Landscapes and geological features may play an important role in a movie. What would a Western be without the reddish sandstone buttes of Monument Valley, a Bond film without the tropical volcanic island as secret lair of an evil mastermind, or the Lord of The Rings trilogy without its rocky prairies and Mount Doom?
The scenes of the Lord of The Rings trilogy were filmed in New Zealand´s Alps and Mount Doom is really the active volcano Ngauruhoe. Another New Zealand volcano, Mount Taranaki, acts as the counterpart of Japan's famous Mount Fuji in the movie The Last Samurai.
It´s not unusual that one geological landmark replaces a more inaccessible, but similar looking, one. Bruce Wayne (a fossil collector) doesn´t really learn his combat skills in front of a Tibetan glacier in Batman Begins, but rather in front of the Icelandic Svínafellsjökull. Seven Years in Tibet also wasn´t filmed in the Himalayas, but in the Andes.
The Himalayas are mountains formed by the collision of two continents (India and Asia). The Andes, by contrast, were formed because the Pacific Plate is pushed below the South American continent, partially melting and resulting in many active volcanoes.
The action scenes of Everest were filmed on a glacier in the Ötztaler Alps (Austria) and Sylvester Stallone fights a helicopter, not in the Rocky Mountains, but on top of the Lagazuoi (made of dolomitic rocks and appropriately located in the Italian Dolomites) in ´em>Cliffhanger. Both movie locations are not only surrounded by a spectacular mountain scenery, but also easily accessible for the film crew by streets and cable car.
Almost all scenes of the famous Italian spaghetti westerns, like They Call Me Trinity starring actor Terence Hill (alias Mario Girotti, younger brother of geologist Odoardo Girotti), were not filmed in the U.S, but in some abandoned quarries near Rome. Big budget productions can afford more exotic locations. The famous city of stone in Indiana Jones and the Last Crusade was indeed filmed in the ancient city of Petra, a complex of temples excavated from the relatively soft reddish sandstone-formations found there.
Unusual terrestrial landscapes can also act as extraterrestrial ones. Prometheus was filmed in Iceland, near the volcano Hekla. The spaceship in the movie "lands" on a plain made from basaltic lava flows and ash layers. In the background, sedimentary layers of mountains filmed (and later edited into the scenery) in Jordan can be spotted with a geological eye.
But geology can play also a role in inspiring a movie. The scenes of the movie 300 were filmed with real actors playing before a green screen, while the landscape was created later completely with a computer. So there aren't real rocks to be spotted in the movie itself. However the Thermopylae, the hot gates, was the narrow mountain pass and location where the historic battle between Greeks and Persians took place. It was formed by tectonic movements along steep faults. Not to mention disaster movies based on historic earthquakes, tsunamis and eruptions.
Unfortunately there is no best geology category for an Oscar. However, the next time you enjoy a good movie with great landscape shoots, give a bit of credit to the geology as supporting actor.
