Everest (2015) - 9 out of 10:
Everest needs a longer review. At a high level this movie was beyond awesome. At a detailed level I saw a lot of problems. But it's likely that most of my problems were because I know the story too well.
This movie is based on the 1996 tragedy on the south face of Everest. 1996 was the most deadly year on Everest except for very recently. What the movie doesn't show is that there were deaths on both the north and south face of the mountain -- which are the two climbing routes used. I can't remember the exact details, but a lot of men died on the north face of the mountain first. Then the Adventure Consultants and Mountain Madness teams both attempted their ascents and each lost quite a few folks.
While the movie touches on this very briefly, there was also a National Geographic IMAX team there that year, but they opted to wait to attempt a summit until after the large (and very unorganized) crowd of people had come back down. They took a risk doing this because there was no guarantee they'd get a chance if they waited, but they lucked out because the weather got good after the storm happened. They were also one of the few other teams with mainly only experienced people on their team, as they were there to make a documentary of Ed Visteurs summit the mountain without oxygen.
Many things went terribly wrong that year that caused the tragic events, but I'm not sure they were properly explained in the movie. The movie focused almost exclusively on Rob Hall and the decisions he made. Rob being the owner and founder of Adventure Consultants from New Zealand. Rob himself was a very experienced climber who had guided on Everest for a number of years. In general he was a great guide and made good decisions. But in 1996 too many things were weighed against him and for every good decision he made, multiple bad things happened.
What the movie doesn't really show is how bad the crowd on the mountain was that year, and how uncooperative several of the teams were. There is a scene showing the teams attempting to work together and one of the teams getting angry, but it doesn't go far enough to explain how bad it really was. Later in the movie you see Rob and Scott agreeing to work together and asking both of their lead Sherpas to work together. You see the Sherpas arguing, but what you don't see is that later in the climb the Sherpa for Scott's team ignored his responsibilities and didn't do his job.
It also didn't quite show how badly the environment and lack of oxygen affected some of the guides. It shows Andy Harris checking oxygen bottles at one point and claiming they were all empty, but what it doesn't explain is that he thought this because he was already quite sick and was most likely hallucinating. While it's amazing that he climbed back up to help Rob, he only ended up getting worse.
It definitely showed how badly the cold can affect people, especially with Rob and Beck. But it didn't quite show how bad the lack of oxygen was. There was a scene where Toli asks some of the climbers for help to go back and look for people, but they refused. It didn't quite show how bad a shape they were probably in. Guides who do this every year would have trouble going back up, let alone folks who've only been there that year and are probably in over their heads. The fact that Toli was able to do what he did, without oxygen, is a freakin' miracle. In fact, there was a lot of controversy over his decisions on the mountain that year and he addresses some of them in his book. The fact that he didn't use oxygen was looked upon as unethical from a guide perspective, yet he was one of the few who were able to go back and look for survivors. He saved a lot of people that day, but was still criticized for it later.
I also think the movie makes Scott Fischer look a little ... weird. I'm not sure he was really that aloof. He was definitely more laid back than Rob, but I'm not sure he was a dumb as the movie made him to be. The one thing the movie did show was how good a climber Scott was -- but being a little too confident in himself to make it through anything. He was quite sick and really shouldn't have been up that high, but the pressure on a leader is such that he probably felt obligated.
The movie does do a good job showing how much pressure the leaders are under from their clients, and how profitable successful summits are for their business. There was a comment from Beck at one point about not paying Rob $65,000 to not get him to the top. Interestingly, most of that money isn't going to the guides, it's going to the Nepalese government for climbing permits. And then there's the scene where Rob comes across Gary and they both look up at the summit, which seems so close. This is the reality of climbing that makes people make bad decisions. It really does look that close and that easy, but in reality it took them hours to cover that distance.
Think about it. On a summit day climbers usually leave camp 5 around 12am. They usually have a rule to turn back -- wherever they are -- at 2pm. They're suppose to turn back even if they haven't made the summit. The reason is simple, it's really hard to climb down a mountain in the dark when you're exhausted. But by 2pm on summit day, they've already been climbing for 14 HOURS!!!! Most of us don't have normal work days that long. Some of us don't even stay up that many hours in a day!!! After 14 hours of climbing they're ONLY at the point where they're TURNING AROUND. Thankfully getting down is usually faster, but it can still be dark by the time they reach camp 5 again. In the end, some of them have been climbing for a full 24 hours non-stop. And in most cases they've been doing that without enough oxygen.
The fact is that above 26,000 feet your body uses more oxygen than it can ever bring in. The human body is literally dying a slow death while you're that high. And the longer you stay, the closer to death you get. That's why they try to stay at camp 5 for as short a period as possible. If weather sets in and it doesn't look like they'll be able to summit, they always move back down to camp 2 or 3 to give their bodies a break.
The fact is that both teams lost multiple people. And some of those who survived, like Beck Weathers, were seriously injured. It tries to give a decent view of what climbing an 8,000 m peak is like, but it will probably still cause people to misunderstand just how bad it is up there and who, if anyone, is to blame.
Personally I don't think the events of that year are any one person's fault. I think they were caused by a series of bad decisions and bad luck that in other years wouldn't have been a problem. The fact is that there are people attempting to climb Everest that shouldn't even attempt to climb stairs. For some reason climbing companies agree to take people like this to the summit of the mountain. This will probably not change because there will always be someone who is willing to take an inexperienced person to the top for a load of money.
The movie didn't show it in very much detail, but there was a woman on Scott's team (Sandy Hill-Pittman) who shouldn't have been there. And there's some good evidence that Doug wasn't really prepared for such a climb. Beck probably shouldn't have been there either - if he had attempted lower altitude mountains first he would have become aware of his eye problems before getting himself stuck on Everest. There was a group of 2 climbers on Rob's team that were the only ones to make the good decision to turn back early. They did this because they were using up too much oxygen waiting at a bottleneck for too long. It would have been devastating for them to do that, but it was probably the smartest decision made that day. Some of the sherpas were awesome, but not all of them. Some were unhelpful and irresponsible. Scott shouldn't have attempted to climb to camp 5 that quickly. Rob should never have allowed Doug to talk him into a summit attempt after 2pm. Toli should never have been guiding without oxygen. Andy shouldn't have attempted to climb up and help Rob.
If all of these decisions had been made AND the weather was good, chances are most of the people could have been saved. But the combination of that many bad decisions AND a terrible storm literally caused all hell to break loose. While it may sound harsh, the only people to blame for the deaths are those individuals themselves. They made the decisions to do the climb. Some of them pushed themselves too far. Some of them were too inexperienced. But they should have all known the risks. And once they got that high they should have known that their lives depended on every little decision they made. The problem is that it's really hard to make good decisions when your brain is starved of oxygen and you feel like complete shit. It really is too easy to just lie down and not get back up again.
The almost 2 decades since that year have shown that many people have not learned from these events. Inexperienced climbers continue to climb. Overzealous guides continue to guide. Multiple people continue to die on a regular basis. The death toll just keep rising.
Edge of Tomorrow - 8 out of 10 - I'm not a Tom Cruise fan, but I do think he's a good actor. And he did a good job in this movie. It was a pleasant surprise and I liked it. The storyline was well developed. The actors were great. The special effects were good. And the interesting parallel to the World War II invasion of Normandy was quite awesome. I would highly recommend this movie.
Jurassic World - 7.5 out of 10 - I liked the remnants of the old park on the new site. I liked the silly guy in the control room who had the vintage Jurassic Park shirt on. I liked that they brought back the geneticist guy in this movie. But I thought it a bit weird that they actually went through with a park and still created predators. I could understand if they opened a park with only herbivores, but yet another T-Rex and more Velociraptors? Are they really that stupid? I guess they are, and it makes for a good movie, but it was just ridiculous. And the fact that the velociraptors were the good guys this time? Yeah .. not likely. (Not to mention, those fences around the water where that massive underwater dinosaur was were way too short.)
Taken 3 - 4 out of 10 - Taken, the first in the trilogy, was pretty cool. But then they had to go on and make a second and third movie. They should have stopped at the first one. By Taken 3 I was seriously wondering how Liam Neeson's character was able to do the things he did, he just seemed too old!
Mad Max: Fury Road - 2 out of 10 - The only good thing about this movie was the fact that there were a lot of car chase scenes. There was nothing else about this movie that was any good. I really don't understand all the hype. There was no storyline. The acting was stupid. Tom Hardy's character could barely speak -- literally, it was like there was something wrong with him.
Furious 7 - 7 out of 10 - Number 7 wasn't much different from numbers 5 and 6, but it was good. I like the car chases. I like the stunts. I like the acting that's a bit too much and ridiculous. It's what makes the series fun and interesting. The downside is that everyone who watches this movie knows that Paul Walker died while making it, so it's on your mind the whole movie. I assume the movie wasn't made in sequence, so it makes me wonder at what point he passed away. I remember hearing that his brother replaced him in some scenes, but I'm not sure if those included any of the big scenes, or just the ending. The ending ... wow ... be ready to cry. The music, the beach, the words, the cars ... you can't help but be devastated that this is the last in the series with Walker in it. And you can tell how upset his real friends were in these scenes.
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