20 Thoughts We Had While Watching ‘San Andreas’

Carla Gugino and Dwayne Johnson in ‘San Andreas’ (Warner Bros.)

With its enormous $54.6 million take this weekend, San Andreas clearly satisfied a need for movie audiences. (And that need was, “You know how every superhero movie ends with a city being destroyed? Can I see that, but without all those pesky superheroes?”) Dwayne Johnson’s disaster flick was an epic demonstration of Hollywood’s ability to simulate mass destruction — and answer the age-old question, “What would it look like if a chef caught on fire?” Grand-scale action movies like these aren’t about plot consistency or logic: They’re about throwing as many oh s—! moments as possible onto the screen. And yet, here are a few nitpicky questions that slipped through in the middle of San Andreas’ carnage.

1. When faced with the opening emergency of a girl and her dangling car stuck between two cliffs, Dwayne Johnson — as rescuer Ray — needs a strategy. He pauses and then dramatically announces, “We’re gonna tip the hat.” Tipping the hat! Ray is gonna tip the hat! I don’t know what it is, but it’s so crazy it might work! And then…"tipping the hat" turned out to just be “go down.” Jeez, not every maneuver needs a dramatic code name, Ray! When he orders takeout at McDonalds, does he call it “beefing the eagle”?

2. Side note: Ray may also want to rethink that name, as “tipping the hat” sounds like it could be a euphemism for what happens when a teenage boy vanishes into the bathroom for a long time. “Billy! Billy! It’s dinner! You better not be tipping the hat in there!”

3. In the class run by Prof. Lawrence (Paul Giamatti) — which is apparently called “Scaring the Crap out of Students 101” — a student asks about the possibilities of a giant earthquake. Lawrence ominously replies, “It’s not a matter of if… It’s a matter of when.” Which sounds prescient until you realize he’s been answering this question in the exact same way for years: You picture someone from the Caltech class of ‘02 meeting someone from the class of ‘09 and saying, “You had Professor Lawrence? Did he give you that whole 'It’s not a matter of if…it’s a matter of when’ speech? We get it dude, earthquakes happen.”

4. In the history of disaster films, has there ever been a hero who was: not pining for his ex-wife: whose child was not in jeopardy; and who did not have unsigned divorce papers in play? And was it a clerical oversight that not a single pet was rescued in this film?

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5. A geology PhD knows many things, the most crucial being the exact spot where the crumble-free zone starts on the Hoover Dam so you can stand there and catch little girls thrown to you and not have to worry about tumbling into the water like those ignorant teaching assistants who merely have their Masters.

6. Ray’s wife’s boyfriend, Riddick (Ioan Gruffudd), goes from zero to Die Hard’s Harry Ellis in just one scene, setting the new world’s record for fastest pivot from kindly potential stepdad (“I’m never going to try to take your Dad’s place”) to weaselly, greedy villain (it’s every architect for himself, Blake: if you survive the crumbling garage, keep the car!).

7. What was the mathematical formula tattooed on the bicep of Lawrence’s Russian assistant? Is it the Chekhovian formula that proves that if a deadly earthquake is introduced in the first act, then patriotism will go off in the third act?

8. After the big quake erupts while Emma (Carla Gugino) is out for lunch, she seems strangely attached to Larissa the waitress, trying (and failing) to get her to safety. Does LA have a more binding waiter/patron pact than restaurants everywhere else?

9. If you had a critical job interview and absolutely had to take your precocious little brother, would you not have some preset safeguards to stop him from running around asking out the boss’ daughter for you? Like a bribe? Or a taser?

10. Also, it’s charming that small British boys haven’t discovered the internet yet and when vacationing still lug around enormous travel guides.

11. When an entire city is a disaster area, is it okay for a rescue pilot to commandeer an official helicopter just to save two family members? Asking for a friend who was buried in rubble with hundreds of other people.

12. When rushing around with his team, Prof. Lawrence utters the words, “Sweet, bro, get your laptop.” Is it any wonder he was voted “Hippest member of the Caltech faculty” for three years running?

13. You can only say the F-word once in a PG-13 movie, and San Andreas’ creative team decided to give their one free pass to Emma with her message on Riddick’s voicemail: “You left my daughter? If you’re not already dead, I’m gonna f—in’ kill you!” It was a good applause line — but let’s take a moment of silence for the millions of other San Franciscans who had to gruesomely die while yelling, “Oh, darn!” as a result.

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14. At this point in the film, I started to wonder if Riddick may not be so evil as I thought. After all, maybe he was just in shock when he abandoned Blake! Perhaps he’ll go back and…what’s that? He just shoved a guy into the path of a crumbling building to claim his safe spot? Never mind.

15. I’m glad there was a break in the action so Ray and Emma could get some quality time to clear the air about their dead daughter: Sometimes you just need time on the open road to sort these things out, provided you don’t drive into the San Andreas fault and plummet to your death.

16. Would Emma find it cathartic to know that Riddick died as secondary villains often do in movies like these — being squashed by a giant object — or would she prefer to have f—in’ killed him herself?

17. When the tsunami hits, the music mournfully swells as an old couple accepts their death and embraces, facing the wave. Considering the movie also opens with a closeup of a floating heart necklace, was Titanic having a two-for-one reference close-out sale?

18. Dwayne Johnson learned a key CPR tip from Michelle Rodriguez in Furious 7: It doesn’t matter how long someone’s brain has been deprived of oxygen – as long as you yell at them with enough emotion, they’ll come back to life and be fine. Perhaps NASA should look into this workaround solution for the need for oxygen: Instead of spending all that money on oxygen tanks, they could just play The Rock shouting “NOT TODAY!” over the space shuttle sound system 24/7 and everyone will be just fine.

Paul Giamatti and Archie Panjabi in ‘San Andreas’ (Warner Bros.)

19. The happy ending of San Andreas is that while millions died in the quake and its aftermath, thanks to Prof. Lawrence’s early warning system, hundreds of thousands of people didn’t! Those cockeyed optimists: They don’t look at San Francisco as being 90 percent full of corpses, they think of San Francisco as being 10 percent full of lucky survivors clawing their way out of debris — past layers and layers of corpses.

20. The film ends with Ray solemnly looking at the massive wreckage and intoning, “Now…we rebuild.” Considering how he swiped a valuable rescue chopper to save his family, did he follow up this statement by collecting every hammer in the San Francisco area and using them to shore up his own pool house?