20 "Twin" Films That Were In Competition With Each Other
2. Volcano vs. Dante's Peak
Rotten Tomatoes: 50%/26%
IMDb: 5.5/5.9
Perhaps the most obvious of twin films, these two came out a year after Armageddon and Deep Impact in an attempt to re-invigorate the disaster film - a subgenre that hadn't known great success since the 1970s.
Volcano, directed by Mick Jackson, wastes no time blowing things up, opening with an earthquake in L.A. that puts emergency workers at risk. Soon, implausibly, lava rises from the street. It's quite a step down for Jackson, who so gracefully handled the city once before with Steve Martin's L.A. Story. And the script does him no favours, with clunky dialogue and ham-fisted attempts at relevance by referencing the Rodney King riots and the ineffectiveness of 911.
One critic, while noting its ineptitude, noted that the audience was having a blast, but not in a good way. They were enjoying it the way they would an episode of Mystery Science Theatre 3000.
Where Volcano largely won over critics with its silliness, Dante's Peak alienated them with its devotion to thin characterization. Pierce Brosnan plays Volcanologist Harry Dalton, who has a bone to pick with volcanoes after losing his lover to one in South America. When a Mount St. Helen's-esque Peak (Dante's) looks as though it's ready for a to burst in Washington, he's called to investigate.
While it's accurate that the characters are fairly stock, they're capably handled by veterans like Brosnan, Linda Hamilton and Charles Hallihan. And though some of the science has been reviewed as bogus (you can't stand that close to lava without immolating), some has some merit.
Neither film succeeded in bringing about a demand for more of the same, so it's a bit of a toss-up: the unfettered goofiness of Volcano overseen by a grunting Tommy Lee Jones or the more grounded Dante's Peak. The latter enjoys a healthy cult, the former has mostly been forgotten.