I ride an indoor exercise bicycle, and I have to have something to watch as I do. I had recorded a movie previously and started to watch it. It got to a diving scene pretty quickly, and it was so horrendous that I immediately decided we needed a thread in which we could describe the worst scuba diving scenes we had ever encountered. I will start with the movie I just put on pause so I could write this. I hope my memories of the key details are accurate. The movie is a Laura Croft: Tomb Raider movie, and I watched it because I had not seen anything that involved Angelina Jolie since she did Girl Interrupted, and I wanted to see what all the fuss was about.
Before the dive (and later) we see her on the boat with a silvery wet suit, like Mike Nelson, except that, unlike Mike Nelson, her nipples are clearly visible. (Apparently not a lot of mms of thermal protection.)Her team is searching for an ancient submerged temple off the shore of Santorini, a temple whose location was moved significantly away from its original location by a recent earthquake. They are the only ones who have realized it, so they will be the first to find it.
To get there, they have to ride on large, powerful DPVs, each with 3 large headlights required to illuminate the gloom at the depths to which they are diving. Normally those waters are pretty well lit by the sunlight for quite a distance, so it must be a deep dive, and the film makes it clear they are going very deep indeed. Despite that darkness, the lights reveal an ocean floor covered with green flora, sea grasses and columns of some other kinds of green plants flourishing through photosynthesis despite the lack of sunlight. They find the temple that has eluded searchers for thousands of years easily, and they drive right in with their huge DPVs.
They find themselves inside a huge room, perfectly intact, and apparently sitting well above the water level, since they can park their DPVs, take off their gear, and walk around freely. It's also remarkably well lit. They light some flares and toss them into bowls to produce the light they don't really need anyway. The place is filled with treasure which was apparently just sitting around when the first earthquake buried it at sea a couple thousand years ago. (They must have been taking inventory at the time.) They realize they are about to become wealthy, apparently unaware of the local laws related to archaeological finds.
While they are hard at work looting the temple, the bad guys arrive. Apparently they had figured out the location as well, and, expecting the others to get there before them, they came armed with spear guns with many small spears with no lines attached. They quickly dispatch Laura's helpers, but they turn into horrible shots as they send fusillades of spears unsuccessfully her way. She manages to get to her DPV and get the high tech gun she keeps there for just such emergencies and fires off a few successful shots at the bad guys from under water.
But meanwhile aftershocks of the earthquake that moved the temple earlier have begun, and this time, instead of moving it to a new location, they cause the temple to fall apart. Laura helps by firing a well-aimed shot at the top of a column, which knocks it over. At this point, I realized that no, the temple was not above water, which would have made its location pretty obvious to all the local residents. No, it was deep below the surface, where they had gone on their scooters. This ancient temple was apparently airtight, and the air they had been breathing had been stored there for thousands of years. Apparently the sunlight illuminating it had been captured there as well. (How could it get out?) The earthquake had now broken that airtight (and lighttight) seal, and water was starting to flow in.
I cannot remember the exact sequence, but at some point a bad guy shoots a spear through her scuba tank, causing it to hiss as the air escapes, like a tire going flat. Knowing she won't have the benefit of either the DPV or the leaking scuba tank, Laura has to think fast. She pulls out her huge knife and cuts through the wet suit and into her arm. She begins to swim, heading back in the direction she came and then starting to ascend. There is no way she can get that far without help on a single breath hold, so she manipulates the wound she had just made and hangs around calmly waiting for a large shark to smell the blood and come after her. Fortunately, it does not take long, and that blood-thirsty shark comes right at her, it's gaping jaws wide open for the kill.
But that was exactly what she wanted--the shark had been played for a fool! She punched the shark in the nose, and, mad with pain, the shark has no choice but to turn and head for the surface, Laura hanging on to its fin and getting a free ride as he goes. Once there, she has to take several deep breaths before looking around and planning her next steps.
So what do you think?
Before the dive (and later) we see her on the boat with a silvery wet suit, like Mike Nelson, except that, unlike Mike Nelson, her nipples are clearly visible. (Apparently not a lot of mms of thermal protection.)Her team is searching for an ancient submerged temple off the shore of Santorini, a temple whose location was moved significantly away from its original location by a recent earthquake. They are the only ones who have realized it, so they will be the first to find it.
To get there, they have to ride on large, powerful DPVs, each with 3 large headlights required to illuminate the gloom at the depths to which they are diving. Normally those waters are pretty well lit by the sunlight for quite a distance, so it must be a deep dive, and the film makes it clear they are going very deep indeed. Despite that darkness, the lights reveal an ocean floor covered with green flora, sea grasses and columns of some other kinds of green plants flourishing through photosynthesis despite the lack of sunlight. They find the temple that has eluded searchers for thousands of years easily, and they drive right in with their huge DPVs.
They find themselves inside a huge room, perfectly intact, and apparently sitting well above the water level, since they can park their DPVs, take off their gear, and walk around freely. It's also remarkably well lit. They light some flares and toss them into bowls to produce the light they don't really need anyway. The place is filled with treasure which was apparently just sitting around when the first earthquake buried it at sea a couple thousand years ago. (They must have been taking inventory at the time.) They realize they are about to become wealthy, apparently unaware of the local laws related to archaeological finds.
While they are hard at work looting the temple, the bad guys arrive. Apparently they had figured out the location as well, and, expecting the others to get there before them, they came armed with spear guns with many small spears with no lines attached. They quickly dispatch Laura's helpers, but they turn into horrible shots as they send fusillades of spears unsuccessfully her way. She manages to get to her DPV and get the high tech gun she keeps there for just such emergencies and fires off a few successful shots at the bad guys from under water.
But meanwhile aftershocks of the earthquake that moved the temple earlier have begun, and this time, instead of moving it to a new location, they cause the temple to fall apart. Laura helps by firing a well-aimed shot at the top of a column, which knocks it over. At this point, I realized that no, the temple was not above water, which would have made its location pretty obvious to all the local residents. No, it was deep below the surface, where they had gone on their scooters. This ancient temple was apparently airtight, and the air they had been breathing had been stored there for thousands of years. Apparently the sunlight illuminating it had been captured there as well. (How could it get out?) The earthquake had now broken that airtight (and lighttight) seal, and water was starting to flow in.
I cannot remember the exact sequence, but at some point a bad guy shoots a spear through her scuba tank, causing it to hiss as the air escapes, like a tire going flat. Knowing she won't have the benefit of either the DPV or the leaking scuba tank, Laura has to think fast. She pulls out her huge knife and cuts through the wet suit and into her arm. She begins to swim, heading back in the direction she came and then starting to ascend. There is no way she can get that far without help on a single breath hold, so she manipulates the wound she had just made and hangs around calmly waiting for a large shark to smell the blood and come after her. Fortunately, it does not take long, and that blood-thirsty shark comes right at her, it's gaping jaws wide open for the kill.
But that was exactly what she wanted--the shark had been played for a fool! She punched the shark in the nose, and, mad with pain, the shark has no choice but to turn and head for the surface, Laura hanging on to its fin and getting a free ride as he goes. Once there, she has to take several deep breaths before looking around and planning her next steps.
So what do you think?
)
