A movie doesn’t automatically matter just because it’s about something that matters. Case in point: Everest, a drama about a real-life tragedy that befell multiple expeditions to the top of Mount Everest in 1996, which resulted in multiple fatalities. The true story is nothing to scoff at, and the filmmakers seem eager to treat everyone involved with the proper reverence, but that doesn’t mean that they did a good job at it.
But the pieces were in place. Everest boasts breathtaking cinematography and an illustrious cast of significant actors, including Jason Clarke, Jake Gyllenhaal, Josh Brolin, John Hawkes, Keira Knightley, Sam Worthington and Emily Watson. Take those elements and put them in a life or death drama set against the backdrop of one of nature’s greatest wonders and you’ve got a sure-fire recipe for success… unless of course somebody forgets to explain what the audience is supposed get out of watching it.
Because the problem with Everest isn’t that it’s unwatchable, it’s that there’s no reason to watch it at all. Director Baltasar Kormakur and writers William Nicholson and Simon Beaufoy show us what happened here but they’re pretty darned hazy about why. There’s no one to blame for this disaster that occurred on Mount Everest, no specific act of stupidity or any particular failure to observe safety protocols or even anyone who sticks their middle finger up at nature. And because there’s no distinct cause for all of this strife, there’s nothing to milk for suspense during the first hour-and-a-half of Everest, when hardly anything happens.
The cast hikes up to the base of Mount Everest, they train for a while, they get to know each other (but not very well), and then they trek upwards and then the weather gets bad and some of them die. There’s not much to it, really. There aren’t any portents of doom, there isn’t a point being made, it’s just – in the immortal words of The Simpsons – “a bunch of stuff that happened.” And a production the size of Everest, with a cast this impressive and a story this significant, can’t help but feel like a waste of time when it all boils down to “So that happened and it sucked.”
Everest isn’t being disrespectful to the real-life people depicted on camera, but that backfires badly. None of them are very interesting. There’s a reason why so many disaster movies resort to stock characters: it’s a dramatic shorthand that lets the audience know what’s important and why they should care, and then it gets out of the way. Everest blanches out any flaws in its characters so that most of them are indistinguishable from each other, and then the plot – rather by necessity – covers up their faces so you can’t even tell who is playing whom.
There is no reason why a film like Everest should feel this disposable. It’s pretty as hell but the only thing worth talking about on the car ride home is how they assembled such an impressive cast when most of them had nothing to do but “be cold.”
Images via Universal Pictures
William Bibbiani (everyone calls him ‘Bibbs’) is Crave’s film content editor and critic. You can hear him every week on The B-Movies Podcast and watch him on the weekly YouTube series Most Craved and What the Flick. Follow his rantings on Twitter at @WilliamBibbiani.
