Poseidon is a movie remake of the classic disaster film The Poseidon Adventure, based on the novel by Paul Gallico. It was released on May 12, 2006 and stars Kurt Russell, Josh Lucas, Jacinda Barrett, Emmy Rossum and Richard Dreyfuss. It is directed by Wolfgang Petersen and was produced and distributed by Warner Bros., in association with Virtual Studios. The film also had a simultaneous release in the IMAX format.
The movie centres on the S.S. Poseidon, a luxury cruise ship named for the Greek god of sea, cutting through the Ocean. On the promenade deck, Dylan Johns (Josh Lucas) is seen running for an evening workout, stopping when he reaches the top of the ship to enjoy the last sunset of the year. Meanwhile, in one of the luxury cabins, Jennifer Ramsey (Emmy Rossum) is found kissing her boyfriend/fiance Christian (Mike Vogel) when they are interrupted by Jen's father, former firefighter/mayor of New York Robert Ramsey (Kurt Russell).
Christian immediately becomes sycophantic to Robert, but he rebuffs Christian, and then implies that the kids were having sex before he entered, which Jen flatly denies before stomping upstairs to her room, angry at the accusation. Down below, in the kitchen, a woman named Elena (MÃa Maestro) is hunting for her friend, Marco Valentin. After she bumps into Dylan in the lobby, she finds Marco (Freddy Rodriguez), a waiter on the ship, and it is revealed that he is smuggling her across from Europe so she can be with her sick brother in New York. He gives her some food from a nearby plate, but tells her that she must stay in his cabin. Elsewhere, architect Richard Nelson (Richard Dreyfuss) is seen calling his boyfriend, but only gets the answering machine, and from the message he leaves it is implied that he has recently experienced a break up.
That night, Captain Michael Bradford (Andre Braugher) welcomes everyone to the New Year's party in the ship's ballroom, telling them a little about its namesake, and then introduces musical act Gloria (Stacy Ferguson). On the upper level of the ballroom, Dylan and Robert are playing a game of poker with two others, one of whom is Lucky Larry (Kevin Dillon). As Robert is nearing the fifty thousand dollar betting mark on his hand, Jen comes up to wish him a happy New Year before heading downstairs to the nightclub with Dylan. Down on the main level, Nelson is telling some of his table-mates the story of his breakup. He orders a five thousand dollar bottle of wine for the table just before excusing himself to go on deck to get some air. Dylan is then seen again, walking away with his winnings, when he bumps into a kid, Connor James (Jimmy Bennett), playing with his PSP. Dylan is introduced to Connor's mom, Maggie (Jacinda Barrett), when she comes up looking for her son. Down in the disco, Jen and Chris are partying when Elena manoeuvres her way, alone, through the crowded disco.
On the bridge the First Officer silences a celebratory crew, and says concernedly: "Something's off." After pacing the bridge, he puts his binoculars to his eyes, and, after scanning the horizon, says: "No!" He has spotted an enormous rogue wave nearing the ship (Nelson, who was about to jump overboard after finding no messages from his ex, also sees the wave and returns inside). The officer puts in an order to turn the bow hard to starboard in order to avoid a side-on hit, but it is too late. The wave hits the ship, rolling it completely upside-down, and, as the wave passes over the exposed keel, causes it to rise again on the opposite side, meaning the ship completed a 270 degree rotation on it's beam-end before settling in an inverted position. The impact of the wave, and roll of the ship sweeps people overboard, while others are burned in flash-fires, crushed by debris, or electrocuted.
After some calm is restored in the ballroom, and the general chaos has subsided, Captain Bradford calls for order and assures the people that as soon as the wave hit, a signal-beacon was released and rescue teams are on the way. As he's talking, Maggie notices Connor stuck on a piano bolted to the floor (now the ceiling). Ramsey comes over and with the help of a few others uses a curtain from the stage to catch Connor when he jumps from the piano. Meanwhile, Jennifer and Christian are in the remains of the nightclub, where one of the spotlight girders has fallen on Christian, trapping his leg beneath it. Jen, with the enlisted help of Elena, try to lift the girder off of Christian.
In the ballroom Robert fights with the Captain over his desire to go search for Jen. Dylan, who opts to save himself rather than wait for rescue, is meanwhile spotted leaving by Connor. This draws attention to Dylan, first by Maggie, and then by Robert and Nelson. After questioning and arguing, Dylan explains that they will probably be able to get out through the bow thrusters, now above the water line. Before leaving, Robert pulls aside Marco and, as a staff member, conscripts him as a guide through the ship. After the group leaves, the Captain orders the water-tight doors sealed, and mutters, "God be with them."
On the other side, Robert asserts that the first destination is the disco, where he knows his daughter last was. The group picks their way through the fiery kitchen, eventually finding the way to the stairs blocked, but Marco says that a nearby service elevator should allow them vertical access to the deck above. To cross the shaft, they use a metal food preparation table as a bridge. After trying to get the doors on the other side open, Dylan notices the doors on the next level up are slightly open, so Nelson volunteers as a stirrup to get him up there. Just as Dylan gets the upper doors open, the elevator cab wedged above them in the shaft begins to shift dangerously, and it becomes a race to get everyone through before the cab plummets. With only Nelson and Macro left, Macro fatally volunteers to let Nelson go ahead of him. With nobody left to hold the table stable, it falls and Marco grabs onto Nelson's legs. Realizing he can't save both, Dylan orders Nelson to kick Marco off, and Marco falls all the way to the "top" of the shaft where he's impaled on metal debris, and then crushed by the falling elevator. The group recovers and heads on.
Back in the nightclub, Elena and Jennifer struggle to free Christian, as the survivors around them are electrocuted through a mixture of flooding from broken water pipes, and severed electrical wires. Elena goes off to find something to lift the girder, and is grabbed from under a pile of corpses by Lucky Larry. With his help, the two women are able to get the girder off of Christian just as the other group arrives from the ballroom. Robert and Jen reunite, and everybody is introduced.
The assemblage then heads through the passenger corridors and into the main atrium, where they use the fallen elevator as a bridge to the other side. Most of the group gets across, but as Lucky Larry crawls across a large piece of machinery torn loose from its moorings falls through the floor above, striking Larry, and the bridge, followed by a waterfall of fuel which ignites into a stream of flame. Robert suggests he, Dylan and Jen find another way across, but Dylan grabs a nearby fire hose, dives into the water, swims across, and climbs up to where the others are, making a rope bridge. With she and her father alone on the one side of the atrium, Jen shows Robert the ring, to which he offers little surprise. The two, using a piece of broken brass railing, slide across the fire hose bridge together.
Back in the ballroom, people are milling around, waiting for rescue, when the glass in the exterior windows starts cracking, and rivets popping. Once this is noticed, people begin to panic, looking for an exit, but beyond the water-tight doors is flooded. The Captain and Gloria calmly hug each other just before all the windows burst open and water comes pouring in, drowning everybody. The screams of those trapped in the ballroom are heard be the survivors in the atrium, and the group heads off once more, with the camera panning to catch the water collected in the bottom of the atrium beginning to rise quickly.
Elena, Robert, Nelson, Jen, Christian, Dylan, Maggie, and Connor have found a shaft that they think might lead up to the next level. Despite Elena's claustrophobia, everyone makes their way into the duct, with the water rushing into the corridor behind them. Once Robert reaches the grille at the end of the shaft, he finds it screwed shut from the outside, his fingers too big to manipulate the screw loose. Using his small hands, and Elena's crucifix as a screwdriver, Connor releases the grille, allowing everyone to climb out of the rapidly filling duct in which Dylan is nearly drowned.
They eventually find themselves in a ballast tank, with the only mode of exit being through the sealed portal into the next tank beyond, with the only way to open the portal being to flood the tank. They let the water in and after a few tense moments, the vent opens and they swim for some stairs. On the way though, Elena gets caught on loose wires, and while trying to free herself hits her head on a beam. By the time anyone notices she's missing and gets back to her, she has drowned. The group lays her to rest and moves on. Meanwhile, we see in the control room that the remaining tanks are filling up one by one, meaning the ship is getting that much closer to going under.
Back with our remaining heroes, we see that the area they need to go get out is currently under more water than they could swim through. Discouraged, they regroup and try to think of another way out when suddenly the ship starts tiling towards the stern, due to an explosion at the rear of the ship. This causes a mass of water to roar past them towards the stern. They realize that this means the previous way forward to the bow thrusters that was blocked might now be clear, and they head that way, when Maggie notices that Connor is missing. She and Dylan search for him while the others secure an exit and find him trapped behind a screen in an area that is rapidly filling with water. Dylan dives under and gets him out, and the trio rapidly swim for the other four, who have made it into the engine room. Nelson sees the door to the propellers and opens it, only to get blown back by the hurricane-force winds the still-active propel is generating.
Christian proposes throwing something in there to block the propellers and get them to stop, but Ramsey points out they'd need to either stop them manually or get them turning the other way, which makes the two argue about who should make the hundred and fifty foot swim to the underwater control room. Christian says that he has better lung capacity so he should do it, and Ramsey reluctantly agrees. Christian moves to say a teary goodbye to Jen, and while he's busy with that, Ramsey dives in and swims off. The other three arrive and are told what Ramsey is doing as we see Ramsey get in the control room. He finds the engine stop button, but it's broken. He starts running out of air, and with his last breath manages to find the button to make the propellers turn the other way.
Back in the propeller room, everyone notices that the blades are now turning the other way. Dylan moves to throw a nitrogen tank into the blades to get them to stop, but the tank gets caught crosswise in the narrow door frame. He manages to push it through, and there's a huge explosion that blows out that pair of propellers on both sides of the ship. The remaining survivors come up and pick their way through the tube, stopping at the drop to the water. Dylan says they have to jump, and soon everybody is in the water and swimming for a nearby lifeboat that was inflated upon the capsizing. They get in just as the ship flip right-side-up and goes under, and Jennifer screams at them to move, as the backwash threatens to drown them. They manage to escape it, and Dylan fires off a flare gun to let any rescue teams know where they are. After a short wait, a pair of helicopters arrive and pick the six survivors from the water.
Like the film The Poseidon Adventure based many of its sets on rooms aboard the RMS Queen Mary, the set designers for the 2006 movie Poseidon drew inspiration for some of the spaces on board the fictional Poseidon from rooms aboard the RMS Queen Mary 2, most notably in the Poseidon's ballroom, which is modeled on the main dining room of the Queen Mary 2.
On the soundstage, separate sets for each main room were built - one "right-side-up" and the other "up-side-down." The interior (and exterior) shots of the ship rolling were constructed using CGI. With a reported $150 million budget, Poseidon received mixed to negative reviews with critics, and opened with a disappointing $22.1 million on its opening weekend of May 12th, in 2nd place behind the reigning leader, Mission: Impossible III. Warner Brothers president-chief operating officer Alan Horn called the results, "very, very disappointing." As of June 4, Poseidon has taken in roughly $52 million dollars at the domestic box office |
