Because the opening sequence was stupid and contrived for words. The rest of the movie is just as awful. From a technical standpoint, it is incredibly cheap. The dully lit scenery and crude-looking and unauthentic special effects were problems but was nothing compared to the constant zooming-in-and-out camera work, which got on my nerves as quick as when you say Bob's your uncle. The sound effects are just bizarre, and the music is over-bearing. The dialogue is so bad that you are left cringing at how aimlessly cheesy it is. The story is paced in such a plodding manner, with no surprises or genuine emotion as well as being ridiculously contrived. The characters may be clichéd, but they are also obnoxious and undeveloped ones. The acting is phoned in, and the direction is flat. And don't get me started on the science, I had a feeling there were going to be inaccuracies but I had no idea that there would be so many or that every single of them would be so implausible that you are both laughing and dropping your jaw at the television at the same time. In conclusion, a terrible movie with no redeeming qualities at all, it actually leaves you angry rather than laughing at its complete ineptitude. 1/10 Bethany Cox

Almost every criticism that can be thrown at this mini series has already been made, so I will start with mine: * the stereotyped young, beautiful, brilliant, kick-ass woman who will not fall into line and insists on playing by her rules which run counter to all others. She is right and everyone else is wrong. She wears a tightly fitting shirt throughout the film and never changes it, so presumably everything happens in one day.* The squabbling families - father and son, father and daughter, husband and wife. All disaster movies have them so they can either be killed off or reconciled.* The rupture following the train down the tracks. That's the part where I suspended all belief and just sat back for the ride.* We are told that the fault is so deep underground that no instruments have been invented which could measure it. Later they have to set their nuclear war heads at 350 feet or thereabouts to fuse the fault. Gimme a break! I thought coal mines went lower than that. 3,500 feet would have sounded more likely. 3.5 miles even better.The good points: * I liked the split screen and the special effects.* It was fun for a few hours and made a change from talk shows, cooking shows and home the shopping channels.On a cold wet winter's night when you have nothing better to do, stoke up the fire, grab a few friends and sit back for the ride.

10.5 (2004) BOMB (out of 4)An X-Games biker is riding around Seattle when a massive 7.2 earthquake hits bringing all the buildings down around him. This here gets the attention of the President of the United States (Beau Bridges) who turns this case over to a friend who works for FEMA (Fred Ward). On another part of the West Coast an earthquake expert (Kim Delaney) has a theory that more earthquakes are going to follow due to something dealing with the plates but she also believes a nuclear blast could bring the plates together and stop future quakes. Soon another quake hits Northern California and soon one hits San Francisco and it appears the next quake will his Los Angeles, which would mean no more bad movies from Hollywood. Actually, it means this quake is the big one and the West Coast is going to fall in the ocean. Whatever….While Earthquake was a bad movie that was made entertaining due to how bad it was, 10.5 on the other hand is just an incredibly bad film that doesn't have any redeeming factors. I'm a sucker for this disaster flicks but this one here grows tiresome before the opening credits are over and the bad thing is that we've still got over two and a half hours to go. Everything from the acting to the directing to the incredibly bad special effects are worthless making this an incredibly hard film to get through. In fact, by the time part two starts I'm sure most people watching would rather be experiencing a real 10.5. The key to every disaster film ever made are the characters who we are supposed to cheer and root on and hope they don't fall victim to Mother Nature but that's not the case here. In fact, I kept hoping most of our main cast would fall victim because that would mean we were closer to the finish. Throughout disaster film history we always get stereotypes that are usually so incredibly stupid that we laugh at them and we get the same type of thing here minus the laughs. We get the typical melodrama, which includes and father and son struggling after the mothers death, a father and daughter trying to come together and a husband and wife who are the verge of a divorce. Thankfully, even though fifty million people are evacuating the city they are all able to find one another to make up before the quake hits.The characters are so overwrought and obnoxious that you can't really cheer for them and the worst one has to be the beautiful daughter who hates her father but the quake brings them together. I'm not going to bother mentioning the actresses name but lets just say her acting ability is below the level of Tor Johnson of Ed Wood fame. Beau Bridges usually delivers a decent performance but it's clear he was just cashing a paycheck here. Seeing him as President of the United States is a joke in itself and he does nothing with the role making us believe he really is the leader of this country. Kim Delaney comes off very annoying and doesn't make a good lead actress. The film's one saving grace is Fred Ward who is interesting even if he's just sleeping. He also gets the film's only well made scene where he has a final talk with his son. I think people are attracted to disaster movies for the same reason they can't help avoid looking at a car wreck just in case they are able to see a body lying in the road. They watch these films because they want to see disaster and the hopes of a few people beating the odds of survival. The special effects in the film are all CGI and do they look incredibly awful and fake. I'm sorry but CGI is the evil creation of Satan and the lack of imagination really shows this here. And please, don't give me the fact that these scenes couldn't have been done without the CGI effects. Check out San Francisco or Earthquake and you'll see that effects were being done before CGI and they also contained a bit of imagination, which is very important. Just take a look at the scene where the Golden Gate Bridge collapses. Check out the scene where the earth is breaking apart and following a train. Tremors had better ground breaking scenes and it didn't take a computer to create them.With this disaster film we also get a post 9/11 speech that is so forced that you can't help but role your eyes. There are various political statements made throughout the film and they all come off fake and it's clear the director is just trying to make this film be something better than it actually is. This film shows the worst of America in the fact that no imagination went into it and the director seems to think that everyone watching would fall for the various tricks and stupidity that is put on the screen. How a film like this could turn out this bad is beyond me but 10.5 is without a doubt the worst disaster film ever made, which is saying a lot considering this genre gave us duds like The Swarm and When Time Ran Out.

I have seen this movie once, but I just don't understand how any of the things that happen in the movie are physically possible, because they probably aren't. Let's see, there is a 7.9 Earthquake in Seattle, a man happens to be able to perform stunts while riding a bike down the streets and tries to out run the Space Needle and also manages to stay on his bike and ride it like there is no shaking at all. But this is only the beginning of the unrealistic stuff you see in the film. Later in Reading, California an 8.4 Earthquake occurs and a rift opens up into the ground and you also see a train. Now instead of having the hole open up and swallow the train right there, they decide to use a even funnier method and have it exactly parallel with the tracks then eventually have gravity pull the train in, also you might probably notice that the train is going the exact same speed as the earthquake to. Later in San Francisco a 9.2 Earthquake occurs causing the Golden Gate bride to collapse and what do you see, people standing up and running. If a 8.0 earthquake occurred in real life people would be immediately thrown from the ground. But the height of the unrealistic story plot is when the 10.5 earthquake hits, and practically destroys everything in California, but everything around the state is almost completely unharmed how do you explain this. Even tough they didn't do a good job with the realism it is kind of fun to watch and the science isn't as bad as the movie science in Core.