Journey to the Center of the Earth

Journey to the Center of the Earth is a 2008 American-Canadian television action adventure film directed by T. J. Scott and starring Rick Schroder, Victoria Pratt, and Peter Fonda. The film is very loosely based on the 1864 novel of the same name by Jules Verne. It was shot in HD on location in and around Vancouver in the summer of 2007, and first aired on Ion Television on January 27, 2008. It has since been released on DVD. Plot Heiress Martha Dennison seeks out professor Jonathan Brock to help find her husband, Edward, who disappeared four years earlier on an expedition towards the center of the Earth. At first Jonathan is hesitant to go despite Martha's offer to handsomely pay him, giving him the opportunity to pay off the debts left to him by his recently deceased father, while his nephew and aspiring journalist Abel is excited for the opportunity to get real life journalistic experience. After reviewing Edward's notes Jonathan is persuaded to go along. The two of them, along with Abel, go to the newly acquired Alaskan territory to gather information about Edward and his expedition and find a Russian guide, Sergei, to aide their search of her husband. They struggle to cover a large amount of ground in only 10 days based upon information recovered from a crudely drawn map. They find and enter a mine shaft in a volcano, venturing deep into the center of the earth. Along the way small signs are found of the previous expedition along with the skeleton of Mikael, a friend like a brother to Sergei, and see it as an ominous sign of what's ahead. Abel constantly lags behind taking notes and pictures of the journey and discovers a passage to a strange new land. They come out into a world that, at first, seems much like the surface except that it never gets dark despite there being no sun with a lush forest land and a large lake-like sea. Soon they encounter many prehistoric creatures and the adventure really begins. While Martha takes a bath and short swim she is attacked by some sort of creature in the sea, at the same time Jonathan and Sergei find some logs that were clearly cut down by a person using an axe to make a raft to cross the sea. They use the left over logs and their supply of rope to make a raft of their own and notice several dinosaur-like birds (Archaeopteryx) flying above their heads in a vulture like fashion. As some of the birds move into attack they notice a very, very large pliosaur in the water heading for their raft.