The recently released film Thor: The Dark World is a huge fantasy epic spanning nine intergalactic realms, following the story of an alien creature with god-like powers fighting to save the universe from the powers of darkness. But what really killed the film’s gritty realism for me was the poor Tube geography.
Londoners are not known for their willingness to talk whilst on public transport, or their politeness, but it’s an unspoken point of pride that when asked by a tourist that they will give the quickest and most accurate directions. The London Underground is so central to the city that even if you’re not a native (I emigrated from Leicester a few years ago), Harry Beck’s iconic Tube map will become ingrained into your mind. So when Thor gets on the Tube at Charing Cross and is told by a fellow passenger he is three stops from Greenwich, it’s intensely frustrating.
Why couldn’t they have just fixed the script? Surely the actor who they employed for just that one line was a local who would know? Unfortunately for Thor, the correct route isn’t quite so simple. He’d have to leave the Tube station, hop on the national rail train from Charing Cross mainline station, and change at London Bridge. And even then to get to Greenwich Park, where shit was going down, it might be quicker to go to Maze Hill station, one stop after Greenwich.
Or how about taking the short walk to Embankment, taking the District to Monument, changing to Bank and taking the DLR to Cutty Sark? Or there’s even the number 53 bus – though if he takes this latter option, the odds of him turning up just in the nick of time are going to be significantly reduced.
Thor 2 isn’t alone though in getting London wrong. Last year’s Bond film, Skyfall, had Bond board a train at Temple station that aficionados (that’s how I’m choosing to refer to train spotters) will be able to tell you was actually a deep-level Jubilee line train rather than the sort used on the District and Circle lines. And this isn’t even to mention the fact that in Bond’s world, the District line apparently serves the Spitalfields (EDIT: Smithfields) area.
Similarly, the cerebral thriller Fast & Furious 6 at one point has a fight in the tunnels at Aldwych station only to emerge in what Vin Diesel’s character later refers to as Waterloo station – though this is perhaps forgivable in comparison to the film’s utterly bizarre street race sequence above ground. In this case, they hold a loud party literally next to the Foreign Office (how did they get a permit for that?) before racing along a bizarre route up Whitehall, skipping Trafalgar Square, emerging at Piccadilly Circus from the wrong direction before, umm, somehow heading north up Whitehall again. Though I guess this is a film that also tries to pass off a barely disguised Lambeth Bridge as Moscow (some onion domes have been added to buildings in post-production), and Senate House as Interpol HQ.
Perhaps the worst London geography fail I’ve seen, though, is in the 2009 Bollywood film London Dreams. At the start of the film a boy called Arjun and his uncle come to London in search of stardom. When they arrive at Heathrow, Arjun runs away… and manages to run all the way to Shad Thames. Just over 20 miles away. Impressive.
Okay, so London geography errors are pretty common – but why do they persist? It’s such a trivial thing, why can’t filmmakers get them right?
In the case of the Tube, the reason is practical. The two most common filming locations on the Underground are the disused station at Aldwych (seen in Fast & Furious 6), which used to be on a branch of the Piccadilly line until it closed in 1994, and the similarly disused Jubilee line platforms at Charing Cross (used for Skyfall and Thor 2), which were used until the line was extended to Stratford via Westminster in 1999. It’s much easier to film on some closed track than upset thousands of commuters.
Now, am I kicking up a fuss over something essentially trivial? Well, yes – but what I don’t understand is how millions of dollars can be spent on making a giant spaceship appear to hover over the Royal Maritime Museum in Greenwich, yet for some reason the budget doesn’t extend to fixing a few rogue signposts in the a Tube station.
And given how London is home to six million people – many of whom presumably like to watch films – can’t a little more care be taken? This can’t be unique to London either – I imagine residents of New York, Los Angeles and many other cities must find this maddening. Am I the only person who finds rubbish geography distracting?
If you want to find me to argue, I’ll be on platform 12 at Clapham Junction. I’ll be the guy with the notebook and the anorak.
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