Summary
Directed by Brad Peyton, San Andreas opens with an establishing shot of the mountains of the San Fernando Valley in Southern California. A young woman drives a silver SUV while listening to music. She isn’t paying much attention to the winding road, reaching for things in the back seat. Suddenly rocks tumble and crack her windshield. She veers over the edge of a cliff. The camera stays with her as the car tumbles down the hillside, becoming increasingly smashed. In a daze, she realizes her car is dangling over an even-deeper ravine.
The scene cuts to a moving helicopter in which search-and-rescue workers are being interviewed by a journalist. The workers are ex-military service members and are now part of the Los Angeles Fire Department. The film’s protagonist, Ray Gaines, flies the helicopter. When asked about his military service in Afghanistan, he tells the journalist he is just doing his job.
Ray spots the young woman in her teetering vehicle. Her name is Natalie. He speaks with her by calling her cell phone through the helicopter phone. He tells her to stay calm as he navigates the helicopter into the narrow ravine. It requires “tipping the hat,” a maneuver that involves Ray tilting the helicopter through the gap. He does so, hovering above the car. His coworker lowers down on a rope and secures the car. However, while he is under the vehicle, the car slips and pins the rescue worker. Ray descends on a rope himself to assist. Meanwhile, the helicopter’s engines are failing. Ray manages to get Natalie out of the vehicle as it shifts, unpinning the other worker. The crew celebrates the successful rescue as the car plummets.
The scene cuts to the California Institute of Technology. Dr. Lawrence Hayes, a professor of seismology, is giving a lecture on the history of massive earthquakes. He says the biggest ever recorded was in Valdivia, Chile, a 9.5 magnitude quake. It lasted eleven minutes and spawned a tsunami that leveled an area the size of Hawaii many miles away. He speaks about the San Andreas fault, a meeting place of tectonic plates, that runs through California. He says they are 100 years overdue for a major earthquake. Hayes says, “It’s not a matter of if, but when.”
Ray and his coworker discuss Ray’s daughter, Blake, now being in college as they walk from their plane. The scene cuts to Dr. Hayes in his office as his colleague, Dr. Kim Park, excitedly brings news of mini quakes detected close to the Hoover Dam. Smiling, they decide to check them out. As Ray gets home, his daughter calls and discusses their plan to drive her up to college the next day. Ray suggests a dinner with Blake and his ex-wife, but she says they already have plans with Daniel, his ex-wife's new boyfriend. At the same moment, Ray opens an envelope containing divorce papers addressed to him. In Blake’s bedroom, Ray looks at pictures of a trip to San Francisco featuring him, his wife, and their two daughters. He smiles at the memories of happier times with his family.
The camera pans over the Hoover Dam in Clark County, Nevada. Park and Hayes use oscillation detectors to measure seismic activity. They are pleased with their work. However, the pulse rate suddenly jumps to a 7.1. Hayes is on top of the dam and rushes tourists and workers off. Park, however, is inside the dam itself and has to climb up a ladder. The dam and surrounding cliffs are crumbling.
Park runs away from the breaking dam, but sees a young girl who hasn’t run. He picks her up and runs with her in his arms, bringing her to Hayes. Just as he throws her into his colleague’s arms, Park realizes a long piece of rebar is stuck in his foot. Hayes reaches out to save him, but he tells him to stop. The dam collapses and Park is carried away while Hayes watches.
Ray receives a text from his boss, Chief Logan, saying there has been an earthquake in Nevada and to call immediately. Ray sighs. Ray goes to pick up his daughter, Blake. Inside a lavish house he meets his ex-wife’s new boyfriend, Daniel, for the first time. They shake hands and Ray compliments Daniel’s house. Blake says her dad is heading to Nevada the next day, meaning he can’t drive her. Daniel offers to bring her because he has business in San Francisco to attend to. Ray learns that Emma and Daniel are planning to move in together. He congratulates them, though the moment is awkward. Alone outside, Emma says she was going to tell him about moving in. He is short with her but not cruel, getting into his truck after removing his daughter’s bike. He tells Emma not to worry and that he’ll get the papers signed soon.
On a private plane, Daniel and Blake sit. Daniel tells her that he’ll never try to get in the way of her relationship with her father. Blake nods. She asks why he never had kids himself. He says he was too busy working on the buildings he develops. He shows her a brochure of his current project, a luxury condo tower set to be the tallest building in San Francisco. Blake says she likes the name The Gate.
Analysis
The opening scene of San Andreas establishes several of the film’s major themes: responsibility, rescue, ingenuity, and cooperation. Director Brad Peyton begins the scene from the perspective of a young woman driving on a winding stretch of Los Angeles highway. Peyton sets the anxious, thriller tone of the movie through the use of dramatic irony: the driver reaches for things in her backseat while the audience watches traffic coming toward her. While the audience assumes the driver will hit oncoming traffic to which she seems oblivious, the danger comes from an unexpected source: falling rocks.
With a high-stakes rescue needed, Peyton brings in the film’s protagonist, Ray Gaines, a military veteran and air rescue pilot with the Los Angeles Fire Department. The theme of responsibility arises with Ray’s terse reply to the journalist’s question about the connection between his military career and his current work. Ray says he is just doing his job, a humble way of deflecting an opportunity to reflect on his heroic vocation.
Despite the risky nature of his work, Ray looks upon rescuing others as a responsibility it is his duty to accept. The rescue itself also requires ingenuity as Ray problem-solves on the spot while remaining cool under pressure. Ultimately, he puts his own life at risk to save both the stranded driver and his colleague from certain death. With this tense introduction, Peyton shows the audience that Ray is someone on whom others can rely.
With a cutaway to Dr. Hayes’s class at Caltech, Peyton introduces the theme at the center of San Andreas: natural disasters. As a seismologist, Hayes researches earthquakes and related phenomena. To add realism to the film, Peyton has Hayes’s character cite real-life historical examples of powerful earthquakes that have killed thousands. In a moment of foreshadowing, Hayes ends his lecture with an ominous warning of an imminent major earthquake along the San Andreas Fault, a tectonic boundary that runs the length of coastal California. Peyton again grounds the realism of the movie by highlighting the real-life issue of a lack of sophisticated early warning technology for earthquakes. In the film at least, Hayes and his colleague Dr. Park are on the verge of debuting technology that can predict when an earthquake will happen.
Peyton next introduces the theme of grief. In the scene in which Ray talks to his daughter on the phone, he is visibly disturbed to learn he can’t have dinner with her before she goes off to college because she already has plans with her mother’s new boyfriend. Ray’s grief is redoubled when he simultaneously opens an envelope containing divorce papers. In this mournful state, Ray stews further in grief over the family he has lost by looking at photos of a trip he took to San Francisco with his wife and two daughters when Mallory was still alive.
Peyton builds further on the themes of grief and natural disasters with Hayes’s and Park’s experience at the Hoover Dam. Although they go because they are excited to confirm that their seismic activity detection instruments are functioning properly, they soon find themselves in the middle of an earthquake they didn’t foresee. The theme of rescue arises again as Park sacrifices his own life to save the life of a frightened young girl.
The disaster at the Hoover Dam means Ray is called to help with rescue efforts and so can’t drive Blake to college as they had planned. Daniel’s offer to step in is upsetting to both Blake and Ray, but neither says anything, out of politeness and emotional repression. Ray continues to suppress his true feelings when he learns Emma is moving in with Daniel. Even when Emma gives him an opportunity when they are alone outside to tell her he feels upset, Ray pretends he isn’t bothered and drives off in a huff. The scene, although minor on the surface, reveals Ray’s tendency not to share his feelings. As the viewer will come to see, Ray’s emotional repression contributed significantly to the dissolution of his marriage to Emma.
