Summary
In the plane, Ray sets the craft on autopilot and says there’s nowhere to land it so they’ll have to parachute out. Emma is hesitant, but they strap into a tandem parachute and leap out over San Francisco. Ray steers them toward the tower where they’re meant to meet their daughter. He finds a safe place to land in the middle of the baseball diamond at AT&T Park. Upon setting down, Ray says, “It’s been a while since I got you to second base.” Emma laughs. They remove the parachute and begin running.
Dr. Hayes and the journalist watch as footage of their interview goes out over every major U.S. news network. Shaking begins and they dive under desks. The scene cuts to Blake, Ben, and Ollie walking in San Francisco. Blake notices the building Daniel has been building up ahead. The ground shakes and glass shatters out of windows. A shard lands in Ben’s inner thigh as he cowers on the ground. The shot moves out to show the rest of the city falling apart with the new tremors. The bridges are falling and the sea is wobbling.
Outside AT&T Park, Ray ushers people to the side of the stadium wall to get them out of the way of collapsing buildings. Ray carries an injured woman to safety. In a group, they huddle as stadium lights fall. Ray confirms that everyone is okay. The injured woman asks how Ray knew they’d be safe. Ray says, “You just need to get up against something sturdy.” Ray and Emma realize there is too much destruction to move through to get to Blake. They see boats in the water and decide to go around.
Blake ties a strip of cloth around Ben’s thigh and gently removes the large piece of glass. She helps him to his feet and says they have to keep moving. In Dr. Hayes’s office, he checks his computer and informs his colleagues that the quake was 9.6, the biggest in recorded history. Meanwhile, Ray and Emma drive a boat through the bay toward the tower. They see that the tower is too dangerous. Ray knows Blake will have had a plan. He sees dramatic changes in the water level of the bay and realizes a tsunami is coming.
Blake listens on the radio to a tsunami warning being announced. At that moment, sirens sound throughout the city. She runs toward Daniel’s building. Back in the boat, Emma and Ray drive toward a massive wave. Ray says they have to get over it before it crests. They motor over the steep wall of water as other boats flip over vertically.
Just as they reach the top, the bottom of a container ship rises overhead. Ray steers out from under it, the canopy of his boat getting knocked off on the giant propellor. Emma and Ray slow down and watch as the massive ship flips over onto the Golden Gate Bridge, where Daniel staggers. He looks up and a container flattens him. The tsunami moves into the rest of the city, making people grab their loved ones before they are swept away.
Ben, Blake, and Ollie get to a high floor of Daniel’s under-construction building. Out the window, they see the water coming. They hold on to pillars for safety as the water crashes through the glass. In the flooded room, they hold a floating piece of furniture and seek safety. Outside, Ray and Emma survey the destroyed city. Debris floats and buildings burn. Ray says Blake is a smart girl and that she’ll know to have got to the top of a skyscraper; it’s just a matter of which one.
Inside the building, Blake attends to Ben’s wounded leg. He looks down at her and says she’s absolutely unbelievable. They lean in and kiss each other, not realizing Ollie is watching. He smiles and says, “Mum’s going to love her.” Meanwhile, Ray and Emma pilot their boat down city streets flooded with seawater. While gathering water bottles, Ollie spots Ray and Emma in the boat and shouts that he can see people. Blake comes running and bashes on the window, but they can’t see her. Blake remembers Ollie has a laser pointer. She shines it at the boat’s control panel, and Emma notices. They turn to see Blake jumping for joy behind the window.
Just then, another wave comes up and breaks the windows of the building. Ben, Ollie, and Blake struggle to hold on as waters rush through the floor. Ben calls out to Blake as the water level rises, cutting Ollie and him off from the room in which she was last seen. They climb the exit stairs, as Ben says the building is sinking. Outside, Ray tells his wife he sees a way into the building. He kisses Emma and tells her he promises to bring her back. He dives under the water.
Analysis
The theme of ingenuity arises again as Ray and Emma fly over San Francisco and see there is nowhere safe to land the plane. Rather than attempt to set down on a runway, Ray calmly informs Emma that she and he will have to tandem-parachute into the disaster-struck city. Trusting her ex-husband’s rescue skills, Emma overcomes her fear and jumps with him, soon finding that the experience of falling through the clouds is thrilling. Peyton hints at their growing intimacy with Ray’s joke that it’s been a while since he got her to second base. Rather than recoil at the sexual pun, Emma laughs affectionately.
Ray’s and Emma’s relief at having touched down safely is interrupted by a 9.6 magnitude earthquake hitting San Francisco. It is more powerful than any earthquake in recorded history, and it causes any towers weakened by the first to teeter over. Ray’s rescue instincts serve the people around him well as he and Emma usher strangers toward a sturdy stadium wall, knowing it won’t topple as easily as the built environment around them. Once again, Ray’s responsible nature is on display as he risks being crushed in order to rescue an injured woman who can’t get to safety herself. Meanwhile, Blake emulates her father’s virtues by employing the survival skills he taught her, tending to Ben’s wounded leg.
While Ray and Emma are out on a boat in the San Francisco Bay, Peyton introduces another type of natural disaster not yet seen in the film: tsunamis. Because of the immense vertical slip that comes with an earthquake rupturing, the sudden movement of the seafloor can translate to an oceanic disruption that sends giant waves traveling in all directions. In the film, the first hint of a tsunami is the water level dropping and early warning sirens sounding throughout the city. Ray is quick to act, as ever, and knows that his only hope of beating the tsunami is to drive over top of it before the wave becomes so tall that it crests.
In another harrowing scene of near-death escape, Emma and Ray get over the wave just as a container ship flips over. But in an instance of situational irony, Daniel has sought safety from falling buildings on the Golden Gate Bridge. Unfortunately for him, a container flattens him to the bridge deck. His ignominious death is significant because it touches on the theme of cooperation: If he had cooperated with others rather than tried to get through the disaster by only looking after himself, Daniel might have survived.
With the tsunami having passed, calm pervades the building in which Ben, Ollie, and Blake have sought refuge. Ben overcomes his shyness and admits his admiration for Blake, who kisses him in return. It seems the harrowing experience is over when Ollie and Blake use the ingenious method of shining a laser pointer at Ray and Emma to get their attention. However, the celebratory atmosphere is washed away by another wave of water rushing through the building, separating the people in need of rescue.
