What responsibility do film makers have to accurately represent geological disasters?

Opinion piece

Written by Ben Ireland

PhD candidate studying Volcanology at Bristol University and Science communicator at GeoTenerife who has been involved in studying the 2021 Tajogaite eruption and subsequent the reconstruction and activism for residents

Netflix’s disaster miniseries La Palma was released on 12 December 2024. The Norwegian production secured a spot on Netflix’s top 10 non-English series in just five weeks and was the most-watched between December 19 and 25 across all streaming platforms. However, it has received local criticism for its plot and the timing of its release, as La Palma is still recovering from the 2021 eruption on the island. It asks questions about filmmaking ethics, especially when real places and phenomena are involved.

The series follows a Norwegian family holidaying in La Palma, as volcanic unrest on the island intensifies as the whole island begins to crack in two, just out of their view.  When the volcano erupts, they must escape to the neighbouring island of Tenerife, where a purported ‘safe’ zone exists that will shelter them from the giant mega-tsunami waves when they hit. In the end, *spoilers*, they all survive by the skin of their teeth. Discounting the landslide and mega-tsunami, the majority of the remaining ‘science’ in the film poorly reflects reality, from the volcanic monitoring techniques and explanations, to the climate change reference for the worsening of the ‘crack’ on the island, to the fact that someone could survive a mega-tsunami impact in half a submerged plane fuselage! 

Neflix’s La Palma, and the  massive eruption, landslide and ‘mega-tsunami’ on the island portrayed, is completely fictional, as pointed out by local volcanologists at the Spanish National Geographic Institute, IGN. To a geoscientist, that is obvious. Many aspects of this apocalyptic scenario on La Palma, which emerged and was popularised in the early 2000s, have subsequently been debunked by scientists across many disciplines, including the US Geological Survey. This is especially true for its most far-reaching impacts, that would have allegedly seen waves of up to 25 m high along the east coast of the Americas. However, perhaps because of its scale and notoriety, the idea remains of a ‘mega-tsunami’ in the mainstream conscience and has become a thorn in the side of many residents and authorities on La Palma. 

La Palma presents itself in a fairly serious, matter-of-fact way; Opening with a clip of a professional-looking documentary footage complete with a scientist (who happens to be the author of the original Mega-tsunami study and also the BBC documentary) priming the audience with a summary of the debunked “hypothesis’ of how the mega-tsunami will happen and how terrible the impacts will be. 

After the 2000 BBC Documentary Mega-tsunami: Wave of Destruction popularised the theory, there were reports of tourist numbers dropping, flights being cancelled and even foreign nationals selling their homes on La Palma and moving away. More recently during the recent 2021 Tajogaite eruption on La Palma, scientists on the island were inundated with distressed messages from concerned citizens outside the Canary Islands as far away as the USA. Already since the miniseries’ release, volcanologists have felt compelled to once again reiterate that this ‘Mega-tsunami’ theory has been debunked given how damaging it has been in the past. In this climate, serious ethical questions should be raised as to why a drama profiting from this fear and controversy should be commissioned and aired, and the knock-on effects it could have for the island.

Entertainment media does not exist in a societal vacuum, and there is a strong element of social responsibility and ethics, especially when covering real places and referencing real events, and a failure to consider this can directly impact people and places. Another element of this in the case of La Palma is that despite being completely fictional, the series inextricably links itself to reality and the 2021 eruption in La Palma. There are frequent verbal references to the 2021 eruption, all the non-CGI footage of the volcano and lava flows comes directly from the 2021 eruption and the associated volcanic cones, and even some of the news footage of the fictional eruption is taken directly from reporting on the 2021 event. To the average viewer, the drama risks implicitly linking the mega-tsunami theory with scientific reality on La Palma, sowing seeds for a repeat of the fallout from the 2000 BBC documentary, with the social and financial impacts from tourism losses.

Obviously, stretching scientific truth and the use of fictional apocalyptic scenarios is commonplace in the disaster media genre, and on its own is not particularly damaging or unethical. However, the context that these productions are grounded in is key to the ethics and sensitivities behind how accurately relevant science and scenarios should be portrayed. In productions grounded in real contexts and places such as La Palma, especially given the notoriety of the mega-tsunami theory and the well-documented and referenced 2021 eruption, getting the scientific facts right is necessary as to not risk misinforming the audience. 

The science in La Palma largely gives the impression that the volcanologists can ‘predict’ all sorts of things from instantaneous gas ‘emissions’, the style of the eruption (ash or lava) based on all sorts of different signals, and even the eruption itself. Not only are the referenced tools and measurements all wrong for the ‘predictions’ they are used to make, but the very notion of ‘predicting’ a volcanic eruption is misleading. In a similar way to the weather, volcanologists cannot predict eruptions, but in some cases, they can forecast them over a period of days, weeks or months, with significant uncertainties. This distinction between predicting and forecasting is especially important on La Palma, where perhaps the biggest controversy of the 2021 eruption centres around the lack of evacuations and alert level increase prior to the eruption, and if the scientists could have known the eruption was ‘imminent’. There is still a move on the island to condemn the authorities for the lack of warning, and it would not be the first time scientists have faced consequences for not ‘predicting’ geohazards.

The final element of the miniseries that raises ethical questions is the timing of its release. La Palma is still only very slowly recovering from the 2021 eruption, in which over 1,300 homes were destroyed and over €1 billion in damage was caused. Three years on from the eruption, there are many living in precarious circumstances or who have yet to receive state aid for their destroyed homes. Around 30% of tourist beds have been lost, and flights are being cancelled as tourism has fallen well below pre-eruption levels.

The continuing struggles on the island to recover after the 2021 eruption, the most destructive in over 500 years, have been well documented by many including myself and colleagues at GeoTenerife through the #VolcanoStories project and Lava Bombs documentaries.  La Palma is an incredible tourist destination, known as La Isla Bonita (The Beautiful Island) for a reason, specialising in natural scenery and local experiences, but now more than ever requires a tourism boost that can help further its recovery, rather than a series which may do more harm than good in that respect. The producers claim that the series will promote La Palma and business groups are in support, although the negative responses from local citizen groups show those affected strongly disagree with the series’ publication. Multiple comments from locals on social media quip that the only good thing about the series are the island’s beautiful landscapes.

There are lessons to be learnt here regarding the ethics of disaster filmmaking. As a scientist, my favourite types of disaster films are (predictably) those that get the science right, as well as being engaging and focus on both the human and physical sides to disaster. The brilliant In the Path of a Killer Volcano, following the 1991 eruption of Mt Pinatubo comes to mind. However, there is also equally space for ‘what-if’ films that thrive on morbid curiosity, throwing out the scientific rulebook, such as 2012, GeoStorm, and others. Where films such as La Palma try to tread the line between these endmembers, especially where they have a local context or sensitivities around certain disasters, it becomes very difficult to avoid a degree of scientific misinformation. When this misinformation could directly impact local communities, the production of such a film becomes unethical. 

As others have argued, one opportunity is to work alongside scientists to help get the science right. Additionally, many dramatic, inspirational and most importantly true stories have emerged from the 2021 eruption on La Palma, and one of the best ways to promote the island’s recovery through film could be to focus on these, moving well on from using damaging, fear-driven scenarios to attract audiences. GeoTenerife’s award-winning Lava Bombs documentaries aim to do just that, with ethical filmmaking principles considered throughout.

From the makers of the award-winning documentary Lava Bombs: Truths Behind the Volcano, Lava Bombs 2: The Reconstruction dives into what happens after the most destructive eruption in an island’s history ends. Lava Bombs 2: The Reconstruction, Winner at the Madrid International Film Festival; finalist at the London Director Awards and officially selected for the Hollywood Best Indie Film Awards, Awareness Festival, and Madrid Arthouse Film Festival, has now been released on several platforms.