I’ve been thinking about doing a topic like this for the better part of a week. Basically, my intention with I Want To See, is to talk about movies or shows that I would absolutely love to see. They’re probably not even in production at all, and if they are, it could be years before we see anything on it. One thing you should be aware of about this topic is that this is what I would like to see, and it may not be what YOU want to see, and that’s just fine. We’ve all got those stories that we would love to see made into a movie or a series. Some folks got their wish, while others have yet to see it fulfilled. Some should be made while others probably shouldn’t for one reason or another. So, to start off this new topic, I would love to see a movie or series based on The Year Without A Summer of 1816. Why? Here’s a bit of background on that: On April 10, 1815, Mount Tambora, which was on the island of Sumbawa in Indonesia, erupted. The mountain’s height was a little over 14,000 feet. After the eruption, Tambora dropped to about 9,354 feet. The mountain had basically liquified and collapsed into a massive caldera that you see in the picture above. The resulting pyroclastic flows and lahars(mud flows) went down the mountain on all sides, wiping out the nearby village of Tambora in the process. 10,000 people were instantly killed. And over 100,000 in the region would lose their lives. However, the damage from the volcano’s eruption would end up having far-reaching consequences across the globe. The amount of material that was blasted into the air caused what is known as a volcanic winter. A volcanic winter is the result of an eruption that causes global temperatures to drop. The summer of 1816 in the Northern Hemisphere saw the globe cool by .53 degrees Celsius(.95 degrees Fahrenheit). The resulting climate change resulted in massive and devastating weather changes that resulted in one of the worst famines of the 19th century. Entire crops were destroyed and the abnormal amount of rainfall caused lakes and rivers to overflow across Europe. North America would also see one of the coldest years and decades on record. A lot of diseases included typhoid and cholera were blamed on this event. The effects of Mount Tambora’s eruption were felt for decades and they’re still being felt today. It’s regarded as the most powerful eruption in recorded history.
While I would love to see this as a movie, I think it would work better as a mini-series because of the aftermath of the eruption. There was so much that happened afterwards, that I don’t think you could do in a 2-3 hour movie. I’m sure that somebody like Roland Emmerich would try, but there are a number of reasons why a series would be a better format. There are documentaries about this event, but I want to see a full-blown narrative. So, there would have to be some kind of central narrative thread that could a group of people through the events of Mount Tambora, all the way until after things started settling down. I would see The Year Without A Summer as a limited-run series of 6-8 episodes in length. I would obviously see the first episode start with a group of people/explorers making their way around the world and with the episode to end with the eruption of Mount Tambora. Episode 2 would continue with that eruption and subsequent destruction of everything around the mountain. The following episodes would take place over the following year with our main characters trying to observe and survive the effects, while avoiding other events like the Napoleonic Wars. Finally, the series would eventually culminate in the final shot of one Mary Shelley as she begins to write her infamous novel, Frankenstein, or The Modern Prometheus. Yes, she started writing that book during the summer of 1816, and would publish the book 2 years later. In a way, the events and weather anomalies would have an impact on Mary Shelley and her book. The concept of this is epic in scope. There’s a lot of things happening during this period in history, and I think it would be kind of neat for this show to touch base with some of that.
Would it really work, though? Would be people be interested in it? Maybe. I think it would be an important story to tell, because the eruption of Mount Tambora proves what happens when the climate changes rapidly, through one force or another. The evidence collected from soil and ice samples from the time period prove it. This would not be an easy or cheap venture to start. If you want to do something like this with the best quality possible, you’re looking at WELL over 200 million to make. You have to consider the visual effects involved, location scouting, casting, and everything else that goes into making a movie or TV show. It’s a long and complicated process. The visual effects alone would probably take the most amount of time. You couldn’t do it the same way that Dante’s Peak did it back in 1997. It would have to be CG. Research would have to go into finding out what the mountain actually looked like before it blew its top, and then there’s the eruption itself. You want it to look as real as possible and not like something from Paul W.S. Anderson’s Pompeii. Narratively, you need a story that ties the events to our main characters, so some liberties will need to be taken for dramatic purposes, as is the case with most historical pieces. Aside from the major logistical issues surround a project like this, you would a place to distribute the project. The only place that I could really see this ended up at is Amazon. They’ve got more money than God, so they would be able to fund this thing. It also would not be a family-friendly affair. This is a pretty brutal period in history, so there’s going to be some fairly graphic imagery being shown. They would need to be.
Would something like this get made today? Perhaps, with the right director and writer, it could be spectacular. At it’s core, it would a disaster movie/show, but the focus would be on people, not just the events. Whether it gets made or not, the events surrounding Mount Tambora and its eruption are important. It’s a story that I believe needs to be told. I just don’t know if anybody would be willing to take on something of such scope. Then again, we shows like Rome, Game of Thrones, and Peaky Blinders. With the right people, The Year Without A Summer could an outstanding drama. But with the logistics involved, it could be a very, VERY expensive undertaking. That’s what I would love to see. Will it get made? I don’t know. Probably not, but someone somewhere is thinking about this very same idea. You never know.