When a Former Special Ops commando visits Pompeii, his wife and daughter are trapped as Mt. Vesuvius erupts with massive force. While his family fights to survive the deadly onslaught of heat and lava, he enlists his former teammates in a daring operation beneath the ruins of Pompeii.
Factual Mistake The prologue depicts a volcano near Puerto Villamil of the Galapgos Islands erupting violently, with a Plinean-type eruption including a large pyroclastic flow. All of the volcanoes on the Galapagos Islands are shield volcanoes, which do not erupt in this manner. Their eruptions are similar to Hawaiian volcanoes, with little ash or debris and fluid, long-lasting lava flows
Factual Mistake The climax involves a building being filled with fast-moving, highly fluid lava due to the eruption of Mt. Vesuvius. Vesuvius does not erupt in this manner; as a composite volcano it erupts in Plinean or Peléan fashion, which is characterized partially by thick, slow, viscous lava flows that often doesn't even make it all the way down the mountainside
Revealing Mistakes Lava bombs - giant red-hot boulders - instantly vanish on impact, often resulting in puny explosions that don't correspond to the rock's mass and velocity at all
Revealing Mistakes When lava bombs are raining down on a Naples street, all of the storefront signs are conspicuously, exclusively in English
Revealing Mistakes Multiple earthquake shots show trees and other scenery remaining perfectly still as the actors throw themselves about and the camera shakes
Revealing Mistakes A shot of the streets of Naples during the eruption shows only the main characters reacting appropriately, with all the people in the background walking along casually completely oblivious to the huge fireball-spitting mountain
Factual Mistake While driving to Pompeii, characters stop in a ENOS service station: but actually there's no ENOS service station in Italy
Factual Mistake The Chevrolet Matiz's plate at the beginning of the movie is wrong for the Italian standard: the format is correct (with some minor imperfections) but that plate will be available only in 5 or 6 years from now
Factual Mistake There are no "common tremors" in the Neaples area
Factual Mistake A subtitle identifies the prologue as taking place in "Puerto Villamil - Galapagos Island." Galapagos is not a single island, but an archipelago, the Galapagos Islands. Puerto Villamil is located on the island Isla Isabela
Factual Mistake In some of the "husband scenes" we can see the Teatro La Scala: this is impossible because it is in Milan, about 750kms away
Revealing Mistakes When the burning rocks rain down on Naples, a man's arm catches fire. The pyrotechnic barrier gel on the actor's arm is plainly visible.
Factual Mistake The corner where Jeff and his squad stop when they come to Pompeii is not even far-remembering anything Neaples-Pompeii related: in the background even a clear "Bank" sign can be seen.
Revealing Mistakes When the heat wave strikes Pompeii, it vaporizes people attempting to escape, yet has no effect on foliage, a vehicle, or any of their other surroundings.
Character Error Mykaela remarks that only one person, a prisoner, survived in the direct path of the 1902 volcanic eruption in Martinique. In fact, two people survived.
Character Error During the helicopter chase scene, the co-pilot states that they are "almost at firing range" when external views show the helicopters to be within a few meters of each other. The helicopter would have been within firing range much further away.
Continuity The helicopter is military green in the CGI long shots, but blue in the practical close-ups.
Factual Mistake The interior camera shots of the helicopter are nothing like the interior of a UH-60 Blackhawk or any variation.
Trivia:
John Rhys-Davies was originally cast as Cade before being shifted into the role of the Colonel. Realizing this was essentially the same part he had played in _100 Degrees Below Zero (2013)_, another disaster film from the same production company, he convinced the producers to re-use the name Colonel Dillard and make it a return for the same character.
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