The Rock

Michael Bay’s 1996 film follows General Hummel (Ed Harris), who holds Alcatraz and its tourists hostage and aims chemical rockets at San Francisco to force compensation for the families of his dead men. The team sent in includes FBI chemist Stanley Goodspeed (Nicolas Cage) and John Mason (Sean Connery), billed as the island’s only escapee. The gas in green glass spheres is made up: co-writer David Weisberg said real chemical weapons are visually dull and the globes were pure invention for excitement. The 2016 Chilcot report records that in 2002 an MI6 source’s claim of chemical agents in glass containers was questioned partly for resembling this film. Writers Guild arbitration credited Weisberg, Douglas Cook and Mark Rosner; Bay’s open letter called that a sham and a travesty for leaving out Jonathan Hensleigh. Weisberg said seven writers worked on the script, including an uncredited Aaron Sorkin. Dick Clement and Ian La Frenais, hired at Connery’s request to make Mason more British and funnier, went uncredited too. Nominated for Sound at the 69th Academy Awards, it was shot on the real Alcatraz, which as a national park stayed open, so filming worked around tour groups. A good fit if you want Connery’s rewritten, funnier Mason paired with Cage’s FBI chemist. Not for viewers who need the chemical threat to be plausible.