Or... it's just how far the Mayan Calendar could be bothered to go, and by December 22nd we will all be fine.
Whatever the outcome will be at the end of this year, I thought it was a good opportunity to list and review some of my favourite disaster films ever (I am also a bit of a disaster movie fanatic!)
The Poseidon Adventure (1972)
Ahhh, probably my favourite film out of the lot. The only thing holding this back from being the top of a disaster film list is that the action is contained on the one ship... and so doesn't really affect a lot of people.
Still, the characters we are introduced to are brilliantly written and brought together so well - it's a proper rag-tag group of survivors as they try to make their way safely to the surface, which is now the bottom of the ship (as it was flipped over by a rogue wave).
If you want to see how a remake can suck the entire soul out of an original film and only be a hollow shell of what the original film was, check out the remake of this film, Poseidon (2006). In all honesty, the remake is terrible (with great special effects), but the original is a brilliant film (with slightly ropey special effects!)
2012 (2009)
Even though it's not really a great film in the slightest bit, I couldn't leave this film off a list dedicated to disaster films in the year 2012.
Released just under three years ago now (time flies!) Roland Emmerich made a film that was a first mainstream dabble into the idea that our world will end in 2012. And visually, this film is stunning. Honestly, I remember being open-mouthed when watching the special effect set pieces... It's just a shame that the 'story' (if you can call it that) woven in-between the special effects is pretty laughable.
I guess you could argue that you would never go to a film like this to focus on the drama and that you would want to see brilliant special effects, but the completely laughable dialogue ("It's Russian!") and insanely stupid plot points make certain points of this film unwatchable (the main characters survive twice, maybe three times, certain death the exact same way - a plane taking off from a crumbling runway and the said plane then outruns a pyroclastic cloud. Now, I'm not a scientist, but even I know that outrunning a pyroclastic cloud is impossible...)
Airport 1975 (1974)
Going back to the old school 1970s vibe again, I'm including the sequel to the original Airport (1970). The reason that I'm going straight for the sequel is that this one had a much more straight-forward 'plane-in-crisis' plot, whereas the original followed the daily drama in lots of characters lives. I preferred the straight-forward plot in the sequel - like I said before, disaster films are for the special effects and the disasters... save the drama for elsewhere! (Although, I will admit I still love the original Airport film).
If you've seen the spoof film of this, Airplane (1980), then you will pretty much know exactly how this film will go down. A small bi-plane hits the cockpit of a commercial aeroplane leaving the pilot injured and unable to fly the plane full of passengers (including a guitar playing nun and a young girl on the way to get a heart transplant!) The only person left to save them? The air stewardess!
Like The Poseidon Adventure this film suffers slightly from being a true disaster film in the sense that all the action is limited to one small location (a commercial aeroplane), but it still manages to hook you in with the various challenges faced.
And at the end of the film? The passengers get to use those cool blow up escape slides and the air stewardess gets to leave the aeroplane with her head held high and her hair still hairsprayed into place. God bless those industrial strength 70s hairsprays...
The Towering Inferno (1974)
Another 70s disaster film again, and this time it's the world's tallest building that's on fire! With an all-star cart including Steve McQueen, Paul Newman, Faye Dunaway and Fred Astaire, this film boasts a star in almost every single frame!
The film is set up nicely - it's the opening night of the world's newest and tallest building - and the disaster is introduced when we see that the control centre is experiencing some... short circuit problems. As the fire slowly creeps around the building, tension also builds as we see our all-star cast slowly get themselves into a pickle!
This film follows the conventional 70s disaster film plot, in that it's confined to the one man-made location that is just waiting for human error and nature to make it go wrong... but again, it works!
The special effects are a bit ropey again by today's standards, but that just seems to add to the film's charm.
Armageddon / Deep Impact (1998)
I have linked these films together, because they are pretty similar (plot wise) and being released mere months apart, comparisons are inevitable.
I remember the big box office smash of these two films - I don't think I saw either of them at the cinema - but I remember catching them on video and loving them (but loving Deep Impact that little bit more).
I remember running to my Dad after seeing Deep Impact and raving about when the first asteroid hit earth and then when the tidal wave destroyed cities and buildings. I think it was then that my love of the disaster film was truly born. It's always been said that a good story in a film is all about conflict and there was just something so scary and thrilling about the conflict being
between man and nature - could we really survive an asteroid hitting earth?!
Whilst Armageddon boasted Bruce Willis, Ben Affleck and Liv Tyler (that scene where she has to say goodbye to her Dad still makes me weep), Deep Impact just seemed to deliver more on the end of the world destruction - even though I'm pretty sure the only disaster special effects comes right towards the end of the film.
I guess the end of the film just stuck with me!
Dante's Peak (1997)
Ahhhh... James Bond, I mean, Pierce Brosnan in the height of his 007 career decides to do a disaster film based around volcanoes.
This film is pretty much a guilty pleasure. The sub-plot revolving around his (kind of) 'revenge' against volcanoes is pretty laughable (we are introduced to Brosnan's character at the beginning as his fiancé is killed by an erupting volcano). I suppose this film was taking notes from the film Twister, but I just remember it coming off as a little bit cheesy in this film!
However, the film does deliver on it's volcano destruction. The ticking clock of the erupting volcano set against an ignorant town that finds the volcano too beautiful to ever think it could erupt adds some nice tension to the film.
Also, I remember this film being my education into what pyroclastic clouds are (see 2012!) Who said films cannot be educational?!
The Day After Tomorrow (2004)
The last film on my list is another effort from Roland Emmerich (he loves destroying the world!) And following a similar narrative to his later film, 2012, this film looks at the end of the entire world through the next ice age (we've come a long way since the small time disasters of the 1970s!)
The thing I remember about this film was that it started my man crush on Jake Gyllenhaal. I liked him in Donnie Darko, but I didn't really like the film. I remember seeing the promos for this and seeing how infectiously into the role he was and the possibility of him playing something more mainstream and it instantly made me respect him as an actor.
Some of the stuff is a bit dodgy in this film (Computer Graphic wolves?!) but overall, it was a good predecessor film to Emmerich's massive 2012.
Again, I remember marvelling over the massive tidal wave and tornado scenes to the point where my fan-boy obsession with disaster films came flooding back to me! Of course, 2012 wiped the floor with this film later with it's own special effects, but this one has a better (but still cheesy) dramatic story to it.
So there you have it. A small insight into some of my favourite disaster films. So now all you need to do is curl up, grab a notebook and pen and make notes on how you plan to survive the end of the world this year!!
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