Greatest
Disaster Film Scenes: Introduction
Disasters
have been the subject of film-goers' fascination since the time of
silent film epics, and this interest continues to exist up to the
present time. Films have often depicted
large-scale natural disasters (weather-related usually) or man-made
calamities (a wreck at sea, an airplane crash), often accompanied
by massive crowd scenes. Studios have jumped to Hollywood-ize
extreme weather for their disaster films. Other disasters may be
planetary-related, criminally-instigated, nuclear-related, millennial-related,
or involving alien or mutant invasions of some kind. They can be
either impending or ongoing, or they can exist locally or globally.
Spectacular scenes of destruction always provide big
entertainment value, but the best disaster movies also commented
upon the negative effects of advancing technology, demonstrated the
hubris of scientists, delivered uplifting moral lessons of sacrifice,
and provided a how-to in survival skills.
Also see this site's writeup on the
Greatest
Disaster Films
.
The focus of such extreme climate-related and other
disaster films has always been on a spectacular calamity that threatened
existence, with a small group of people in imminent danger, and how
they must cope or devise a method of escape. Tension has been developed
by concentrating on the miraculous means of rescue and whether all
the characters (usually in an all-star cast) have the inner strength
to survive the ordeal.
Most disaster films have large-scale special effects
(especially in the recent past's mega-budget spectaculars), huge
casts of stars facing a crisis, a persevering hero or heroine
(i.e., Charlton Heston, Steve McQueen, Tommy Lee Jones, Dwayne
Johnson, etc.) called upon to lead the struggle against the threat,
and many plot-lines affecting multiple characters. In many cases,
the 'evil' or 'selfish' individuals were the first to succumb to
the conflagration.
As in any sub-genre, the move to capitalize
on the 'disaster film' trend has led to many sub-par disaster films,
with weak and unsubtle, formulaic plots, improbable circumstances
and bad science, poor character development, and laughable acting
from third-rate stars portraying cliched characters. And many of
the more current 'disaster films' have been overshadowed by action-thriller
elements in the plots.
The Sub-Category of Extreme Weather Events and Other Natural Disasters
Earthquakes
The 1906 San Francisco earthquake was the concluding
cornerstone of Best Picture-nominated
San Francisco (1936)
, a big
moneymaker for MGM. The special effects in the scenes of the Earth
splitting apart and a subsequent devastating fire were stunningly
realistic. In
Earthquake (1974)
, suspenseful scenes of the crumbling
destruction of Los Angeles by a powerful 9.9-level earthquake were
accompanied by impressive special effects and the first use of bass-rumbling
Sensurround ('You'll feel it, as well as see it!'),
resulting in the film's only Oscar win, for Best Sound. The
film also used model skyscrapers that collapsed, Styrofoam concrete,
and a miniature to depict the crumbling Hollywood Reservoir.
Rampaging
Floods
Warner Brothers'
Noah's Ark (1928)
told
about the Biblical story of the great flood, ending with a flood
sequence that mixed miniatures, double exposures, and the full-scale
destruction of actual sets. When tanks of water were released upon
hundreds of unsuspecting extras, three of them reportedly drowned,
and many others were severely injured. RKO's
Deluge (1933)
,
about tidal waves that destroyed various California coastal cities
as well as New York City, was the first big-budget talkie disaster
film with impressive visual effects. Darryl F. Zanuck and 20th
Century Fox's production
of
The Rains Came (1939)
was the biggest disaster epic of
the decade. It featured a spectacularly staged major earthquake and
an epic flood sequence in the Indian city of Ranchipur, depicting
a dam burst with a combination of miniatures and live-action footage.
This film won the first-ever Best Special Effects Oscar, beating
Gone
With the Wind (1939)
and five other films. It was later remade
as
The
Rains of Ranchipur (1955)
, starring Richard Burton and Lana Turner.
The doomed, submerged world of Kevin Costner's
Waterworld
(1995)
was credited to melting ice caps that caused
severe global flooding — and
the film's production in Hawaii was severely hampered by an
actual hurricane. Torrential rains and flooding inundated an Indiana
town in the heist thriller
Hard Rain (1998)
.
Hurricanes, Tornados, and
Storms
The final sequence in Buster Keaton's
Steamboat
Bill, Jr. (1928)
involved a terrifically destructive tornado-cyclone — and
one of the most suicidal and terrifying stunt scenes in movie history,
as the dazed title character stood up in front of a house that was
about to be ripped apart from the forceful winds and the entire two-ton
facade crashed down on top of him. (All that saved him was a small
window opening in the upper story, through which his body passed.)
In that same year's
The Wind (1928)
,
a relentless desert-prairie sandstorm (with sand projected by wind
machines and/or multiple airplane propellers) ultimately caused mass
hysteria. John Ford's
Hurricane
(1937)
is still
considered the classic movie spectacle — with a monstrous South
Pacific tropical storm, massive tidal waves, and battering gale-force
winds.
Typhoon (1940)
was Paramount's response to
The
Hurricane
,
starring a sarong-wearing Dorothy Lamour as its leading lady. The
film was set on an island near Netherlands New Guinea and featured
a climactic typhoon in its final scenes.
Nature's wrath was
later unleashed with the Jan de Bont film
Twister (1996)
,
in which tornado-chasing, thrill-seeking meteorologists (Bill Paxton
and Helen Hunt) went after killer funnel clouds. State-of-the-art
digital special effects and computer graphics included cows flying
through the air.
The Perfect Storm (2000)
was a downbeat, nihilistic true story
about the
Andrea Gail
, a fishing boat that was caught in the
fall of 1991 in a violent storm with 50-foot sea swells. The worldwide
ecological disaster film
The Core (2003)
portrayed a scenario
in which the Earth's
molten core stopped spinning, unleashing harmful microwaves that
caused earthquakes, bridge collapses, and lightning storms all over
the world. A similar film,
The Day After Tomorrow (2004)
,
chronicled the instantaneous after-effects of global warming (the
greenhouse effect) with super-hurricanes, killer tornadoes, tidal
waves, floods, and a new ice age. The movie
2012 (2009)
was
end-of-days expert Roland Emmerich's latest climactic disaster epic,
based upon the Mayan calendar's
apocalyptic predictions for the year 2012. It portrayed a global
cataclysm with monstrous earthquakes, threatening molten lava, and
tsunamis. With Al Gore's surprise-hit global-warming
documentary,
An Inconvenient Truth (2006)
, it seemed all
the apocalyptic visions were finally coming true.
Top 30 Disaster Films at the Box-Office
(based upon
domestic
box-office revenue, about
half of the list were above $100 million)
By Mid-2023
Note: None of the classic disaster films of the 1970s
made the list!
|
- Titanic (1997)
- Independence Day (1996)
- Gravity (2013)
- Twister (1996)
- War of the Worlds (2005)
- World War Z (2013)
- Armageddon (1998)
- Godzilla (2014)
- The Day After Tomorrow (2004)
- The Perfect Storm (2000)
- Apollo 13 (1995)
- 2012 (2009)
- San Andreas (2015)
- Deep Impact (1998)
- Godzilla (1998)
|
- This is the End (2013)
- Noah (2014)
- Knowing (2009)
- Contagion (2011)
- Vertical Limit (2000)
- Dante's Peak (1997)
- Deepwater Horizon (2016)
- Poseidon (2006)
- The Grey (2012)
- Volcano (1997)
- Into the Storm (2014)
- Alive (1993)
- Geostorm (2017)
- Daylight (1996)
- The Core (2003)
|
|