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Disaster Movie: Difference between revisions
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About half have the main characters trying to stop the disaster somehow, while the other half have them simply trying to survive. In both varieties, viewers are introduced to large casts that exist solely to be killed off in various ways by the disaster and its side effects. Meteors, tornadoes, earthquakes, volcanoes, and catastrophic climate change are among the popular subjects. People who watch these movies are typically [[Just Here for Godzilla]].
The genre became incredibly popular in [[The Seventies]], with [[
[[Alien Invasion]] and especially [[Kaiju]] movies tend to be very similar in tone to disaster movies, with their focus on destruction.
Not to be confused with the [[Seltzer and Friedberg]] [[
* [[All-Star Cast]]: For some reason, disaster movies are like magnets for A and B-list actors.
** For audiences back then it was genuinely surprising to see big name actors that one assumed were safe die '''horrific''' deaths onscreen, as opposed to just the extras(see the trope below).
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* [[High Octane Nightmare Fuel]]: One wonders why none of these movies ever get mentioned when anyone makes a list of [[One Hundred Scariest Movie Moments|the scariest movies of all time]], considering how much they work off of [[Why Did It Have to Be Snakes?|common fears like acrophobia]] and [[Claustrophobia]].
* [[Hollywood Science]]: After all, you can't let little things like the laws of physics get in the way of some awesome destruction.
** [[Accidentally Accurate]]: In most cases, [[Did Not Do the Research]] comes into play, but by pure chance… they got the science is right.
** [[Shown Their Work]]: Where research was done to prove that a disaster can happen, and they aren’t bashful on how.
* [[HSQ]]
* [[Infant Immortality]]: For some reason, a lot of these movies show a baby getting killed, just in case [[Eight Deadly Words|we've ceased to give a fuck]] by this point.
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** Unless you really hate your neighbour...
* [[Outrun the Fireball]]: Often many times in a single movie. Substitute "tidal wave", "fault line", "lava flow", [[Wave Motion Gun]], etc. for fireball as necessary.
* [[Popularity Polynomial]]: Disaster movies went through [[Deader Than Disco]] status ''twice''
* [[Primal Fear]]: If you're [[Claustrophobia|claustrophobic]], [[Not the Fall That Kills You|acrophobic]], [[Incendiary Exponent|pyrophobic]], or any number of other phobias, you will not have a good time.
* [[Red Shirt]]
** [[Red Shirt Reporter]]
* [[Relationship
* [[Rule of Cool]]: See [[Hollywood Science]].
* [[Scenery Gorn]]
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{{examples}}
* ''Deluge'' (1933): One of the [[Ur Example
* ''San Francisco'' (1936): Another early example, decipting the historical 1906 San Francisco Earthquake. Stars [[Clark Gable]], Jeanette MacDonald and Spencer Tracy.
* ''The High and the Mighty'' (1954): An [[Unbuilt Trope]] example of the genre. Starred [[John Wayne]], who was also co-producer. Its plot, about a plane that suffers engine failure on a flight from [[Hawaii|Honolulu]] to [[San Francisco]], would later be copied by ''Airport''.
* ''[[A Night to Remember]]'' (1958): An accurate portrayal of the doomed RMS Titanic; arguably the [[Trope Codifier]] and served as the inspiration for James Cameron's ''[[Titanic]]''.
* ''[
* ''[[Airport]]'' (1970): The [[Trope Codifier]]. Started the first boom of disaster films in the '70s. Starred Burt Lancaster, Dean Martin, George Kennedy and Jacqueline Bisset. Had three sequels, [[Sequelitis|each one progressively worse]] (but still successful... at least, until the fourth one [[Franchise Killer|finally killed the series]]).
* ''[[The Poseidon Adventure]]'' (1972): An ocean liner is capsized by a giant wave. The first of [[
* ''[[Nihon Chinbotsu]]'' (''Japan Sinks'') (1973): Arguably the most successful Japanese disaster film ever, it was followed up by a highly subpar remake in 2006. See below for its plot.
* ''[[The Towering Inferno]]'' (1974): The world's tallest skyscraper is built in [[San Francisco]], but on the day of its dedication, it catches fire, trapping partygoers on the top floors. The second of [[
* ''[[Earthquake]]'' (1974): An earthquake destroys [[Los Angeles]]. Charlton Heston, Ava Gardner, and Lorne Greene try to survive. This was the first of a handful of '70s films to use Sensurround, a special surround sound system with a powerful bass line. When the city started to rumble, crumble, and tumble, the bass kicked in to literally shake up audiences.
* ''[[The Last Days Of Planet Earth]]'' (1974): Japanese movie. Earth goes through a disaster gauntlet, ranging from [[I Love Nuclear Power|mutant slugs]] to city-engulfing fire-storms, to [[George Carlin|the sky filling with green shit]]. Notable for depicting [[Useful Notes/Nostradamus|Nostradamus]] as Japanese. Not kidding.
* ''The Hindenburg'' (1975): Why did this [[Real Life]] disaster happen? The fictional story chronicles the possibility that it was sabotage. A rare case of a
* ''The Cassandra Crossing'' (1976): A terrorist infected with plague is on a train, so the authorities send it in the directon of a bridge too weak to support it. Can the passengers who don't succumb to the illness save themselves?
* ''[[Film/The Swarm|The Swarm]]'' (1978): In another Irwin Allen effort, killer bees attack [[Everything Is Big in Texas|Texas]]. Yeah. It was around this point that the genre began dying out.
* ''Avalanche'' (1978): [[Exactly What It Says
* ''Meteor'' (1979): A bunch of nukes built by [[Sean Connery]] and Brian Keith versus a giant asteroid. Not as cool as it sounds, sadly.
* ''Hurricane'' (1979): A remake of a 1937 John Ford film tells a tropical tale of young lovers whose romance is threatened first by the girl's father, then by the titular storm.
* ''When Time Ran Out'' (1980): A volcano in the South Pacific threatens a resort, an oil rig, and a volcano observatory. The final nail in the coffin for the first cycle of disaster films, and [[
* ''[[Airplane!]]'' (1980): [[The Parody]] of the disaster genre. So effective, it made it [[Genre Killer|nearly impossible for disaster movies to be taken seriously]] for another thirteen years.
** The ZAZ team is also responsible for an earlier and much more brief parody of the Disaster genre with "That's Armageddon!", a segment of ''[[The Kentucky Fried Movie]]''.
* ''[[The Day After]]'' (1983): A [[High Octane Nightmare Fuel|very different sort of disaster movie]], which is the reason it was able to escape ''Airplane!'''s shadow. It was a [[Made for TV Movie|TV movie]] about [[World War III|nuclear war]] between the USA and the USSR. It, along with [[Threads|its British equivalent]], was effective enough at showing [[The End of the World
* [[Threads]]
* ''[[Twister]]'' (1996): Tornadoes in Oklahoma. Helped to revive interest in disaster films, with help from...
* ''[[Independence Day]]'' (1996): Aliens blow up the White House, among other things. This film turned [[Will Smith]] into a superstar.
* ''[[Mars Attacks
* ''[[
* ''[[
* ''[[Daylight]]'' (1997): The Holland Tunnel floods following an explosion, and [[Sylvester Stallone]] goes in to save the people trapped.
* ''[[Titanic]]'' (1997): What happens when you combine a disaster movie with a [[Chick Flick]]. The latest in a long line of films about the Titanic disaster.
* ''[[
* ''[[Deep Impact]]'' (1998), the [[Shown Their Work|comparative]] ''Dante's Peak'' of this particular duel.
* ''Earthquake In New York'' (1998): A two-part TV movie about a major quake in a place no one expects.
* ''[[The Core]]'' (2003): [[Critical Research Failure|Earth's core stops rotating thanks to a top-secret military project]] [[Gone Horribly Wrong]], eliminating Earth's magnetic field and causing it to get hit by solar storms. Aaron Eckhart and Hilary Swank go down into Earth's interior to restart the core with nuclear bombs. Makes ''Armageddon'' look like ''Volcano''. [[Lost Aesop|Or something]].
* ''10.5'' (2004): An [[NBC]] [[Miniseries]] about massive earthquakes destroying the West Coast. Its 2006 sequel, ''10.5 Apocalypse'', had a massive fault line opening up in the Midwest and splitting North America in half.
* ''[[The Day After Tomorrow]]'' (2004): [[Hollywood Global Warming]] destroys the world. Starred Dennis Quaid and [[Donnie Darko|Jake Gyllenhaal]].
* ''Category 6: Day of Destruction'' (2004): Another [[Miniseries]], this one from [[CBS]] and starring Randy Quaid and Brian Dennehy. A massive storm (which is, for some reason, [[Critical Research Failure|referred to as a hurricane]]) develops over Chicago and destroys it. Its release [[Follow the Leader|just six months after]] ''[[The Day After Tomorrow]]'' [[Blatant Lies|must be a coincidence]].
** ''Category 7: The End of the World'' (2005): The sequel to the above. The storm from the original moves east and destroys New York and Washington, while similar storms destroy Paris and Egypt. Meanwhile, a televangelist and his wife exploit the storms to gain new converts. Starred Gina Gershon [[
* ''Nihon Chinbotsu'' (''Japan Sinks'') (2006): [[Exactly What It Says
* ''[[Snakes
* ''[[Seltzer and Friedberg|Disaster Movie]]'' (2008): A [[Shallow Parody]] of...erm, movies with cool-looking trailers? Despite its name, it had [[In Name Only|almost nothing]] to do with disaster films. Then again, what more would you expect from [[Seltzer and Friedberg]]?
* ''[[
* ''[[Tokyo Magnitude 8.0]]'' (2009): A disaster ''[[Anime]]''. Pretty much [[Exactly What It Says
* Many [[
** The major networks often did this in the 1970's and '80's, but with better budgets and stars. ''[[Mystery Science Theater 3000]]'' did a few of these in their time as a local access show, including ''SST: Death Flight'' and ''Superdome''.
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[[Category:The Seventies]]
[[Category:Discredited Trope]]
[[Category:
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