He disaster cinema it had a golden age in the 70s. Typically, movies with the same name as the disaster they were about: Earthquake, Airplane, Roller Coaster (yes!)
Disaster movies came back into fashion in the 1990s, a magical decade because special effects and miniatures were still mixed with innovative digital effects, creating unforgettable images.
Nowadays, everything can be created by computer…and maybe that’s why disaster movies don’t excite audiences so much anymore.
Recently, the “king” director of the genre, Roland Emmerich (Independence Day, Godzilla, El Día de Mañana, 2012) complained that the public prefers to go see Marvel or Star Wars movies, saying that they “ruin our industry.”
And well, it was true: hardly anyone went to see his movie, called Moonfall. They didn’t miss much, the movie was very bad, but it has a most absurd premise.
In his honor, we have decided to compile this list with The Most Exaggerated Disaster Movies Ever Made. It doesn’t have to be the best or the worst, but it certainly is the craziest, most unlikely.
The most unlikely disaster movies:
Geostorm
There have been many movies about natural disasters, and many about man-made disasters. This is a mix of both: a system of satellites capable of controlling the weather, precisely to prevent disasters… is stolen and used to create the Geostorma storm so big that it can destroy half the planet.
Tornadoes in India, a heat wave in Moscow, a megatsunami in Dubai… the world spirals out of control with impossible natural disasters, orchestrated as terrorist attacks in this action thriller with Gerard Butler.
Curiously, Butler soon after would star in Greenlandanother disaster movie (this time about a meteorite) that turned out to be a welcome surprise: a family drama with little gratuitous destruction but plenty of tension.
Operation: Hurricane
The Hurricane Heist was promoted as a film by the director of The Fast anf the Furious (A Todo Gas). But the truth is that the Fast & Furious saga as the public knew it in 2018 had little to do with Rob Cohenwho got off the train very soon, and most of the public was not fooled.
The low-budget The Hurricane Heist is about a gang of thieves trying to steal $600 million from the US Treasury via trucking, taking advantage of the chaos of a hurricane.
It’s as crazy and absurd as it gets, and oddly enough it resembles another 1998 filmstarring Morgan Freeman y Christian Slatercall Hard Rainin which some thieves try to steal 3 million dollars in the middle of some floods.
Both are pretty forgettable and forgotten movies, but they’re more worthy than they seem, especially if you’re a fan of disaster movies and fed up with family dramas.
Unstoppable
Unstoppable it was the last film by director Tony Scott (Ridley’s brother) who committed suicide in 2012. Although he did not receive the same prestige as his brother, Tony Scott He was one of the most prolific and box-office directors in action films: Top Gun (1986, launching Tom Cruise to stardom), The Last Boy Scout (1991), point blank love (1993), Already seen (2006)….
Unstoppable It was not his highest grossing film nor is it his most remembered, but it has many fans who consider it a worthy successor to the series. Speedstarring her favorite actor, Denzel Washington, and Chris Pine.
It tells the story (inspired by a real case) of a freight train that goes out of control, driverlessloaded with toxic gases: it’s a race against time to board the train and stop it before it causes a catastrophe.
Signals of the future
Starring Nicolas Cage, Knowing is one of the most divisive movies: some love it, others hate it… and others love its premise and hate its ending, which we won’t spoil. But we will tell you the plot, which is most intriguing.
In a time capsule, which a school to be unearthed 50 years later, a girl buried a paper with a series of numbers… which Nicolas Cage discovers are the dates, coordinates and number of victims of the biggest catastrophes in human history.
The paper shows the figures for the Oklahoma attacks, the 9/11 attacks or Hurricane Katrina (all very American, yes)… but the most worrying thing is that the paper has not ended, and it predicts future catastrophes.
The end of everything
This original Netflix production, released in 2018 and with Forest Whitaker and Theo James (Divergent) was buried in its algorithm, but it can be a worthy entertainment for lovers of the apocalypse.
In The end of everythingthe entire West Coast of the United States has been plunged into a disaster of biblical proportions, but the worst is coming when society falls, and humanity resorts to looting, looting and violence to survive.
The film becomes a road movie that, although it does not have much interest as a plot, does show a more credible apocalypse than usual in Hollywood cinema and the nature of the catastrophe serves as an alert for the delicate balance of our planet.
The incident
What would happen if humanity, one day, lost all survival instinct? That is the premise of The incidentone of the most criticized films of M. Night Shyamalan (The sixth Sense), but which also has numerous defenders.
Although the film falters in many aspects, its approach is most terrifying, and the Indian director does not tremble as he shows all kinds of gruesome deaths, such as people jumping from the roof or the man who allows himself to be crushed by a machine. mower. But the scariest of all is that they are inexplicable.
Humans in this apocalypse go through three phases: speech nullification, erratic behavior and self-destruction. Society is falling apart and no one knows why.
Sharknado
The producer The Asylum produces dozens of low-budget films for channels like SyFy, “mockbusters” that are usually unstoppable, sometimes parodying Hollywood blockbusters, such as Transmorphers.
Sharknadopremiered on SyFy in 2013, could have passed as just another one, but it went viral on Twitter for its proposal, mixing two fetish topics of disaster cinema: sharks and tornadoes.
Shortly after airing, the film starring Tara Reid (which was originally “serious”) became a viral phenomenon: no one who was on Twitter in the summer of 2013 did not find out about the existence of Sharknadowhich prompted a theatrical release (very limited, but quickly sold out) and the creation of five sequels: the joke lasted until 2018, with The Last Sharknado: It’s About Time.
The Norwegian Trilogy: The Wave, Earthquake and The North Sea
Norway has become a mecca for disaster cinema in the last decade. More sober and realistic, less epic than the Hollywood equivalents, with much more human characters and, therefore, sometimes less charismatic, but also less strident.
The first of them, Life day (The wave)directed by Roar Uthaug in 2015, is about a tsunami in the Norwegian fjords that destroys a small mountain village.
The following were directed by John Andreas Andersen: Earthquake (Tremble), 2018, an earthquake destroys Oslo. AND the north sea (Nordsjøen, North Sea), from 2021, is the equivalent of Deepwater Horizon: a sinking oil rig.
Moonfall
Diamond Films
Moonfall, the film with which we have opened the report, is a good example of why disaster cinema is in the doldrums. The name of Roland Emmerich It was awesome in the 90s and 2000s (Independence Day, The Day After Tomorrow, 2012), but in the last decade the tastes of viewers have changed.
Moonfall is one of the biggest catastrophes commercials in recent years: it had a huge budget, around 140 million dollars (an outrage as it is, technically, an “indie” film, without a major production company behind it), and a well-known, but “second-tier” cast: Halle Berry, Patrick Wilson, John Bradley or Michael Peña.
The plot “orbits” around the Moon, which mysteriously shifts out of its orbit, naturally wreaking havoc on Earth due to the shifting tides. Some astronauts are sent, Armageddon style, to investigate the event… and discover that the Moon is an artificial megastructure controlled by an alien AI.
2023-08-10 06:14:44
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