In addition to the horror genre, disaster movies are also the genre of films that reflect our deepest fears. Unlike horror films, where danger can be contained, even exists, the threats in this film are often limitless – there's nothing like an entire planet with the future in the balance, and there's nothing like writhing on the couch without getting restless.
Their heyday was in the '70s, when audiences accustomed to the Vietnam War, Watergate, and economic woes craved a more escapist kind of disaster, and superdirectors like "Master of Disaster" Owen Allen were on the big screen with content like this. Decades later, Roland Emmerich picked up the burning baton to find new, creative ways to destroy the planet.
As Netflix's disaster movie Don't Look Up, as evidenced, our thirst for destruction never wanes. In compiling this list, we stick to the natural definition of "catastrophe" — asteroids, and, uh, Earth storms, not rampaging monsters and invading aliens. Here are 30 classic films from the genre, which are shown as 11 on the Richter scale in the movie.
Gravity
Types of Disasters:Space stranded.
Destruction:George Clooney.
Castaway in Space, the sequel to Alfonso Cuarón's dystopian masterpiece Children of Man, is more of a high-stress video game than a movie. Sandra Bullock takes on the role of Tom Hanks and spends almost all of her time alone in space, as an astronaut whose spaceship is destroyed in a rain of debris, forcing her to improvise a way home. In terms of pure, palm-making tension, it trumps almost every other film on this list. You need to be careful not to suffocate yourself.
The adventures of the Poseidon
Types of Disasters:Navigation.
Major Destruction:SS Poseidon
Producer Irwin Allen is the Demille of the Demille of the Destruction Realm, and he has prepared an updated script for his '70s disaster epic – the big stars battling an even bigger catastrophe, and the classic film culminates with the tsunami upending a cruise ship. It fell like a bathtub toy. The upside-down scenes subtly add a layer of disorientation, plunging you into the wet shoes of Gene Hackman, Shelley Winters, Ernest Bognen, and others as they climb and swim through various unrecognizable obstacles to reach the lifeboat. Crucially, the script gives the star cast plenty of room to play their roles to build emotional resonance – fearlessly killing half of them on their way to their goal.
years).
Types of Disasters:Revelation.
Utter destruction:All.
Roland Emmerich had already destroyed half the world in 2004's The Day After Tomorrow, and just five years later, he returned to continue the work. Emmerich used the spread of the "Mayan apocalypse" theory to dispel all concerns about possible disinformation in the film, Los Angeles was engulfed, waves flooded Washington and India, and the Hawaiian Islands were swallowed by volcanic magma. If it's not the greatest disaster movie of all time, at least its destruction is certainly the most complete.
Titanic
Types of Disasters:Shipwreck.
Significant Destruction:A very large ship.
Titanic became the highest-grossing film of all time because of the tragic love story at its center, or more accurately, because of the tragic love of millions of teenage girls for Leonardo DiCaprio. But when that very large ship crashed into that very large iceberg, James Cameron's true purpose became clear: to reconstruct the most famous maritime disaster in history in precise detail. No matter what you look at the rest of the film, this one is an awe-inspiring spectacle, a symphony of rushing water, crashing plates, collapsing funnels, and slippery, sliding, flying objects. Rest in peace, it's like that guy has dropped from a billion feet into a giant propeller, spinning his body like a windmill into the icy water below.
International airports
Types of Disasters:Plane crash.
Notable sabotage:A potential *** Bert Lancaster's blood pressure.
It's an ambitious all-star production that ushered in an era of disaster for cinema, and it's hard to say if this blockbuster from the bad film adaptation of the bestseller Arthur Haley is technically a "good" movie, but it's truly a spectacle. Burt Lancaster plays the manager of an airport near Chicago while getting caught up in personal affairs (his wife is divorcing him) and professional affairs (a snowstorm paralyzes the airport). His life only gets worse when a distraught passenger blows a hole in the airliner mid-flight, which also makes pilot Dean Martin very angry. It's a soap opera shattered by chaos that has since become the template for every big-budget disaster movie – and, of course, the immortal spoof!
A story of a skyscraper on fire
Types of Disasters:The skyscraper is on fire.
Significant Destruction:The top floor of a brand new tower.
Another blockbuster film by Owen Allen after The Adventures of Poseidon, which replaces ships with skyscrapers, but all the other elements are in place: human error caused by greed leads to catastrophic accidents that force a host of Hollywood stars to face life-threatening dangers. Paul Newman and Steve McQueen play architects and firefighters who are forced into action after a skyscraper in San Francisco. When they're done arguing over the top charge on drawings, the dreamy duo puts the fire itself aside and offers a vintage Hollywood glow to distract from the film's flaws.
Tornado
Types of Disasters:Tornado
Significant Destruction:A drive-in movie theater, a barn, a couple of cars, and a poor cow.
In terms of effect, "Tornado" is to Tornado what Jurassic Park is to dinosaurs. Jan de Bont, a '90s action master, combined a high level of real-world effects with state-of-the-art CGI at the time, bringing viewers into the heart of the storm – and it still looks great nearly three decades later. Of course, the characters are an afterthought, but Helen Hunter and Bill Paxton, as a bickering, newly divorced, and desperate couple chasing the storm, need the thrill of nearly being swept into a giant whirlwind to realize that they still love each other. Romance isn't what you're here for, though: it's the weather event in the title – and, of course, the famous Flying Bull.
Infectious diseases
Types of Disasters:Virus.
Major Destruction:26 million immune systems, a Chinese rainforest.
Viewers rediscover Steven Soderbergh's pandemic response procedures in the early days of the pandemic, as if the film might harbor some clues about humanity's path forward. It's not as ridiculous as it sounds. In contrast to Outbreak, or 1980's Virus, Contagion, with near-indifferent and practical realism, presents the concept of a deadly, fast-spreading respiratory virus that was assumed at the time. Of course, it doesn't exactly ** future – who could have predicted that the strip of cloth on your face would be strongly politicized?— but it's still a frightening movie that honors what we've been through and shows us how bad things could have gotten out of place.
The perfect storm
Types of Disasters:Shipwreck.
Significant Destruction:A small fishing boat.
In 1991, the term "perfect storm" ceased to be just a figurative expression, and two weather systems converged over the Atlantic Ocean to wreak havoc in the northeastern United States. In the sea thriller adaptation by Das Boot director Wolfgang Petersen, a group of desperate fishermen find themselves in the middle of a chaotic sea, battling 100-foot-high waves in an attempt to get back to shore. It's undoubtedly a film about men, but it's a surprisingly engaging one, featuring the likes of George Clooney, John C. Reilly, and John Hawkes, a group of geniuses who have not yet become superstars, and their intense performances. Oh!Mark Wahlberg was also there.
Unprecedented, unprecedented, full of sky
Types of Disasters:Commercial airliners.
Significant Destruction:Airport terminal windows.
The Zack Brothers' comedy classic is a disaster movie about helium that throws everything against the wall – almost everything is a spoof. Airports in the 1970s. Whatever you see in the film has its cleverness, especially in recasting the horn of Leslie Nelson (who was the captain in The Adventures of Poseidon) into a comedic genius with a blank face. Stressed air traffic controllers, traumatized Air Force pilots – they're full of joy.
The day after tomorrow
Types of Disasters:Climate.
Significant Destruction:Tokyo (massive hail), Los Angeles (tornado), Manhattan (deep freeze immediately after the tsunami).
By the turn of the century, Roland Emmerich had razed New York in "Godzilla" and blew up the White House in "Independence Day," but the German demolition director proved his credentials as Hollywood's master of disaster with this environmental disaster film. Climate change is not a gradual process, but an instantaneous catastrophe, with a series of superstorms coming together to plunge the Northern Hemisphere into a new ice age. It's ridiculous, of course, but it taps into people's real anxiety about the health of the planet, even including the deputy of climate change denial Dick Cheney.
Waves
Types of Disasters:Tsunami.
Major Destruction:The village of Geiranger, Norway.
This Norwegian thriller follows the tradition of "** and Volcano", as the title tells it: a huge wave triggered by a massive avalanche has swept through a small town on the Norwegian coast. Director Raul Usog indulges in some disaster clichés, but also manages to subvert them with a story that genuinely cares about the characters – namely the geologist's family who warns of the town's impending doom. But that doesn't mean it's nerving. Quite the opposite: when the tsunami in the alarm hits, it's jaw-dropping.
Ice sea shipwreck
Types of Disasters:Shipwreck.
Significant Damage:A very large ship. This time it's in black and white.
Forty years before the Titanic, the underrated dreamer Roy Ward Baker dramatized the biggest maritime disaster in history, and his budget may not even be enough to pay for meals on James Cameron's submarine. But at the time, it was still the most expensive film ever made in the UK. It's a simple entertainment compared to the more famous movie depictions, but Baker's attention to detail is undiminished. Want to sink a very large ship without the interference of Jack, Rose, and Billy Zane?This is a disaster movie for you.
Doomsday Escape (
Types of Disasters:Giant asteroids.
Significant Destruction:Mexico City, Paris, Sydney, all of Florida
The estranged father tends to be the central character in most disaster films, but this is often only a superficial narrative strategy. There are very few movies that really have a response to the question "Who do you want to be with at the end of the world?"."This question is of interest. Surprisingly, Gerard Butler does a pretty good job of this. An asteroid is heading towards Earth, and Butler is struggling to reunite with his family – you guessed it – Greenland, where there are said to be underground bunkers for selected survivors. There are fewer disaster scenes, but more emotional scenes, which is a rare example of this type of movie, but you won't miss the shocking destruction scenes.
Doomsday collapses
Types of Disasters:
Significant Destruction:Hoover Dam, Golden Gate Bridge, Kylie Minogue.
Dwayne Johnson battled his toughest opponent to date, California's San Andreas Fall. When the "cataclysm" finally hits, it will literally tear the state apart, destroying Los Angeles and San Francisco and everything in between. Can pilot Raymond Gaines rescue his estranged wife and their daughter, despite being in two different cities nearly 400 miles apart on that disastrous dayThe movie spoils everything, but the American Institute of Earth Sciences describes the scope of destruction depicted in the movie as "geologically ridiculous," but that's why you know it's great.
The day the earth caught fire
Types of Disasters:Apocalypse.
Significant Damage:The whole planet. Possible.
When British director Val Geist made this film about the planet on the brink of overheating, the term "global warming" was still decades away from entering the public eye. True, the reason for this is not entirely environmental degradation, but the fault of humanity: nuclear tests deorbit the Earth and rush towards the Sun. It sounds silly, but only if it's handled very seriously and with a distinctly British flair. No matter how vague the conclusion is, the end result is much more modern than you might expect from a 60s sci-fi movie.
Terror Zone
Types of Disasters:Virus.
Major Destruction:In a village in the Democratic Republic of the Congo, the room was packed with moviegoers.
Like Contagion, this '90s disease thriller caused a surge of interest in the early days of the COVID-19 outbreak. But while Steven Soderbergh took pains to show what might happen in the event of a global pandemic, which often harmed the protagonist's aura, director Wolfgang Peterson took the opposite approach. No one would call the outbreak "prescient": of course, there was a spike in Ebola cases in the United States, but as far as we know, Molotov cocktail bombardment of towns was never considered to contain the outbreak. But Peterson makes better use of his first-line cast, including Dustin Hoffman as a virologist who races to find a way to do the best and Morgan Freeman as a general who is ambivalent about the idea of killing American citizens in the form of immunology.
Large**
Types of Disasters:
Significant Destruction:Mulholland Dam, highway overpass.
One of the representatives of the disaster boom of the 70s, Charleton Heston ran through the rubble of Los Angeles after the big ** (magnitude 9 on the Richter scale.)Level 9) to save his estranged wife (Ava Gardner) and his family. Genevieve Bjord). The 70s were also crazy, and the film had a huge budget. And the effect - most of them are carefully camouflaged models. Forty years later, Doomsday Collapse will exacerbate the level of tectonic destruction of the Earth's crust, but you really can't resist a fully loaded elevator falling into doom and then splattering blood on the screen.
Molten City of Living Fire
Types of Disasters:Volcano.
Significant Destruction:Wilshire Boulevard, La Brea Tar Pit, Character Actor John Carroll Lynch.
In 1997, not one but two films about a dormant volcano erupting without warning, one of which was about the sudden eruption of underground magma in central Los Angeles. In this not film, the dubious racial political infusion aside, the image of Los Angeles Geography or Tommy Lee Jones as the director of the Office of Emergency Management, the character of scientist Anne Heche — lava flowing into Wilshire Avenue is enough to make it all a classic in an instant.
The end of the world
Types of Disasters:Giant asteroids.
Significant Destruction:Two space shuttles, a space station, Singapore.
Armageddon is widely regarded as the worse of the two "giant asteroids crashing to Earth" films, released in 1998. But because of its pure, unabashed absurdity, it appears even more prominent in people's imaginations. A meteorite "the size of Texas" is flying towards Earth, and the best thing the United States can think of to stop it is to send Bruce Willis and a motley group of oil drillers into space to blow up the meteorite. Still, leaving aside the romantic subplot between Liv Taylor and the baby-faced Ben Affleck, you'll see Bruce Willis, Owen Wilson, Steve Buscemi, and Billy Bob Thornton**, all of whom know how ridiculous the whole situation is, but the movie gives us all possibilities.
Tsunami miracle
Types of Disasters:Tsunami.
Significant Destruction:Beach resort in Thailand.
Yes, it was really special to make a film about the tsunami that swept through Thailand in 2004, as a wealthy British family happened to be there on holiday at the time and experienced the tsunami. That being said, Spanish director Ja Bayona's Tsunami Miracle is unusually moving for a disaster film, thanks in large part to its A-list cast, including Ewan McGregor, Naomi Watts, and the very young Tom Holland, who plays their adolescent son. While the focus is on Europeans, the playbook emphasizes the innate human compassion in times of crisis and respects indigenous populations in this way.
Deep-sea catastrophe
Types of Disasters:Oil spills.
Significant Destruction:Offshore drilling rigs, many seagulls
Peter Berg is a master of serious, reality-based action thrillers, and he was the ideal director for a film about a 2016 U.S. Gulf Coast oil rig**, which caused the worst oil spill in U.S. history — an event that wouldn't necessarily lend itself to a movie. But Berg's clever emphasis on the corporate cost-cutting of energy giant BP foreshadows the accident, and Mark Wahlberg and his ever-frowning expressions, a huge and fierce ** brought a righteous outrage. Didn't spend much time discussing the environmental impact of the disaster, but the handling of people** was better than you might think.
The sky is falling apart
It's another 1997 volcano movie that's a little more serious than "Molten City on Fire," where a hero's grandmother burns out her legs in a sulfuric acid lake and Pierce Brosnan drives a beat-up truck down the mountain. 007 was a volcanologist at the time, and when he arrived in a small town in the Pacific Northwest to investigate an active volcano nearby, he was still immersed in the cause even though his fiancée had died from lava. When the volcano inevitably erupts, he must protect the mayor (Linda Hamilton) from a similar fate. It's a basic premise of a disaster movie, and the movie doesn't have a scene where lava destroys a landmark in Los Angeles, but it makes up for it with a spectacular eruption, and the near-escape is really exciting.
Heaven and earth collide
Types of Disasters:Giant asteroids.
Significant Destruction:All.
Mimi Ryder's sensitive subject matter to the genre of "giant space rocks about to destroy the Earth" will forever be associated with Michael Bay's "The End of the World," which was released in the same year. Most people agree that Heaven and Earth is an excellent movie, but it really comes down to personal preference: do you prefer loud and silly big-scale space rock movies or dramatic and sentimental movies?If the latter sounds more appealing, then, you should probably join Gerard Butler in Greenland. But Ryder, who rose to fame in the '90s by directing "ER's Story," still proves herself to be adept at shaping highly emotional dramas in stressful situations. In addition, in this movie, Morgan Freeman is in the United States**, and he is very suitable for this role.
Geocentric Rescue
Types of Disasters:The end of the world
Significant Destruction:The Colosseum, the Golden Gate Bridge, the Pacific Ocean Sea.
Certain films seem to have been designed only to provoke the scientific community, and for this, Jon Amir's "Rescue from the Center of the Earth" was a huge success. A group of brain-dead people once rated it as the most scientifically inaccurate film of all time. It's an underground apocalypse, where a rabble of rabble is sent to the true center of the planet on a mission to use a nuclear bomb to "reboot" the Earth's collapsing molten nucleus. Even the stupidest person in geology class will say it is nonsense on every major plot. But none of Amile and actors like Stanley Tucci, Alan Eckhart, Delroy Lindo, and Hilary Swank seem to be joking.
Heavy rain is a disaster
Types of Disasters:Flood.
Significant Destruction:A town church, a town prison, a town.
This 90s action film is half disaster, half robbery, and while it doesn't realize the full potential of this clever combination, it gets a lot of points for its efforts. Morgan Freeman plays the leader of a criminal gang who, during a near-biblical storm in a small Indiana town, hatches a plot to rob $3 million from an armored truck driven by Christian Slater. John Woo originally planned to direct, but later chose "Changing Face" — which may have been a wise choice — but his successor, Mikael Solomon, put his skills as a former cinematographer to good use to create a film that felt believable and flooded.
Danger speed
Types of Disasters:The train is out of control.
Major Destruction:An engineer is retiring.
A freight train laden with hazardous chemicals is out of control and is heading towards a small town in Pennsylvania, and Chris Pine and Denzel Washington must stop it before the train derails and "**." "Danger" was the late Tony Scott's last film, and it was a film that put the action director at his peak, maintaining an unrelenting frantic rhythm with Denzel giving it his all.
Virus.
Types of Disasters:Virus.
Significant Damage:Almost all of humanity.
Despite the title, this US-Japan co-production is only half about a deadly disease. When man-made creatures** were accidentally released into the world, almost the entire human race was wiped out, with the exception of the 855 people stationed in Antarctica. Years later, when the survivors try to rebuild, a big ** threatens to detonate the world's nuclear arsenal. Now it's a bit obscure, but "Virus" was at one time the most expensive film in Japanese history. Its cast is still impressive: how many other films include both George Kennedy and Sonny Chiba, and there's so much more to the films.
Go ahead
Types of Disasters:Wildfires.
Significant Destruction:Yanel Township, Arizona;Multiple firefighters.
The film is based on the true story of firefighters who died in a massive wildfire in Arizona in 2013, although its plot sounds similar to Smoke Bombs. Director Joseph Kosinski pays homage to some of the true heroes in a serious tone that is admirable, visually striking, and emotionally unmistakable.
Giant Crocodile Storm (
Types of Disasters:Hurricanes, crocodiles.
Significant Destruction:Parts of Florida.
A B-grade horror film with vague environmental information, "Giant Crocodile Storm" sparked a Category 5 hurricane in Florida, followed by Kaya Scodelario and Barry Pepper trapped in their fast-flooding home. Sure, technically, it's a gorgeous monster movie, not a disaster movie, but the pace here is the same: the father and daughter duo fight against nature in a frantic quest for survival. The twin threats of high winds and crocodiles also exacerbate the danger – more terror is unleashed as the eye of the storm shifts. You won't even mind too much about the crocodiles that are clearly computer-generated.
Earth Storm(2017) (add 1 part, this one really shouldn't be abandoned).
Types of Disasters:Geological storms
Significant Destruction:Mumbai (tornado), Moscow (heatwave) and Dubai (extraordinarily large tsunamis).
If you build a machine to prevent global warming, how do you do the Ready Player One Call for Orders?What if that machine is used for?As long as Gerard Butler can get to the rescue in time, everything will be fine. At least, that's the conclusion given by this multi-concept film that combines an eco-disaster movie, a political thriller, and an extremely goofy sci-fi film, and while it's not great at the box office, it's still a convenient option when your brain needs some apocalyptic escapism. The film is directed by Dean Devlin, a veteran screenwriter of Roland Emmerich, so you know what to expect: a massive CG spectacle, and at least one adorable dog that survives no matter how nature attacks.