The end is near! Why disaster movies make sense in the '90s - and dollars - Cover Story

Washington Monthly, April, 1997 by Howard Rabinowitz

An embarrassing confession: I remember The Poseidon Adventure as one of the most exciting movies of my childhood. Star Wars-level exciting. The gripping story of a capsized cruise ship on New Year's Eve, it follows a handful of survivors' struggle to escape before the boat goes under. I was too young to catch this disaster classic's first run in a movie theater, but as a seven-year-old I saw its network TV premiere, and it left me on the edge of my seat--wondering who'd survive and who'd perish (people in disaster movies always "perished"); marveling at the upside-down sets and all-star cast (Ernest Borgnine! Roddy McDowall! Red Buttons!); terrified by the crash of the enormous tidal wave; and moved to tears by the enormous Shelley Winters, portraying a self-sacrificing Brooklyn Jew.

Of course, today The Poseidon Adventure plays like pure camp. Like the best and worst of the '70s disaster movies, it is junky film making, with soggy dialogue and over-the-top performances. But it does the job--it entertains you for more than two hours. The script manages to turn up the tension every 15 minutes or so as the ship sinks ever deeper and new calamities threaten the survivors. It's an enjoyable bad movie, but not a so-bad-it's-good one; it is fun and forgettable in the way that only certain expensive Hollywood trash can be.

In 1997, for better or worse, major Hollywood studios have returned full force to recycling that particular brand of trash. This summer we'll find out how far we've come from The Poseidon Adventure when James Cameron's $180-million Titanic hits the screen. And Titanic is just the tip of the iceberg. Moviegoers can choose between two films about exploding volcanoes, Dante's Peak and Volcano; major summer releases include Steven Spielberg's Jurassic Park sequel, The Lost World, and the waterlogged adventure flick The Flood; and next fall brings us Firestorm. Network television has even offered up the mini-series Asteroid and Volcano: Fire on the Mountain. Hollywood hasn't unleashed such a massive dose of catastrophe on the viewing public since, well--Showgirls.

So to what can we credit the return of the disaster movie? Studio execs' subtle sense that people are anxious about the impending collapse of the natural world? Hollywood's proximity to the mud slides, earthquakes, firestorms, and race riots that have made L.A. the disaster capital of the world? Perhaps a John Travolta-inspired nostalgia for the Me Decade? Actually, the answer is simpler: Hollywood's bottom line is money, and none of these projects would have been bankrolled if not for the phenomenal success of three movies--Jurassic Park, Independence Day, and Twister--each of which carried a strong whiff of the '70s disaster-movie formula.

Like their '70s predecessors, all three films rely on cutting-edge special effects to portray havoc (natural, man-made, and alien) loosed on humankind--and the heart-stopping rescue sequences that must logically follow. Twister shows Mother Nature hitting the spin cycle, air-lifting a cow and devastating countless farms, a drive-in movie theater, a fuel tanker, and the house of the heroine's aunt. Of course, the film's heroes manage to free Aunt Meg and her dog just before the structure caves in. At the heart of Jurassic Park, with its undeniably impressive digitized prehistoric supporting cast, is an extended child-rescue sequence (a disaster-movie staple), as Dr. Alan Grant (Sam Neill) uses his dinosaur savvy to ferry two terrified kids to safety. The sci-fi, pop-art cartoon Independence Day, which cheerfully envisions the destruction of

three-quarters of the earth's population, also has its share of implausible rescues amid the carnage. Saved from the aliens' death ray is yet another family dog. (Lesson 1: It's good to be a dog in a disaster movie.)

You could argue that eye-popping visuals are the raison d'etre of the genre. (When George Lucas and Steven Spielberg lured Hollywood's special-effects wizards into outer space in the late '70s, it dealt a death blow to the disaster flick.) A Twister or Jurassic Park is designed like a virtual roller-coaster ride--which is exactly what the audience wants. It's dazzling displays of destruction that draw the crowds--the bigger and bolder, the better--and a skimpy story and bad dialogue can be incidental if the effects are good enough. (On a recent trip to Mexico, I happened to catch a version of Twister dubbed into Spanish, a language I don't speak. Surprisingly, I enjoyed the movie much better when I couldn't understand what anyone was saying.)

But special effects are only part of the story. The disaster movie's appeal also lies in its application of a reassuring moral logic to human survival, the suggestion that if we are virtuous, we'll probably survive. (An exception is the Noble Sacrifice of a Featured Supporting Character--which is equally worthwhile in the disaster-movie ethos.) The audience doesn't merely imagine disaster, we imagine how we'd behave in the situation. Would we panic or stay calm? Save ourselves or our loved ones? Have the wisdom to see the tell-tale signs and the agility to react in time? A disaster movie is filled with moral shorthand. In Independence Day, we can tell if a character is going to live or die based on whether or not he recycles an aluminum can. In Jurassic Park, when a character is introduced as a lawyer, the audience knows he's going to be lunch meat for T-Rex.