The 2009 Roland Emmerich movie “2012” is the film that I think really killed the disaster movie genre. Pretty much every disaster movie that came after that were largely a bombs that were then swiftly forgotten.
I don’t know why people hate that movie. If you’re gonna make a disaster movie, you might as well just have every disaster that could possibly occur in one movie. Fuck it.
2012 was a decent disaster movie had a name coming from the prediction of mayan that has been proven to be not true by waking up next morning. No one is taking seriously anymore. But the movie was alright.
@@knockitoffhudson3470 But that's the problem because it relied on spectacle, and not story telling and meaning, not to mention that The Day After Tomorrow pretty much did that, so it was just a remake with new disasters.
I saw Twister as part of my high school science class and the part I remember the most wasn't any of the big special effects or spectacle, it was the moment where they all sit down to have a nice breakfast because the atmosphere and characters felt very real and it helped ground them while providing a needed break from the action.
The one thing I loved about Twister that doesn't get nearly enough attention is Jo's mental state. She's suffering from classic PTSD as a result from watching her own dad die and she's never addressed it nor does the movie in terms of her working through her trauma. It's obviously mentioned, but outside of that, it's completely ignored.
For some reason, many people don't think of "Titanic" as a disaster movie. A couple of underrated ones from the 90s are "Daylight" w/ Sylvester Stallone and "Hard Rain" w/ Christian Slater & Morgan Freeman.
Here are some directors that should explore this genre: * Christopher Nolan * Denis Villeneuve * David Fincher * Damien Chazelle * Jordan Peele * Sam Mendes * Darren Aronofsky * JA Bayona * Doug Liman
"Christopher Nolan, in his commitment to practical effects, funds the largest cloud-seeding mission in history, triggering catastrophic storms for upcoming disaster film."
@@Aldairion Maybe Nolan has been planning on making a global warming movie and has been the one behind the scenes causing the world to get hotter just so he can shoot a scene of Antarctica melting over earth without CGI.
Twister and Dante's peak are my 2 all time favorite disaster movies and i actually rewatched twister 2 days ago for the nostalgia and it was just as good as always
@@RyDeRzWorld Yes, but Dante's Peak is objectively the better movie. It has Sarah Connor and James Bond. Plus, it was directed by a person who had a background in geology. Yeah, he admitted he took a lot of creative liberties to make things more interesting but stuck pretty closely to scientific accuracy wherever possible, otherwise. Also, Dante's Peak doesn't have reverse smoke footage!
The Perfect Storm is a movie that captivated me back in my teens. Not unlike Twitter, (another favorite of mine in that era), it was about a ragtag team reacting to an unstoppable force, but I haven't seen it mentioned anywhere since then.
One of the movies I'm surprised was left out of this was Volcano. That movie was a fascinating concept because there was no "bad guy". There was no mustache-twisting villain sitting on the sidelines denying what was happening while people died. It was a story about a bunch of people, doing their jobs, living their lives, and making extraordinary sacrifices when the time came to protect the ones they love and the people who needed saving. The decisions that were made were very human and very by the book and when the evidence clearly showed that what they feared was happening was the people who'd been standing in the way stepped up and (in some cases) gave their lives to try to save everyone that could be saved. It also has little hints of human unification and gender stereotyping (though less on that second one) with Anne Heche's all-female survey team and the little boy's line at the end that "they all look the same". This is all ignoring the small subplot between the arrested man and the police officer, culminating in them all working together to stem the tide of lava in the street. Truly a fascinating piece of cinema and one that I feel has really stood the test of time.
I have never heard Volcano praised to that level. Each to their own, but i myself always felt it was just a dumb fun action flick, nothing more much. Mind you, it did scare the crap out of me as a kid.
I think Backdraft 'ride' was in that same space before Twister. That was the one that freaked me out as a kid. Literally thought we weren't going to leave that theater alive. lol
Speak for yourself. Twister is an all time favorite, watch it a dozen times a year. Don't think for a moment Twisters will have that same level of magic, but I've been genuinely looking forward to seeing it since way before shooting even started. Would've rather it be the Twister sequel HH herself was developing in 2020, but here we are.
@@JustJessee Get real - it was a disgracefully cheesy mess of poor character acting, a lame script - and of course, high production values, which allowed the monstrosity to even exist and therefore be marketed down our collective throats. I knew that night in the theater that we'd crossed some kind of line of acceptably low standards in our big movies - with people like Michael Bay soon to take over. 👍
@@ranakatan There are a ton of original films that get released... the issue is that a lot end up on streaming services with very little fanfare or word of mouth and get lost in the streaming void. Thats why movie theatres only seem to show movies from established IP's (remakes, sequels, etc)... even this year there has been quite a few oiriginal films hitting theatres, with audience and critical praise but their box office hasn't been great as people don't go to the theatres as much anymore to take a chance on a movie they don't know much about or doesn't exist in an ongoing series... horror films and comedies are semi-immune to this, but even they seem to be relegated to opening weekend numbers anymore....
Before Twisters even comes out I have a problem with it. Namely that the sky looks too bright during the scenes with the titular twisters. I just think the original film had the more realistic skyline in terms of the tornado scenes.
A couple of disaster movies came out in 1998 which addressed the same subject; a giant asteroid coming to strike the earth. The more famous one was Armageddon which I absolutely hated for its ridiculous script and hamfisted direction by Michael Bay. The other one was Deep Impact, which was more a character story about various groups of people and how they had to emotionally deal with the possible extinction of the human race as the asteroid slowly but surely approached earth. It was slow at times but got sadder as the asteroid approached earth and only a few select groups of people would be sent to an underground bunker to survive the impact of the asteroid striking earth and have to rebuild society.
Can't lie. The father being ripped away into the tornado in the opening scene of the original Twister traumatized me as a child more than Michael Myers and Freddy Kruger ever could combined
There exists one perfect disaster movie, Deep Water Horizon. All the meta shit, hitchcock’s ticking time bomb under the table, a lot of spectacle to make it look great, a restrained scope that isn’t “the entire world is going to explode”, and fantastic acting to bring it all together. With all due respect. it was a real event and many people died and that is truly tragic. But even if it wasn’t and it was all fictional it would have been just as intense and cautionary
Not only is Twister one of the greatest disaster movies and a master class in early CGI/VFX, it's a blockbuster movie that gave Bill Paxton a leading role which he did not get much. He really gets to show some acting chops here and he nails it Alsp fuck every makn cast member nails it. PSH is so good in this movie
I watched Twister on TV one night when I was very young and was very afraid for tornados for a while after that. And I live in a place where they don't even happen!
The evolution of the John Wick franchise is a perfect example of a winning formula being paired down into a "sure thing" recipe, that often fails us before we realize it. The first movie has a grounded, real feel to it. It's grittier, the fight scenes are clumsier. And in that way, it pulled us in. Seeing things get bigger and more polished for #2 was a blast, but arguably already a downward step. People are afraid to CHOOSE to go low budget.
When I was a kid I felt like there was a period of time where nearly every movie was a disaster film. If I was watching a movie about a flood, a tornado, or something on fire, all I could think was "Man, this would be a lot more interesting if there were comic book characters involved in all this destruction! Oh well" Years later and people are complaining about superhero fatigue 🤣 Damnit
Exactly, a disaster movie is just a type of monster movie: Godzilla was a bomb after all. And, to quote Tolkien, "stories are never about monsters, stories are about people." The movie needs to be about humans reacting to the disaster, not merely showcasing the disaster itself. High qualify VFX are a good thing, but they need to be in service of the story. The disaster exists to bring out certain qualities in the characters, be they ordinary people or world leaders. It exists to put pressure on them, to create moral dilemmas, and to illuminate the parts of themselves they hide. What will actually make the story compelling is how the characters overcome their flaws, or don't.
One thing that I always bothered me about that flying cow is that if there was enough wind to pick up that cow they would be flying off the road themselves.
Glenn Powell just did 3 really fun movies this year. “Anyone But you” was ok but funny, “Hitman” was fucking great and now this Twister sequel. He is gonna be a mega star
I think you missed mentioning other modern disaster movies like The Wave and Quake. They arnt mainstream in the states though because they are foreign language
I saw Twisters this past weekend. It was a ton of fun and played with the whole rag tag crew vs the money backed crew scenario, it even threw in the social media craze of people getting famous for doing stupid things. It was truly a disaster movie for this era as it kinda hit all the notes it needed too.
Saw an interesting one on TCM a few years ago. San Francisco from 1936. Covers the earthquake and the aftermath. One of Scorsese's favorites apparently. Kind of strange to see the genre go back that far. Curious how popular that movie was at the time.
Coincidentally I just had my Disaster-Movie-Weekend with 7 movies, 1 per day:Monday: Independence Day (1996), Tuesday: Armageddon (1998), Wednesday: The Core (2003), Thursday: The Day After Tomorrow (2004), Friday: War of the Worlds (2005), Saturday: Knowing (2009), Sunday: 2012 (2009).But I also like San Andreas (2015) and I get some enjoyment out of Geostorm (2017). I love Greenland (2020), I think we're even getting a sequel to that due to the positive box office and critical response..
Man, I cannot believe I have lived long enough to see Twister become a nostalgic movie-watch. I remember very distinctly watching it in the movie theater and thinking "man, we sure are in a creative dry spell". We've come full circle.
I work in a secondary school in the UK. Here STEM stands for Science Technology English and Maths. The core subjects and most important functional skills
To add for the story telling, and really in regard to a movie like Twister or Dante’s Peak, I also think the level of realism plays a part. Twister, despite at moments feeling fantastical, also never tries to go to far from the spectacle. The F5 tornado at the end is a very real tornado size, though not as common. The only moment that I felt was cheesy was the it turned into their direction and seemingly chased them. Aside from that, I don’t think it ever extended too far past disbelief, something that disaster films started going for. In looking for the spectacle, they lost that grounded reality that these worlds are based in. Maybe it’s me but k think disaster movies play it fast and loose without bothering to make sure if it actually makes some kind of sense
I think the Genra just moved to a different format, TV, and the story continues out past the initial disaster. You have Scavengers Reign, Last of Us, Walking Dead, Fallout, and Sweet Tooth are all good examples.
Not same names actually, the new one is called twisters and is suppose to be a stand alone sequel. In other words same universe as twister but not the same characters.
I've not seen the 2024 movie but from the trailers and other media it looks like it's mostly just named the same though it might be a something of a soft reboot using inspiration from the 2013 El Reno tornado.
Something that disaster movies - and movies in general - is losing track of, is in my opinion a sense of scale. It seems like it always seems to have world-ending stakes and "superhumans" nowadays, when the best stories are told by putting normal people in a smaller scale event. Part what makes Twister and The Towering Inferno so great, for example, is that they are about normal people, with their normal jobs, facing a disaster that is of a realistic scale threat and therefor the audience can identify with and feel the same emotions the characters feel.
I thought the trailer for Twisters was really dumb schlock to be honest... As a kid I saw The Day After Tomorrow and I thought it was a horror movie. I had enough science knowledge to grasp the concepts but I didn't realize it's more of a psychological thriller than straight horror
A tornado also moves through an area and then is gone, rarely staying on the ground more than a few miles, so it's difficult to make a disaster style movie featuring tornadoes as a main subject. Twister worked because it centered on the storm chasing teams and the leads' prior relationship as they encountered multiple tornadoes over a period of a few days in an almost documentary style movie. There just isn't a lot one can do with a tornado movie (same with hurricanes/typhoons) without it just being something that happens during the movie.
TL;DW - Genre stories have the advantage of being able to lean on the genre as a shortcut where they might otherwise have to build thing up fresh. With genre stories, you essentially exploit the cliches and foreknowledge to either skip past things the audience already knows by virtue of the genre, or you subvert the genre. Or both.
Twister is my favorite movie and even comparing it to other somewhat similar movies, it still holds up. The new Twisters... I don't know... Obviously its all updated with today's view of social media. I hope its a good movie but by the trailer just seems meh.
We have plenty of them. When the at the start of 1999 before, but that’s when it really kicked off, they were nothing but disaster everywhere. If you need more, your life go back to 1999 and most of the summer blockbusters disaster because we just discovered CGI. That movies like twister came out. Don’t get me wrong. There were some good ones I mean twisters a popcorn Dante’s Peak is one of my favorites because it’s absolutely stupid and ridiculous. But yeah, we do not need more disaster movies
“Twisters” was good, but it was clearly a “romance novel” movie, from the two dueling men, one financially successful, the other ruggedly charming but blue collar, to the manic pixie behavior and tragic backstory of the female lead. Even the “we won’t destroy the tornado, we’re going to tame it!” line as the female lead pirouettes. The original “Twister” is blatantly a Michael Crichton story. It follows all the beats Crichton comes back to again and again: science as a philosophical and moral pursuit, the flagrant financial entrapment and corporatization of science leading to civilization’s downfall, estranged lovers, the man as inherently masculine with a blend of intelligence, wisdom, and strength, not a nerd, jock, or other one-dimensional perception. If there is one issue I have with “Twister”, it’s the total dehumanization of Jonas. To make it better, it would’ve been more interesting to see Jonas do the following: 1) Admit DOT3 was actually Bill’s idea, but he pursued it with corporate funding after Bill left the group, and no pending grants or university support to continue their research. 2) Jonas and his more experienced crew help haul Bill, Jo, and crew out of a jam in Act 2. 3) Jonas “owed Bill a 10 second car”, and uses the black Suburban to haul the last Dorothy into the F5, finally reuniting the team. Perhaps its my capitalist mind, or maybe I’ve seen too many Barbara Streisand movies, but I wanted to see an end credits scene where Bill reinvents himself as “The Extreme” weather man on the local tv station. Take his compromised job, and turn it into a “Mr Wizard” presentation of the weather, with guest appearances by Dusty and crew, live coverage from chase vehicles, all the while explaining to the audience how to deal with natural disasters.
Media was always a way to get messages to get across. Media and information is a powerful tool. So yeah we need more these movies to spread awareness and positivity. Also How many people thought San Andreas was a GTA movie cause I certainly did.
