A new breed of disaster film...

If you are anything like me, then you are a film fanatic, sometimes bordering on being a film snob. There are some genres you love, some you put in the “not so much” column, and those that you will absolutely, under no circumstances whatsoever be caught dead (or alive) watching. Well…that’s kind of the ground I dwell on. But lately, Hollywood has struggled to put out films that really get me excited. Don’t get me wrong…they put out “entertainment”, but it is at most a momentary distraction.

The film industry just seems to be stagnating now with all of the remakes, reboots, live-action adaptations (looking DIRECTLY at you Disney), and rehashes of films that have been seen time and time again. There is almost zero originality in Hollywood anymore unless your name happens to be Christopher Nolan. Come on writers…he can’t do it all by himself, someone else has to come up with something original! And most years, Hollywood even pairs films of similar themes. 1996 gave us both Independence Day and The Arrival, 1997 saw dueling volcano films with Dante’s Peak and Volcano, 1998 had Deep Impact facing off against Armageddon…and that trend continues to this day.

But lately…there have been some films that have popped up on my radar that have actually captured my attention. Aside from sci-fi and fantasy, one of the film genres that I have always enjoyed is the disaster film. And yes…there are some great ones out there, and some absolute stinkers. Films like The Core, 2012, and San Andreas were just popcorn films at best, and at worst completely made Hollywood call scientific accuracy into question with completely laughable and implausible scientific events and terminology and vowed to do better (cough THE CORE cough). In many cases, Hollywood seemed to think that disaster films meant that the ENTIRE film needed to be about the disaster and threw huge amounts of money at all the effects going into it, and no thought at all into the human side of the film. A good example of a film that tried to balance that equation was 1998’s Deep Impact, directed by Mimi Leder.

Deep Impact was a film about a newly discovered comet that was on a direct collision course with Earth, and the plan to stop it and save as many people as possible. One of the best reviews of the film came in the form of a pro/con description from a reviewer than I can not remember the name of…but it was quite apt: “Pro - Director Mimi Leder places more emphasis on the humans in the story than in the comet or the special effects. Con - Director Mimi Leder places more emphasis on the humans in the story than in the comet or the special effects.” That was a very accurate description of the film. They tried to balance all aspects of the equation but came up lacking, which is sad because Deep Impact is truly a very unfairly overlooked and underrated “end of the world” film. But lately, there have been others that I think succeeded in balancing the equation to high levels of success.

In 2015, Norwegian director Roar Uthaug helmed a small film called The Wave. It was set in the real village of Geiranger, Norway where a local geologist Kristian Elkjord and his family live, and where he eventually discovers the threat of an impending avalanche and subsequent 260-feet high tsunami, that will destroy the entire area within 10 minutes. But while the tsunami wave is indeed every bit the threat it is, it isn’t the star of the film…the people are. From the moment that Kristian starts piecing together the bits of data that there is about to be something wicked his way comes until the wave passes, is only 20 minutes long, but the total screen time that we see the wave itself equates to less than 4 minutes out of the films 1:45:54 run time. The rest of the film is spent doing what should be done… world-building, establishing the relationships, and afterward the actions of those who survived the wave. And it was all spot on, so much so that in 2018 we got a sequel in the form of The Quake, this time shifting focus from the small village of Geiranger to the capital city of Oslo…and yes, Kristian once again deduces a natural disaster just moments before it hits. Both of these films excel in telling the human survival aspects of their respective stories. And like Deep Impact, are largely unknown and overlooked…but very highly regarded films. Both The Wave and The Quake deliver on so many levels that they should be considered a master-class for Hollywood on just what is actually important in a disaster film.

Hollywood seems to have taken some notes though, as the 2020 film Greenland starring Gerard Butler and Morena Baccarin is set in a world where their struggling marriage becomes a non-existent issue in the face of a newly discovered series of asteroids set to end all life on Earth. The human struggles in the face of fear, panic, devastation and destruction going on all around them highlights the concept of “what are you willing to do to protect your family”, and it does so with flying colors. Yes, the world may have been completely destroyed, but at least we managed to save some people to restart the world.

Why do these films succeed where so many fail? IndieWire writer David Ehrich seems to have the right idea, especially considering Greenland: “By eschewing spectacle and focusing on the human scale of a crisis, Greenland becomes the rare disaster movie that feels realistic." And realistic is indeed how filmmakers are starting to approach things. More and more filmmakers are returning to practical effects, realistic interactions between characters and story elements, and the believable threats they face and must overcome. It is with these efforts that we can hope that Christopher Nolan now has help and backup in bringing original ideas and compelling stories back to the Hollywood machine, and new life being breathed into the disaster film genre because it was most assuredly nearly a victim of its own kind.

The Wave and The Quake can be found on YouTube, and Greenland can be seen on YouTube, Apple TV+, and Amazon Prime Video