How to Appreciate a Good Disaster Movie

I’ve always loved disaster movies. From Earthquake to The Towering Inferno to my all-time fav, The Poseidon Adventure (I even liked the remake), there’s just something about watching a group of people surviving some awful calamity, banding together to get out alive. Wondering who’s going to make it and who’s not.

A disaster movie these days, however, usually entails the near end of Earth as we know it – which, of course, makes sense to me. One natural disaster or hotel fire just doesn’t cut it anymore. You’ve got to up the ante. Aliens are taking over (Independence Day); giant meteors are falling from space (Deep Impact); global warming puts us in an Ice Age (The Day After Tomorrow). I mean, seriously, when those tornadoes rip up Los Angeles or when the survivors have to run from sub-zero frozen air, that’s just excellent entertainment.

This November, we can look forward to 2012, a movie based on the ancient Mayan prophecy that on Dec. 21, 2012, the world will end. In the trailer, it certainly looks that way, a surging sea toppling over the Himalayas. Sweet.

Of course, it sort of also scares the bejeezus out of me. I’ve watched those History Channel specials about how all the other Mayan prophecies have come true. The Sony Pictures campaign behind the movie is playing on that fear, with two separate sites: This Is The End.com and the Institute for Human Continuity.com. Doubly sweet.

Best death scene in a disaster movie EVER? When Shelley Winters’ Mrs. Rosen in Poseidon Adventure– once a champion swimmer, now an overweight grandmother – holds her breath and swims all the way through the debris to clear the path for the others and THEN dies of a heart attack. Best line EVER? When Gene Hackman’s Rev. Scott, holding the dead Mrs. Rosen, says, “Please GOD NOT this woman.”