why we love disaster movies

First, Time Out's Review of '2012' the latest disaster movie by Roland Emmerch

Let’s get the sniffy movie-snob protests out of the way. Yes, ‘2012’ is infantile. Yes, it treats the deaths of six billion people as little more than a tragic footnote. Yes, it’s about as interested in subtlety, narrative invention or character development as the Corkscrew at Alton Towers. But what a ride. There are moments – sights, sounds, special effects – that have never been seen or imagined before, sequences of staggering complexity, immaculate detail and breathtaking scale. In summary, it may seem like just another disaster movie, but this one is bigger, louder, crazier and more wildly exhilarating than anything previously attempted, even by Roland ‘Independence Day’ Emmerich’s own smash ’n’ grab standards.

The plot is little more than a framing device, the MacGuffin something to do with sunspots, plate tectonics and the Mayan calendar. The closest we have to a hero is John Cusack’s shambolic failed author Jackson Curtis, whose attempts to save his estranged family from a fiery death somehow involve Russian plutocrats, Himalayan plane crashes and Woody Harrelson in a fez.

But nobody goes to a movie like this for the storyline. This is disaster porn, and unashamedly so: pavements crack, buildings topple, crowds flee, planes plummet and world leaders scramble to save their own skins as the planet goes to hell in a handcart. Posterity will not be kind to ‘2012’ – and it definitely won’t work on DVD – but catch it on the biggest, noisiest screen available and approach it on its own terms, and it’ll knock your socks off.

My view

Thinking of the attraction most of us feel for silly disaster movies, I would relate to the building toys we all play in childhood. Maybe that’s the secret of Lego’s success, Lego structures break easily and tumble without damaging the blocks themselves. Building the blocks was fun, but the best part was always destroying the whole thing with a ‘giant’ furry rabbit in the role of the space monster. Same with sand castles. Same with Sim City: we like that the random tornado rampages the city that took hours to build. Calvin of Calvin & Hobbes is a wonderful 6-year-old destruction junkie.

On top of the very deep guilty pleasure we feel while watching the destruction of New-York, Tokyo or, like here, the whole world, in the safety of the playground and the comfort of the cinema seat, such shows probably have a social element. We feel guilty for all the greed and injustice and ecological disasters we have caused. Some sort of fictional natural revenge on mankind soothes our anguish just as Gods’ destructive anger in the old testament. The Father punished us and then at the last moment spared mankind; we feel better leaving the theatre. Our pleasure was not only the sadistic regressive joy, we feel morally justified, slightly mortified. There’s hope in mankind and family; it’s never too late to come to terms with daddies and ex-husbands.

Talking of the old testament, the Time Out review fails to mention the explicit reference to Noah’s ark. That’s the most explicit reference I have come across yet in modern disaster movies, even if biblical flooding is perhaps the blueprint of every disaster story (Spoiler coming). Flooding, as a side-effect disaster, was already in the two asteroid movies Armageddon and Deep Impact and also the first explicit ‘global warming’ disaster movie The day after tomorrow. This time, it’s not actually global warming that’s causing the flooding, it’s the inside of the globe that’s warming, melting the upper crust and causing tectonic plaques to sink in the ocean (if I got it well), but the metaphor of global warming flooding remains.

The Noah twist is actually fun here: we kind of assume that mankind will flee in a spaceship, but it turns out to be in actual, huge ships. And elephants and giraffes are on board too. The big Meccano have been built secretly in the Chinese Himalaya (mount Ararat was not high enough this time), but curiously, Yankees and Westerners seems to be in charge on board; I am not sure the Chinese would be that gracious to foreigners. Maybe one of the next Emmerich flicks will explore a spatial ark - Wall E did it brilliantly...

There must also be something with the family reunion plot that is always the background of such movies. All Spielberg films have that for instance. Whether it’s aliens or dinosaurs who are attacking, a divorced man, failed writer or obscure scientist, with low self esteem repents, saves his family and saves day at the same time. In the end, if he survives (generally he does against all odds), he wins back his ex-wife and kids, restores his dignity fatherly image and his virility. Around the male hero and his kids/ex-wife, side-kicks die in horrible, cowardly or heroic fashion. Here the ‘other man’, although a good guy, disappears conveniently a bit before the end. Secondary plots always include elderly fathers estranged from their adult kids and ‘coming to terms’ just before death.

Read Emmerich's unrepentant guide to make a disaster movie on Time Out.