Disaster Films in the Green Age

Conflict toils and churns at the core of any great story, not least of all in the disaster film genre, where the stakes are literally life and death, and personal drama plays out against the hyperbolized spectacle of luxury liners capsized, skyscrapers ablaze or passenger jets disabled. In the 1970s, producer Irwin Allen lassoed some of cinema's biggest names - including Paul Newman, Gene Hackman, Steve McQueen and Faye Dunaway - to battle the elements in loopy, kitschy, self-explanatory extravaganzas like Earthquake, The Towering Inferno, Fire! and Flood!, and made a fortune.

In recent years, though, the disaster film has evolved, throttling the Zeitgeist and going green, tackling environmental and ecological terrors, as in The Day After Tomorrow, M. Night Shyamalan's forthcoming The Happening, and even the Al Gore-Davis Guggenheim documentary, An Inconvenient Truth, with an earnestness, a scientific backbone and a political bent undreamed of in Allen's blockbusters. While the disaster flicks of yesteryear may have been exploitive cautionary tales chock full of eye-popping visual effects and histrionic derring-do, today's renderings are more sober and fact-based, a reflection of the desperate and ambiguous times in which we live.

Green Is the New Black

Michael Rose, co-author (with Glenn Kay) of the book Disaster Movies, a scholarly but hilarious survey of the genre, notes that environmental hazards - fires, floods, hurricanes, tornadoes, et al - have all been reliable antagonists in the disaster canon, but that threats like global warming, sudden climate change, a sun of rapidly diminishing power and other ecological chaos are the new threat du jour. In a post-9/11 era in which working out the source of our threats is complex and uncertain, environmental devastation seems a formidable but combatable "villain." "We may not be able to save the world from dirty bombs and terrorism, but hope still exists when it comes to saving the environment! That's something we can do right now, something that is fixable, unlike the hopelessness offered by the ‘war on terror,'" says Rose. "At the very least, becoming ‘green' takes our minds off of the seemingly unsolvable world conflicts that threaten everything we hold dear."

"It feels that the subject is very important to people right now," says Andrew Macdonald, producer of environmentally-themed genre films Sunshine and 28 Days Later. "Years ago, we had a lot of films about the Cold War and destruction of the planet through atomic war. That doesn't seem to worry people anymore. I don't know why it doesn't, but it doesn't. Today, we're all worried that the planet is going to chew us up and spit us out. Putting characters in that kind of situation is rich with moral quandaries and has all the elements of good drama."

Lloyd Kaufman, founder and president of the 34-year-old horror outfit Troma Pictures, responsible for B-movies like The Toxic Avenger and the forthcoming Poultrygeist - both of which address environmental concerns and social consciousness (albeit with a bounty of bared breasts and spilled guts) - is inspired by this shift. He notes that disaster movies of the past were primarily empty thrill rides or historical retreads, while today's run of films have at least a nascent interest in expanding viewers' minds on contemporary issues. "While in the past, audiences were riddled with disaster films that dealt with past terrors or extravagant glimpses into unlikely circumstances, the films of today seem to be honing in more closely on true issues of imminent concern," says Kaufman. "I believe filmmakers are realizing that it is not helpful to come in behind the curve, preaching caution of things that have already happened. Thus, the films of today are dealing with issues that are very much on the brink of happening or issues that are still able to be fixed."

Kaufman believes films that carefully balance entertainment value with "issues" have the potential to change the world. "If you can find a way to entertain people and tempt them into a critical evaluation of their own world, then you have done your job," he says. "Maybe you've set the table for some kind of change."

Real Ills, Plus Thrills and Spills

Despite the anomalous success of Truth, a compelling though lecture-driven treatise on global warming, audiences are, for the most part, as unlikely to shell out ten bucks for a sermon on environmentalism as they are to give up their Hummers and hairspray. Which is to say disaster movies can't simply preach; they've gotta deliver some serious bang.

"No matter how these movies have changed, the expectations are pretty much the same as they ever were. Comedies are meant to be funny, horror movies are meant to be scary, and disaster movies, for the most part, are meant to be thrilling," says Disaster Movies author Rose. "People want to be entertained by movies that promise large-scale death and destruction (and cutting-edge visual effects, which have always been a part of the genre), and that's ultimately what even the most intellectually sophisticated modern disaster movie is meant to deliver."

Rose's co-writer, Glenn Kay, believes the disaster movie formula, run into the ground by Irwin Allen's garish epics but reborn with social and environmental awareness, is mostly unchanged. "There is usually a powerful force of nature seemingly beyond the control of humankind, and a protagonist (often a scientist) who is constantly warning the community of the impending danger, to no avail. You'll probably see a cavalcade of recognizable faces and big stars playing characters of varied social backgrounds that will end up interacting during the course of the film. You'll usually find scenes of self-sacrifice, mass destruction and citizens in peril, depicted with spectacular special effects," says Kay. "And if you're really, really lucky, you'll see panicked crowds running towards the camera."

Sunshine producer Macdonald believes the audience's appetite for entertainment must be met before any instruction can occur. "We don't set out to make a film about saving the environment. That's just part of the reality we set our characters in. The environmental thing is there to enrich the story, not to be the story," Macdonald says. "Any film that sets out to give a lesson is probably geared up for a lot of trouble. Preaching is, I think, a big no-no. You've got to have great characters, to be entertaining, all the things any film requires. If you decide to have some environmental concerns in your film, it doesn't really change the ingredients you'd need to make a good film. You still have to be entertaining or you'll be playing to empty seats."

Everyone interviewed for this story cites Roland Emmerich's The Day After Tomorrow, which grossed $187 million in 2004, as a prime example of the new breed of disaster film: topical, science-based, and still brimming with visual effects and thrill-ride story beats. The film's writer, Jeffrey Nachmanoff, working from a book by Whitley Strieber and Art Bell, initially had no idea he was part of a shift in the genre, and even confesses an ignorance of disaster films past. "When I was hired, I'd never even seen one of these disaster movies. I had no idea what they were or were supposed to do," he says. But heavy research into the greenhouse effect and global warming, and working closely with Emmerich (the shepherd behind mayhem epics Independence Day and Godzilla), quickly brought him up to speed. "After a while, I began to realize that, although we were making a piece of fiction and entertainment, we had suddenly waded into a public discussion about the single largest problem confronting our planet," says Nachmanoff. "It became about more than selling popcorn at that point."

Besides offering audiences traditional thrills and spills, Nachmanoff adds, "Day After Tomorrow also served a function in paving the way for more serious treatment of the subject (of global warming) in An Inconvenient Truth."

Doom Looms, Ubiquitous and Eternal

In The Happening, previously titled The Green Effect and Green Planet, written and directed by The Sixth Sense's Shyamalan (due next June and starring Mark Wahlberg and Zooey Deschanel), our third rock from the sun faces imminent annihilation tied to environmental issues like global warming, the greenhouse effect and - uh - aliens.

The project is currently in production under a veil of secrecy. More than a half-dozen environmental disaster films, including a remake of The Swarm, are also in production.

But will these films really change the world or save the planet? Disaster Movies author Kay, for one, is somewhat skeptical. "How effective this wave of environmentally themed disaster films is going to be, beyond the exploitive thrills the genre requires, I don't know," he says. "If the movies ultimately persuade a family to conserve a bit of energy and turn the lights off, or to recycle pop bottles or buy a hybrid car, I guess that's a good thing. There can't be anything wrong with promoting eco-friendly measures."

Regardless of how the current wave of environmentally themed disaster films fares at the box office, the disaster genre itself is unlikely to ever go the way of the pterodactyl. "Disaster films are pornography for our masochistic subconscious," says Troma's Kaufman. "They're cathartic and, usually, mankind wins. Audiences like that." -MPM

Top 12 Disaster Movies of All Time

The Last Days of Pompeii (1935)
»Director: Ernest B. Schoedsack
»Starring: Basil Rathbone, Alan Hale
»Box Office: N/A

The Hurricane (1937)
»Director: John Ford
»Starring: John Carradine, Dorothy Lamour, Mary Astor
»Box Office: N/A
»Awards: Three Oscar nominations. One win, for Best Sound

Airport (1970)
»Director: George Seaton
»Starring: Burt Lancaster, Dean Martin, Jacqueline Bissett
»Box Office: $101,000,000
»Awards: Ten Oscar nominations. One win, to Helen Hayes for Best Supporting Actress

The Poseidon Adventure (1972)
»Director: Ronald Neame
»Starring: Gene Hackman, Ernest Borgnine, Shelley Winters
»Box Office: $42,000,000
»Awards: Eight Oscar nominations. One win, for Best Original Song

Earthquake (1974)
»Director: Mark Robson
»Starring: Charlton Heston, Ava Gardner, George Kennedy
»Box Office: $80,000,000
»Awards: Four Oscar nominations. One win, for Best Sound.

The Towering Inferno (1974)
»Director: Irwin Allen, John Guillermin
»Starring: Steve McQueen, Paul Newman, Faye Dunaway
»Box Office: $116,000,000
»Awards: Eight Oscar nominations. Three wins, including Best Cinematography, Best Film Editing, Best Original Song

Dante's Peak (1997)
»Director: Ronald Donaldson
»Starring: Pierce Brosnan, Linda Hamilton
»Box Office: $67,000,000

Titanic (1997)
»Director: James Cameron
»Starring: Kate Winslet, Leonardo DiCaprio
»Box Office: $900,000,000 worldwide
»Awards: Eleven Oscars, including Best Picture

Deep Impact (1998)
»Director: Mimi Leder
»Starring: Robert Duvall, Morgan Freeman, Téa Leoni
»Box Office: $141,000,000

The Perfect Storm (2000)
»Director: Wolfgang Peterson
»Starring: George Clooney, Mark Wahlberg, Diane Lane
»Box Office: $183,000,000
»Awards: Two Oscar nominations

The Day After Tomorrow (2004)
»Director: Roland Emmerich
»Starring: Dennis Quaid, Jake Gyllenhaal
»Box Office: $187,000,000

Sunshine (2007)
»Director: Danny Boyle
»Starring: Cillian Murphy, Michelle Yeoh
»Box Office: $32,000,000 worldwide