Theme: Disaster Movies

The disaster movie is a film spectacle that is set around some type of natural or man-made disaster – earthquakes, volcanoes erupting, planes in the process of crashing, ships sinking. There is the focus on spectacular scenes of mass destruction and drama as a crosscut of characters attempt to survive in the midst.

The original disaster movie fad began in the 1970s a series of big-budget hits featuring A-list casts. This underwent a revival in the 1990s where the advent of the CGI revolution allowed a much greater degree of depiction of spectacular mass destruction.

From the 2000s, the disaster movie has become the province of the B-budget film made for cable usually featuring a number of exotic science-fictional menaces – new onset Ice Ages, black holes, Global Warming scenarios, tornadoes of sharks and the like.

For more detail and an overview of the genre see the Theme Essay Disaster Movies.