Roland Emmerich's Favorite Disaster Movies | Screen Rant
Roland Emmerich is the King of the big-budget disaster movie, and he's picked his top 10 favorite disaster movies of all time. Emmerich's first disaster movie was the highly successful Independence Day in 1996. While he has told stories in other genres, he's most comfortable destroying cities or even the world in ever more inventive ways. The Day After Tomorrow brought about a new ice age, while 2012 proved the Mayans were right about the end of the world (at least cinematically). While he stumbled attempting to revisit the ID4 universe in Independence Day: Resurgence, he looks set to bounce back with the upcoming disaster movie, Moonfall, which finds the Moon on a collision course with Earth.
Roland Emmerich has stated that his sustained interest in the sub-genre is due to the many different ways you can present a disaster movie. Be it an alien invasion, natural disaster, giant Kaiju, or man-made apocalypse, the disaster movie has been a Hollywood staple since the earliest days of cinema. The 1970s brought about the golden age of disaster films courtesy of legendary producer Irwin Allen (The Poseidon Adventure, The Towering Inferno). Then with the advancement of special effects and CGI in the 1990s, the genre received another dose of carnage, as volcanoes, asteroids, and twisters were brought to vivid life onscreen.
While the concept of the disaster movie is endlessly malleable, there are certain tropes that they typically contain. There is usually a broken family that has to come together in order to survive. The cast is normally star-studded, and more often than not, there is a noble sacrifice from one of the protagonists in order to save the day. And, of course, they will always have scenes of epic destruction. Here are Roland Emmerich's ten picks (via Empire) for his favorite disaster movies in no particular order.
The Poseidon Adventure is a classic disaster movie containing all the elements needed for success in the genre. It's a triumph of special effects and production design, as lead actor Gene Hackman leads a band of survivors through a capsized ocean liner. Irwin Allen directed a forgettable sequel in 1979 (Beyond the Poseidon Adventure). Wolfgang Petersen then remade the film in 2006 (despite Roland Emmerich advising against remaking the classic), though Poseidon was unable to capture the magic of the original film.
After the success of T2 and True Lies, James Cameron directed Titanic. The story of the sinking of the infamous “unsinkable ship” on its maiden voyage had been the subject of other movies before, but the quality of Cameron's storytelling combined with the sheer scale of the film resulted in one of the best disaster movies ever made. Titanic became the first to reach the billion-dollar mark, becoming the highest-grossing movie of all time till it was beaten by James Cameron's next film, Avatar. Leonardo DiCaprio and Kate Winslet were catapulted to the A-List, and Titanic earned a record matching 11 Oscars, including Best Picture and Best Director for Cameron. DiCaprio has returned to the disaster movie genre with Don't Look Up, about a comet on a collision course with Earth.
While it was the biggest film of 1998, Armageddon is the definition of a dumb movie. Its defiance of basic physics and even the concept of oil drillers training to be astronauts (rather than the other way around) are easy targets for criticism, as is its frenetic editing. However, it's also a lot of fun, and despite being cheesy, it is an emotional movie that had some classic disaster movie sequences. Armageddon and Deep Impact were released within weeks of one another in 1998, an example of the "twin films" phenomenon in Hollywood where rival studios make two similar movies in a race against one another.
Whereas Michael Bay opted for non-stop action for Armageddon, Deep Impact instead focuses on the human drama that would unfurl if the world were about to come to an end. It's certainly the more serious of the two asteroid/comet movies, though it's also Roland Emmerich's favorite of the two. While the louder, brasher Armageddon has somewhat overshadowed its legacy, it still has enough blockbuster spectacle to be worthy of consideration as one of the great disaster movies.
Before Dwayne Johnson’s derivative Skyscraper, there was The Towering Inferno. The film was such a massive production at the time that it required both 20th Century Fox and Warner Bros. to join forces to get it made. Following the success of The Poseidon Adventure, producer Irwin Allen repeated the disaster movie formula and assembled an all-star cast to fill the burning building, headlined by Paul Newman and Steve McQueen. The incredible screens of fire and destruction were done without the benefit of today's CGI effects, making them all the more impressive. The Towering Inferno was another huge success for Irwin Allen and received 10 Oscar nominations, including Best Picture.
The Impossible is the true story of one family trying to survive the 2004 Boxing Day Indian Ocean tsunami. While the effects work to bring to life is terrifying accurate, it's the intimate and emotional family drama that really makes it such a powerful disaster movie. Tom Holland (in his live-action movie debut) is fantastic as 12-year-old Lucas, showcasing the acting skills that would land him in the role of Spider-Man years later. Naomi Watts, meanwhile, was nominated for Best Actress at the Academy Awards.
World War Z took the concept of fast zombies popularized by 28 Days Later and Zack Snyder's Dawn of the Dead remake and ran with it. In it, Brad Pitt travels the world investigating a deadly virus that turns humans into zombies. Despite straying significantly from its source material and having a nightmare production, it was a financial and critical success. At one point, David Fincher was to direct World War Z 2. However, after years of development hell, the sequel was canceled. Roland Emmerich considers the Jerusalem sequence where hordes of zombies scale the city's fortified walls a "highlight of filmmaking."
Apollo 13 is considered by many to be director Ron Howard's best film. It dramatizes NASA's "finest hour" as they attempt to bring astronauts Jim Lovell (Tom Hanks), Fred Haise (Bill Paxton), and Jack Swigert (Kevin Bacon) back to earth after their spacecraft is damaged on the way to the Moon. Despite the story's outcome set in history, Howard is able to wring every ouch of tension from the situation. The filmmakers went to great lengths to ensure their man-made disaster movie was as technically accurate as possible, even filming scenes aboard a reduced gravity aircraft to depict weightlessness.
In Gravity, stars George Clooney and Sandra Bullock are in a race against time to get back to earth after their space shuttle is destroyed. Director Alfonso Cuarón developed cutting-edge filmmaking technology to create the movie's breathtaking imagery of space. Unlike Armageddon, Cuarón chose to have long shots (with an average length of 45 seconds), increasing the audience's feeling of being adrift in space. Gravity is a cinematic rollercoaster ride of a disaster movie that never lets up and was one of the most successful films of 2013. It won 7 Oscars, including Best Director for Cuarón, Best Visual Effects, and Best Score.
Twister was a massive hit when it was released the same summer as Roland Emmerich's Independence Day. Twister has a simple but effective story of storm chasers tracking tornadoes. As the twisters increase in magnitude (F1-F5), so does the scale of destruction. Upon Seeing Twister's groundbreaking effects work (with CGI being added to Steadicam and helicopter shots), Roland Emmerich felt sure they would get the visual-effects Oscar (Independence Day would go on to win, though). Twister is a highly entertaining disaster movie, and a reboot is currently being developed.