Ranking Natural-Disaster Movies by How Much I Don’t Want to Be There
With Twisters Fever sweeping the nation, or at the very least the Cut’s Slack channels, I’ve had natural-disaster movies on the brain. I rewatched Twister recently and thought, I could deal with this situation. Is that true? Probably not, but it got me wondering about all the other natural disaster movies I’ve caught 45 minutes of on TNT. Which one would I want to be in the least? But first, some ground rules.
For this list, we’re talking about natural disasters only (with one exception). The disaster movies of the ’70s are largely not represented, because Towering Inferno and Airport are about man made disasters. The one notable exclusion from this list is The Impossible, J. A. Bayona’s 2012 movie about the 2004 Indian Ocean tsunami. It’s too real and too sad, and I think I would have felt evil sandwiching it somewhere between Deep Impact and The Day After Tomorrow. Also, no aliens — weather and the elements (and one asteroid) only.
With all that out of the way, let’s start out with a bang. Or, rather, a crash.
Titanic
This should technically be an honorable mention, because human error is what sank the Titanic. The James Cameron flick doesn’t really count as a “natural disaster” movie. It’s more of a “disaster in nature.” That being said, I felt as though I had to include it, because the scene where Rose, half-frozen, is trying to blow the whistle for help is more visceral than any CGI tornado.
Twister
I know that the final tornado in this movie is an F5, which I’ve gleaned is really bad — the worst, some might say. That being said, the real natural disaster in this movie is the one being experienced by Jami Gertz, who spends the entire runtime watching her fiancé fall back in love with his wife. You cannot just get into an underground cellar to avoid that kind of storm. In the grand scheme of natural disaster movies, Twister is not that bad. F5 tornadoes are rare, and if you should live in fear of anything it’s that your man might fall back in love with his beautiful, charming ex.
Contagion
Been there, honey. Were I making this list in 2011, when Contagion was released, this would probably be at the top. It is horrifying. (Who can forget open-mouth Gwyneth dying in the hospital?) However, the concept of this list is “How much do I not want to be there?” And while I really do not want to experience another global pandemic, I at least sort of understand how it would go. I can’t say the same about some of these other scenarios.
Outbreak
Perhaps I should have just paired Outbreak and Contagion together, seeing as they’re both movies about viruses. That being said, Outbreak is worse to me because I’m not imagining myself as Rene Russo, but as one of the people in the town of Cedar Creek. Technically, it is worse that the whole world is getting infected in Contagion. But selfishly, I think it would feel worse to be one of the only people in the world to have this horrible disease.
The Poseidon Adventure
One of my most closely held beliefs is that we are not meant to be out on the open seas (this will come up later). One of the reasons why is because you could be on a luxury cruise liner that gets hit by a tsunami so hard that it turns the ship upside down. First of all, getting flipped would be awful, and then your life depends on you going on the titular adventure? You were supposed to be on vacation!
Volcano/Dante’s Peak
These two are getting paired together because I can easily say “No thanks” to lava! If I had to pick one that’s worse than the other, it’s probably Volcano. That’s only only because it takes place in Los Angeles and would probably be a bigger disaster than the Dante’s Peak fiasco, which takes place in a fictional town in Washington. See, I do care about the Angelenos.
Deep Impact
No, Armaggeddon is not on this list, because I’m not an oil driller and as such will never be tasked with going to space to drill into an asteroid and blow it up. I am, however, a person who lives on this planet who could feasibly be one of the millions killed when an asteroid hits the Atlantic Ocean just off the coast of North Carolina.
San Andreas
Would it really be the worst thing if Los Angeles fell into the middle of the Earth? I’m kidding! I told you I care about Angelenos! This is probably the worst movie on the list, but I am placing it at number three solely because I live in the Bay Area and hate earthquakes. I know this would suck. It also wouldn’t necessarily kill you, which somehow makes it worse. I think getting subsumed by a massive wave in Manhattan might be slightly better than walking around Oakland in the fallout of The Big One. Side note: Did you know that this movie asks you to believe that Alexandra Daddario is the daughter of the Rock and Carla Gugino? That’s weird, right?
The Day After Tomorrow
Obviously, this would be bad. But is it the worst-case scenario? The disaster in 2004’s The Day After Tomorrow is not just that the world has been quickly plunged into an ice age, but that every possible weather event is happening at the same time. There’s ice, tornadoes, tsunamis, something called a “superstorm.” I definitely would not want to be here, but I’d be lying if I said that my adolescent interest wasn’t piqued when I first saw Emmy Rossum warm up Jake Gyllenhaal with her body heat. There could be worse disasters to find yourself in.
The Perfect Storm
Going into this ranking, I didn’t think that this would be my number one. Then I searched “The Perfect Storm wave” on YouTube and was reminded that this is my nightmare. Spoilers for a movie that’s almost 25 years old, but at least in these other movies there are survivors. At least you can drive away from a tornado or find a cure for a virus or have the Rock rescue you from the top of a skyscraper. What is so terrifying about The Perfect Storm, and the sea in general, is that there’s nowhere to go. More than a decade before Interstellar, Wolfgang Petersen’s movie asked the question, “What if there were a wave so huge that it immediately struck fear into the heart of anyone who glimpsed it?” It’s too big! Wave aside, I wouldn’t even want to be on this boat on a sunny day. You’re telling me I’d be the only woman on a swordfishing boat, forced to socialize with a Mark Wahlberg type? Hell!
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