What Makes Disaster Films Great

Summary

Summary of "What Makes Disaster Films Great" Episode on Stuff You Should Know

Released on April 17, 2025, the episode "What Makes Disaster Films Great" explores the intricate elements that define disaster movies, tracing their evolution from early cinematic endeavors to modern-day blockbusters. Hosts Josh Clark and Chuck Bryant delve deep into the genre's characteristics, historical milestones, recurring tropes, and cultural impact, offering listeners a comprehensive understanding of what makes disaster films resonate with audiences.

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1. Introduction

The episode kicks off with Josh and Chuck expressing their mutual passion for movies, particularly disaster films. Josh shares his enthusiasm, citing The Day After Tomorrow as a catalyst for their discussion.

Josh Clark [01:23]: "We're just gonna be sitting around rapping about one of our favorite things to talk about and that is movies."

2. Defining Disaster Films

Josh and Chuck navigate the nebulous boundaries of disaster movies, recognizing them as a subgenre of action films. They attempt to outline the defining characteristics that distinguish disaster films from other action-oriented narratives.

Key Characteristics:

• Presence of a Disaster: Central to the plot, which can range from natural calamities like tsunamis and earthquakes to human-made crises such as pandemics or extraterrestrial threats.

  Chuck Bryant [04:16]: "The first thing you needed in a disaster movie is a disaster."

• Ongoing Crisis: Unlike standalone events, the disaster persists throughout the film, influencing character decisions and plot progression.

  Josh Clark [05:03]: "Transportation is Huge. People love screwing up... the entire movie takes place over some sort of disaster in all of its after effects."

• Ensemble Cast with Diverse Archetypes: Characters often fall into stereotypical roles like the heroic everyman, the damsel in distress, the redeemable antagonist, or the morally dubious antagonist.

• Clear Moral Dichotomies: Characters are typically categorized into good, bad, and redeemable, simplifying moral complexities for audience engagement.

Subgenres:

• Animal Attack: Exemplified by Hitchcock's The Birds, blending horror elements with disaster narratives.
• Epidemic/Pandemic: Focused on outbreaks affecting large populations, like Outbreak (1995).
• Environmental Catastrophes: Including climate change-related disasters as seen in The Day After Tomorrow.

3. Historical Evolution of Disaster Films

a. Early Beginnings (1930s)

Josh identifies Deluge (1933) as one of the pioneering disaster films, showcasing New York City's destruction by a tsunami, setting the stage for future cinematic disasters.

Josh Clark [16:14]: "The first one was Deluge from 1933... several minutes of New York City being destroyed by a tsunami."

b. The 1970s Boom

The genre experienced its golden age in the 1970s, fueled by societal anxieties like nuclear threats during the Cold War.

• Irwin Allen's Influence: Known as the "master of disaster," Allen produced iconic films such as The Poseidon Adventure (1972) and The Towering Inferno (1974), which became box office hits and established genre conventions.

  Chuck Bryant [25:22]: "Irwin Allen... really hit his stride in the 70s with things like The Poseidon Adventure... each of those was the top box office hit of their respective years."

• Ensemble Casts: Films featured star-studded casts, aiming to attract diverse audience demographics.

• Realism vs. Schlock: While some films like The Towering Inferno maintained high production values, others began to exhibit schlockier elements, contributing to the genre's eventual decline.

c. Decline and the Rise of Parodies (Late 1970s-1980s)

Following a series of flops like The Swarm (1978), the disaster film boom waned. High-budget productions struggled to replicate earlier successes, leading studios to pivot towards parodies such as Airplane! (1980).

Josh Clark [34:41]: "Because these movies just got worse and worse... it was ripe for parody... Airplane! captured it perfectly."

d. 1990s Resurgence

The genre saw a revival in the mid-1990s with advancements in CGI and renewed audience interest.

• Key Films: Twister (1996) and Independence Day (1996) spearheaded the comeback, leveraging cutting-edge special effects to captivate audiences.

  Josh Clark [38:06]: "Twister... Independence Day... using emerging CGI computer-assisted special effects."

• Recurring Tropes Consolidated: The heroic scientist and government official archetypes became more pronounced, though often at the expense of diverse character representation.

e. 2010s to Present

Modern disaster films continue to evolve, integrating more sophisticated special effects and addressing contemporary issues like pandemics and climate change.

• Notable Films: Contagion (2011) by Steven Soderbergh and The Day After Tomorrow (2004) stand out for their realistic portrayal and critical acclaim.

  Chuck Bryant [49:39]: "Contagion... doesn't play like one because it is so realistically scary."

• Global Appeal: Studios aim for international resonance by featuring global landmarks and diverse casts, enhancing box office potential worldwide.

4. Stereotypes and Recurring Tropes

a. Character Archetypes

Disaster films often rely on well-worn character types to drive the narrative:

• The Everyman Hero: An ordinary individual thrust into extraordinary circumstances, embodying resilience and leadership.

  Josh Clark [46:08]: "The hero has to be some sort of everyman who may or may not possess some special sort of skills or knowledge..."

• The Damsel in Distress: Typically portrayed as women needing rescue, reinforcing gender stereotypes.

  Josh Clark [08:43]: "Most of the main characters and leads are men, and the woman is basically there to essentially be saved."

• The Redeemable Antagonist: Characters who initially pose a threat but ultimately contribute positively, often sacrificing themselves.

b. Gender and Racial Representation

The genre has been criticized for its lack of diversity and reliance on sexist tropes.

• Male-Centric Narratives: Predominantly featuring male protagonists with minimal female agency.

  Josh Clark [09:43]: "Disaster movies are sexist... could not come up with a single disaster movie where the hero was a woman."

• Racial Stereotypes: African American characters often face high mortality rates, a trope that has been both lampooned and critiqued.

  Chuck Bryant [10:25]: "Black characters will die almost certainly and usually first."

5. Discussion of Notable Films

a. The Towering Inferno (1974)

A quintessential disaster film featuring an ensemble cast and high-stakes drama centered around a skyscraper fire.

Josh Clark [27:14]: "The Towering Inferno... no..."

b. Earthquake (1974)

Known for its shaky camera effects simulating an earthquake, though criticized for unintentionally schlocky elements.

Chuck Bryant [28:00]: "Earthquake did not really mean to be schlocky. It just kind of ended up being schlocky."

c. Twister (1996) and Independence Day (1996)

Pioneered the 1990s disaster boom with groundbreaking special effects, setting new standards for the genre.

Josh Clark [38:06]: "Twister... Independence Day... using emerging CGI computer-assisted special effects."

d. Contagion (2011)

Praised for its realistic portrayal of a pandemic, differentiating itself from traditional schlocky disaster films.

Chuck Bryant [49:39]: "Contagion... doesn't play like one because it is so realistically scary."

6. Cultural Impact and Evolution

Disaster films have mirrored societal fears, from nuclear anxieties in the 1970s to climate change in recent decades. The genre's adaptability has allowed it to remain relevant, though often at the cost of reinforcing outdated stereotypes.

Josh Clark [43:19]: "Like, if you can just kind of hold your nose and make it through stuff like that, then you can enjoy them."

7. Conclusion

Josh and Chuck conclude by acknowledging the genre's enduring appeal despite its flaws. They emphasize that disaster films serve both as thrilling entertainment and cultural barometers, reflecting and shaping audience perceptions of global crises.

Chuck Bryant [54:37]: "We've unlocked bliss in our mail."

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Notable Quotes:

• Josh Clark [05:03]: "Transportation is Huge. People love screwing up... the entire movie takes place over some sort of disaster in all of its after effects."

• Chuck Bryant [10:25]: "Black characters will die almost certainly and usually first."

• Josh Clark [27:14]: "The Towering Inferno... no..."

• Josh Clark [38:06]: "Twister... Independence Day... using emerging CGI computer-assisted special effects."

• Chuck Bryant [49:39]: "Contagion... doesn't play like one because it is so realistically scary."

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This episode provides a thorough exploration of disaster films, offering listeners both nostalgic reflections and critical insights into the genre's mechanics and societal implications.

Transcript

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Welcome to Stuff youf Should Know, a production of iHeartRadio.

[Josh Clark]

Hey, and welcome to the podcast. I'm Josh and there's Chuck. And it's just us today. And that's okay because we're just gonna be sitting around rapping about one of our favorite things to talk about and that is movies.

[Chuck Bryant]

Let's go to the movies.

[Josh Clark]

You had a little Katharine Hepburn thing going on there.

[Chuck Bryant]

Ethel Merman. Katharine Hepburn.

[Josh Clark]

It was Katharine Hepburn singing Ethel Merman. Okay, that's how I see that. Yeah, yeah, we are going to go to the movies, Chuck. And in particular, specific kind of movie that the more I dug into, the more I realized is one of my favorite types of movies.

[Chuck Bryant]

Oh, yeah, yeah.

[Josh Clark]

Disaster movies. I had no idea. But remember we were talking. This whole thing was kicked off by me watching the Day After Tomorrow a couple weeks ago.

[Chuck Bryant]

Yeah, yeah.

[Josh Clark]

And I was like, yeah, that's one of my favorite movies. And the reason why is because I love disaster movies. Love them.

[Chuck Bryant]

Yeah, I like a lot of these. It's not my favorite genre overall, but like I found myself saying like, oh, yeah, that was pretty good. Or I like that. All right. But generally, if we're in this. Hmm. This is a sub genre of action movies. And I think I prefer. Prefer action movies overall more than disaster movies.

[Josh Clark]

Okay, all right, well, yeah, we'll get into that because it is a subgenre of action and that Makes a lot of sense. Disaster movies are packed with action. And there are some that are like, okay, this is definitely a disaster film. Like the Towering Inferno.

[Chuck Bryant]

Oh, yeah. Abhi.

[Josh Clark]

Okay. But then there's also movies like speed, and speed checks off a lot of the boxes.

[Chuck Bryant]

Yeah. Not a disaster movie, though.

[Josh Clark]

You would not call it as a disaster movie, even though it really could. If you really wedged it in there, it would qualify. But there's just a couple little things that are different that make it definitely an action movie. And then you have other ones, like the Birds. Alfred Hitchcock's the Birds.

[Chuck Bryant]

Not a disaster movie to me.

[Josh Clark]

Ends up on lists. It's part of the animal attack subgenre of disaster films, which is a subgenre of action.

[Chuck Bryant]

Yeah. It's interesting because I'm sure you did the same thing when reading off some of these. It's sort of like just a gut feeling sometimes. And you can't say exactly what it is that you feel personally like, doesn't count, but someone else might think it counts. It's not like this is something you can say is very cut and dry, you know.

[Josh Clark]

Right. And because of that, I looked everywhere on the Internet to try to cobble together this list of like basically the basic defining characteristics of disaster films.

[Chuck Bryant]

Yeah.

[Josh Clark]

And it was hard. Nobody's ever sat down. Sat down and said, here they are. Some people have kind of piecemeal. But people don't talk that much about disaster films, which I find sad.

[Chuck Bryant]

Well, maybe this can be that. And maybe you can like, I don't know, start a website, joshdefines disaster.com and.

[Josh Clark]

I'll just put this article on there and that'll be that.

[Chuck Bryant]

All right. Should we go through some of these? Because you did a bang up job.

[Josh Clark]

Thank you.

[Chuck Bryant]

The first thing you needed in a disaster movie is a disaster.

[Josh Clark]

Sure.

[Chuck Bryant]

But this can be a lot of different things. A lot of time it's a human made thing. And that varies from climate change movies, which we've seen a lot more of lately, to like pandemics and sometimes, I guess some things like Towering Inferno are a bit of a mashup. Cause you can have the threat of a structural collapse. So that is a human made thing. But it might be brought upon by a fire or flood or something.

[Josh Clark]

Yes, there's overlap. Nobody said you can pin down disaster movies pretty easily.

[Chuck Bryant]

That's right. What else?

[Josh Clark]

There's like extraterrestrials, A big one. It can be an alien attack. It can be a comet or an asteroid headed toward Earth.

[Chuck Bryant]

Yeah.

[Josh Clark]

Transportation is Huge. Yeah, People love screwing up. Like cruise ships and trains and boats and airplanes. Love it. And then one of the other things about it too, the disaster is ongoing. Right. So it's not like the people survive a five minute earthquake and then the rest of the movie they all like go out to dinner and everything's fine. They spend the rest of the movie negotiating all the problems that that disaster created. So they're negotiating sub disasters. Or it can be like an ongoing disaster, like a flood or something like that. Like that can happen the entire movie. But one way or another, the entire movie takes place over some sort of disaster in all of its after effects.

[Chuck Bryant]

Yeah, for sure. Impending or in. In what?

[Josh Clark]

Oh, that's a good point too. Yeah. Sometimes there's a lot of lead up to it.

[Chuck Bryant]

Yeah, exactly. But what am I looking for? In process, in progress.

[Josh Clark]

Sure.

[Chuck Bryant]

Oh, good lord. It's usually a pretty large disaster and for me this can be a real big differentiator in my personal opinion. But again, it's a gut check. Sometimes if it's just a local thing to me I'm like, well that's not really a disaster movie. Cause it has to be more big and sweeping to truly qualify. But then sometimes it is sort of a smaller thing and I feel like it does qualify. So like in the case of you know, like a bridge collapse or a collapse tunnel or like daylight Stallone's movie about wasn't that one of the New York tunnels was collapsing or collapse? Like I considered that a disaster movie. So I'm like contradicting myself and that's what makes this all fun.

[Josh Clark]

Yeah. On one end of the spectrum, the world can actually be ending. That could be the premise. Or like you said, a little tunnel collapse. The rest of the world's just going on business as usual. Exactly. Let them die. Like that guy in Airplane.

[Chuck Bryant]

I don't remember that.

[Josh Clark]

What happened there was like a debate TV show like on the news or something like that. And one was like, we need to take better care of people and the FAA has to step it up. And the other guy presenting counterpoint and he was like, I say let em die.

[Chuck Bryant]

Oh my God.

[Josh Clark]

It's way funnier in the movie.

[Chuck Bryant]

Yeah. Obviously surviving the disaster is a big part of the plot point. We know some people won't make it out alive, but usually most of the A list cast will make it out alive. Unless they're really trying to pull one over on you in a scream sort of way.

[Josh Clark]

Yes. And you teased something just now. Some people will definitely not survive. And One of the things about disaster movies is all you have to do is basically see one, and the next one, maybe you don't even need to see a second one. You can pick out very quickly who's going to die, who's going to live. And the reason why is because stereotypes are pervasive in disaster movies. Like, you have, like, the dumb, brawny guy or a smart scientist damsels in distress. Like, to this day, disaster movies are sexist. I could not come up with a single disaster movie where the hero was a woman. Not a single one. In all the decades of disaster movies, it's men. Most of the main characters and leads are men, and the woman is basically there to essentially be saved and maybe help out some.

[Chuck Bryant]

Yeah, I mean, I guess more recently they may throw you a bone with, like, a woman as president, but then she's, like, commissioning the team of men to usually solve the problem. Good point.

[Josh Clark]

Right. So you know very quickly who the hero is, but there's also plenty of other people. You're like, I think they're going to live. And you can really kind of cut them into three moral categories. Good, bad, and redeemable. And redeemable can be, like, the guy's ex wife's new boyfriend who you hate, but really he actually turns out to be a good guy. He probably dies, but he'll die a good, noble death. He could also not die and become, like, a sidekick. And then there's, like, the shady rich people, often the people who are responsible for the disaster through, like, their greed or something like that, you know, they're going to die a very bad death. And the point is, like, it's a really simplistic way of looking at humans. And I think that's one of the reassuring things about it that make them enjoyable.

[Chuck Bryant]

Yeah, for sure. And I think we would be remiss if we didn't bring up a little bit of a prickly topic for our African American listeners. It has long been a movie trope in horror movies, disaster movies or whatever, where the black characters will die almost certainly and usually first. And that has become such a trope. It's become a joke and lampooned in, like, you know, the parody movies and stuff. But we have to mention that and what I'm curious about, and hopefully we'll hear from some of our listeners if that has now become so ridiculous and crossed over to where it's now just sort of funny and expected and a movie thing and not, like, truly upsetting.

[Josh Clark]

Right.

[Chuck Bryant]

So I'm curious how our African American Listeners feel about this at this point in 2025?

[Josh Clark]

Yeah. There's usually about as many black characters as there are women characters in disaster movies.

[Chuck Bryant]

Yeah.

[Josh Clark]

But like you said, similarly, they're often the President, like Morgan Freeman or Danny Glover or something like that.

[Chuck Bryant]

I'd vote for Morgan Freeman.

[Josh Clark]

Yeah, for sure. But I heard the reason. You know he wears those diamond studs in his ears all the time.

[Chuck Bryant]

Yeah. He's been rocking those for a while.

[Josh Clark]

I heard the reason why. It's an old pirates thing where you wear some sort of jewelry or whatever so that if you die away from home, you have enough currency or value or something on you to pay for your funeral.

[Chuck Bryant]

That's why he does that.

[Josh Clark]

That's what I heard.

[Chuck Bryant]

That's incredible.

[Josh Clark]

Yeah. It makes you want to vote for him even more, huh?

[Chuck Bryant]

I just want to hear that State of the Union.

[Josh Clark]

Yeah. Whatever speech he's delivering, it would be really smooth.

[Chuck Bryant]

I was going to try and bust out of Morgan Freeman, but I think I would embarrass myself. I've never tried, so. It's never good to launch into your first attempt live on the air.

[Josh Clark]

Well, maybe we'll workshop it off air.

[Chuck Bryant]

Well, we have to talk about the hero. The hero most times is not like a typical hero. It's usually an everyman kind of character who. Just like Armageddon, for instance, they put together a rough and tumble team, Dirty Dozen style. It wasn't a bunch of elite problem solvers. They were oil rig guys. Right. Like drillers.

[Josh Clark]

Yeah. They weren't even astronauts, for Pete's sake.

[Chuck Bryant]

Yeah, they had to train him. I only saw Armageddon once, so I'm pulling a lot of this from distant memory.

[Josh Clark]

Yeah, I'm more a deep impact dude.

[Chuck Bryant]

Oh, yeah, that's what I heard.

[Josh Clark]

As a matter of fact, I'm not entirely certain I've ever seen Armageddon.

[Chuck Bryant]

You know, it was okay. It was fairly, you know, schlocky, big budget sort of stuff.

[Josh Clark]

You just described almost every single disaster movie ever made and the response to your judgment of it. Almost every single disaster movie ever made. Like, they don't get you to jump off the couch at the end and scream, bravo or encore. You know what I mean? You just kind of like them. They're just kind of fun.

[Chuck Bryant]

Yeah, it's summer movie popcorn fare. I still love these kind of movies. I think there's a place for all kinds of movies. And I still love going to the theater and seeing these sort of big budget. Like it probably isn't a great film, but it might be a fun movie.

[Josh Clark]

Right. So within these, this structure, these constrictions, people have learned over the years how to kind of play with them and make it. Make new forms of disaster films. And a really good example, I think. So we said that either a big disaster affects tons of people or a small disaster affects a little amount of people. Something that kind of combines the two is Leave the World Behind. Ethan Hawke movie.

[Chuck Bryant]

I don't know that one.

[Josh Clark]

Oh, it's great. It was on Netflix.

[Chuck Bryant]

Okay.

[Josh Clark]

Ethan Hawke and Julia Roberts. So basically there's a cyber attack that just causes civilization to essentially collapse, but we're just following like two families who are kind of having to figure out what to do and what's going on and all that.

[Chuck Bryant]

I like that approach.

[Josh Clark]

Yeah, it was definitely worth seeing. And then other ones, rather than having kind of a schlocky humor that really started to develop in the late 70s and then kind of turned into like, quips, I guess, in the 90s. Yeah, there's some very, very serious ones too, like the Impossible, Not a schlocky depiction of the 2004 Indian Ocean tsunami.

[Chuck Bryant]

It's incredible movie, though.

[Josh Clark]

It is. It's so. It's probably the most realistic film I've ever seen in my life.

[Chuck Bryant]

Yeah, I mean, I remember. I think I remember when it came out, we might have even talked about that on the air at some point. When we did the tsunami episode with the. How they recreated that was just harrowing.

[Josh Clark]

Exactly. So that's disaster films in a nutshell. And I feel like we could probably take a break here and then come back and talk about the history of disaster films. What do you think?

[Chuck Bryant]

Let's do it.

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[Josh Clark]

So unlike some other things, disaster films are one of those things you can explore and find that there's an actual beginning and it's not like this thing developed over time. There were disaster films because there's. There's these definitions, these Characteristics that you have to have. There were films along the way that just happened to have those. And the first one was deluge from 1933, where if you watch it, there's several minutes of New York City being destroyed by a tsunami. And it's pretty impressive for 1933.

[Chuck Bryant]

Yeah, for sure. And it also sort of, as we'll see, and usually they're the schlockier ones, but you get a lot of these one word title disaster movies.

[Josh Clark]

Right.

[Chuck Bryant]

Especially in the 70s. But then again, as we'll see in the 90s, resurgent things like tornado, flood, stuff like that.

[Josh Clark]

Yeah, you put an exclamation point at the end of a natural disaster or a force of nature and you're set.

[Chuck Bryant]

So I didn't know, I didn't know any of these early, early ones, but one from 1936, it was called San Francisco, right?

[Josh Clark]

Yep.

[Chuck Bryant]

And it was made 30 years after the 1906 earthquake. And about that earthquake.

[Josh Clark]

Yes, but it's also, apparently people break into song in it here or there. So it's sometimes listed as a musical drama.

[Chuck Bryant]

Yeah.

[Josh Clark]

There's another one called Old Chicago about the 1871 Chicago Fire that came in 1938. Titanic apparently was a favorite subject of early disaster films and actually stayed that way over time.

[Chuck Bryant]

Yeah.

[Josh Clark]

But it wasn't until nuclear anxieties really started to develop as the Cold War picked up. And it was reflected in movies that people started imagining what would happen if all these nuclear weapons went off. And that actually kind of created the first crop of. What you could really point to is the earliest disaster films.

[Chuck Bryant]

Yeah. Kind of like the ones as we know it. In the early 60s. Voyage to the bottom of the sea was 1 in 61 when a nuke powered sub. There was radiation fire coming from space. They were gonna bomb that radiation fire from below. Like anytime you're using a nuclear bomb to, you know, launch it into a disaster. Like I feel like that's happened a couple of times, at least.

[Josh Clark]

Sure, for sure. What else? There's the Day the Earth Caught Fire.

[Chuck Bryant]

Not a good day.

[Josh Clark]

No, that, that kind of wondered what would happen if a couple of nuclear bomb tests that happened to be carried out simultaneously by the US and the Soviet Union, what would happen? And they said, oh, well, probably the Earth's axis would be shifted and we would be knocked out of orbit and we would start heading toward the sun. That is cut and dry disaster plot.

[Chuck Bryant]

Yeah, for sure. Also in the 60s we had crack in the world. And for me, one of the great movie titles of all Time Panic in Year Zero. Such a great title.

[Josh Clark]

It is a great title. And then of course, the Birds. An undisputed disaster film.

[Chuck Bryant]

Yeah, I take issue with that. The Night of the Living Dead is listed. That is not a disaster movie.

[Josh Clark]

Well, that's a great question, because is a zombie apocalypse that a handful of survivors have to survive and negotiate. That's an ongoing disaster. You have a group of people from different walks of life, sometimes stereotyped, coming together. Their lives intersect through this disaster and then they have to survive. Some people do, some people don't. There's a hero. I mean, in that sense, Night of the Living Dead definitely qualifies. World War Z would qualify. Yeah, I think that there's like a. I mean, there's room for debate there. Like those could also be horror monster movies too.

[Chuck Bryant]

Yeah, I consider those sub genres. I think as soon as you add any zombie, it becomes something else. Something else entirely. Again, these are all just my dumb opinions.

[Josh Clark]

Did you see Godzilla minus one?

[Chuck Bryant]

No, but I've heard a lot about it. Is it garbage or great?

[Josh Clark]

No, it's great. It has a great plot, great acting, great dialogue. And then the action sequences. Unbelievable.

[Chuck Bryant]

I got to check that out. Then.

[Josh Clark]

It's a really good movie. Again, is it a disaster movie if you add Godzilla? I don't know. Could make it a monster movie. Yeah, let's see what Chuck says.

[Chuck Bryant]

Chuck, Monster movie.

[Josh Clark]

Okay. It is officially a monster movie.

[Chuck Bryant]

Well, you know, I did host a movie show for a couple of years.

[Josh Clark]

I know you did. That's why I deferred to you.

[Chuck Bryant]

That makes me an expert. The 70s is when really things start get cooking with all manner of disaster movies from things like the Andromeda strain in 1971, you know, a Michael Crichton novel. So one of his early novels that was adapted.

[Josh Clark]

I tried to watch that the other day. And the animal torture I could not get past.

[Chuck Bryant]

Man, that's when they just didn't care about depicting that stuff with any kind of tenderness at all, you know?

[Josh Clark]

Well, I stopped the movie and went and looked it up like, did they actually kill this monkey and these rats? Did they? And no, luckily they did not. And the ASPCA was on hand and signed off on it. But what they did was they suffocated it with carbon dioxide until it passed out. And then the moment it passed out, they cut and then they revived it. But that monkey was still suffering from this fixation during that. Those moments where they filmed it. It's awful.

[Chuck Bryant]

Did someone do mouth to monkey resuscitation?

[Josh Clark]

Well, there's a. There's a. When the monkey dies. If you look closely before they cut, there's a shadow of somebody moving toward it already.

[Chuck Bryant]

Are you serious?

[Josh Clark]

So I think they used a little tiny oxygen mask to revive it.

[Chuck Bryant]

Oh, God.

[Josh Clark]

But it's. Yeah. I mean, that makes it a little better in that they didn't kill him, but they still tortured them, so I couldn't finish that movie.

[Chuck Bryant]

Yeah. I don't blame you. I never saw it, but I remember that kind of as a holdover, you know, came out the year I was born. But I remember it just being a thing.

[Josh Clark]

Yeah. So, okay, yes. You said we started off with Andromeda Strain, right?

[Chuck Bryant]

Yeah. I mean, airport was in 1970, and that's the one that, you know, kicked off a huge. I mean, it had sequels. It led to Airport 75, Airport 77, and then Concorde, Colon, Airport 79, which all eventually led to Airplane as. I mean, that had to be the first spoof, right? Like, disaster spoof.

[Josh Clark]

That's as far as I could tell, unless I would qualify or include Attack of the Killer Tomatoes as a disaster spoof. And I'm not sure if that came out before or after Airplane.

[Chuck Bryant]

I think it was before. But Airport was a very lauded film. It got 10 Oscar nods. It actually won. Helen Hayes won for supporting actress. And this is something that we'll see over and over again. Most of these movies, they make a huge, huge return on, even if they cost a lot to make. Like, that cost 10 million bucks in 1970, which was a lot, but it brought in $100 million in 1970.

[Josh Clark]

Yeah. And so that really caught the attention of the studio bosses. They're like, let's do that again. And like you said, there were three sequels to it. This is probably one of my favorite movie franchises. Although I would make the case that the sequels, at least the first two sequels, are better than the original.

[Chuck Bryant]

I didn't see any of these.

[Josh Clark]

They're so Great. I watched 77 and 79 in the last 24 hours.

[Chuck Bryant]

Oh, really?

[Josh Clark]

I love them so much. And Airport 75 is probably the best of the bunch.

[Chuck Bryant]

All right, I'll check that out. And Airport 77, of course, brings in the Bermuda Triangle, because I think 1977 was peak Bermuda Triangle paranoia.

[Josh Clark]

Yeah, for sure. And then The Concorde. The Airport 79, the Concorde. It's. People keep shooting missiles at it. They have to take, like, evasive action, and you're like, okay, this is definitely when the genre really started to die or died. It had already started. But one of the big things that Airport kicked off in addition to eye popping box office returns, was that huge cast of like where you recognize every single person. Especially, I mean, if you were alive at the time and an adult at the time, you would recognize everybody in there. Sometimes there are cameos and what they were following. Airport was based on a novel by Arthur Haley and he had written Hotel. One of his things was a ton of different characters whose lives kind of intersect in this issue or this problem or this disaster. So basically, Arthur Haley, the novelist, inadvertently invented the disaster film through like his format.

[Chuck Bryant]

Yeah. And you know, movie posters back then reflected that too. Cause I remember stuff like Towering Inferno. There would be the more artistic, like the Inferno, the building on fire. But then like at the top or the bottom, they would literally just have like frames of people's faces of the cast just tagged on there. Like, look at all these. All the star power.

[Josh Clark]

Right. And as time went on, the stars got a little schlockier. In Concord, Charo makes a hilarious one minute cameo.

[Chuck Bryant]

Okay.

[Josh Clark]

J.J. walker is one of the major minor characters.

[Chuck Bryant]

I love it.

[Josh Clark]

Smokes grass the whole time.

[Chuck Bryant]

Okay.

[Josh Clark]

I think in Earthquake, which we'll talk about in a second, Walter Matthau makes this inexplicable cameo a few times where he's dressed like a 70s pimp with a curly wig and everything and he's drunk out of his mind. Wow. That's his character. Like, they were definitely known for cameos, but yeah, those sweeping huge casts of generally A list and then former A list stars. That was a big hallmark of disaster films that came around in the 70s.

[Chuck Bryant]

Yeah. You know, they're trying to appeal to a broad demographic, so they would definitely bring back like some of the stars from like the golden age of Hollywood when they were in their later years, would be in these. Like Fred Astaire was in one of them, right?

[Josh Clark]

Yes. I can't remember. I think he might have been in the Towering Inferno.

[Chuck Bryant]

Yeah. So, you know, they're clearly trying to appeal to all age groups. Another thing a lot of these had in common, at least in the 1970s, was a man named Irwin Allen, the master of disaster. He came up in the 1950s, but he really hit his stride in the 70s with things like the Poseidon Adventure, aforementioned Towering Inferno. Each of those was the top box office hit of their respective years.

[Josh Clark]

Yeah.

[Chuck Bryant]

Poseidon Adventure very famously was about an ocean liner that flips upside down and sinks, basically.

[Josh Clark]

That's such a good movie too.

[Chuck Bryant]

So everybody is upside down on this boat on this ship trying to get out while they're underwater. Pretty great.

[Josh Clark]

Yep. And it's a bunch of different people who are stereotypes from different walks of life who are led out to safety by an everyman. In this case, a priest named Gene Hackman. The character's name. That's the actor's name. That'd be pretty coincidental that Gene Hackman played a character named Gene Hackman.

[Chuck Bryant]

Such a brutal, tragic, very upsetting end for such a wonderful person.

[Josh Clark]

Yeah, Upsetting is definitely a good word for it.

[Chuck Bryant]

Yeah. God. Can't stop thinking about it sometimes.

[Josh Clark]

You should probably try to. I think that would be for the best.

[Chuck Bryant]

I know. Towering Inferno. Of course, we mentioned there was a fire. If you don't know this movie, you should check it out. For sure. It's one of the good ones. But faulty wiring, of course, makes it catch fire. People are trapped at the top. But you've also got, you know, sometimes it can work in other mini disasters within it. And that's the case here where there's a flood scene because they're trying to douse the fire, and then all of a sudden you've got a flood to reckon with.

[Josh Clark]

That's like a prestige disaster film. They played it straight ahead. There's no schlock to it. The cast was just amazing and they did something that would be picked up again in like the 90s and then today's disaster films where they had two heroes who kind of had to work together. One was Paul Newman, who played the architect of this 135 floor skyscraper. Yeah, just totally fictional at the time especially. And then Steve McQueen was this fire chief and they had to work together to figure out how to. How to get the people out of this building and keep the or quench the fire, man.

[Chuck Bryant]

McQueen and Paul Newman. Does it get any better than that?

[Josh Clark]

Not really. Maybe Paul Newman and Robert Redford.

[Chuck Bryant]

Yeah, that's pretty cool.

[Josh Clark]

Weren't they Butch Cassidy and Sundance Kid?

[Chuck Bryant]

Oh, yeah, that was great.

[Josh Clark]

Okay, so yes, if you see one disaster movie, see the Towering Inferno.

[Chuck Bryant]

Yeah, agreed. If you want to see one, that's kind of super schlocky. If you want to go down that avenue, you could start with earthquake from 1974. Yeah, old Charlton Heston was in that one. People are in this case again, trapped in a skyscraper once again. But this time it's an earthquake. When you see these earthquake movies, they're always shaking the camera. But what's funny is if you ever see them being shot, obviously nothing is moving except the camera. So the people are all just going, whoa. On just solid ground. It's always fun.

[Josh Clark]

So Earthquake did not really mean to be schlocky. It just kind of ended up being schlocky.

[Chuck Bryant]

They did a great job of doing it unintentionally.

[Josh Clark]

And it wasn't the film that, like, led to the end of the 70s boom, but it was definitely one of the early signals that this is not. This party's not going to last forever. And it's a good movie. I watched it last night. No, I watched it early this morning. And Charlton Heston, who's a regular in these disaster movies, he did great. Everyone did really good in it. It was just some of the premises and then also some of the special effects. Like, there's a scene where the earthquake tremors are rocking this street in la and they're just pushing over the facades so you can see that it's just this cardboard facade coming down, stuff like that. And then there's a very famous elevator scene. Yeah, that's on YouTube, where it drops, like, all the way down, killing everyone inside. But the way they show the impact is they just freeze the frame and then some animated blood splatters across the screen for some reason.

[Chuck Bryant]

Yeah, it looks. It looks really, really bad and is so abrupt and jarring and weird. But it's like I said, that part is on YouTube if you just, you know, type in earthquake movie, elevator scene.

[Josh Clark]

There you go.

[Chuck Bryant]

It's so good. You know, it's a good scene if someone has taken the time to clip it out and put it on YouTube.

[Josh Clark]

Right? Yeah, it is definitely worth seeing, but. Okay, you want to take a break now and come back and talk about the end of the 70s or push on through until the 90s?

[Chuck Bryant]

Yeah, let's maybe push on and then we'll stop at the 90s.

[Josh Clark]

Okay, sounds good. So, like I said, it was kind of clear fairly early on that this wasn't going to last forever, and it definitely did not make it out of the decade. It really kind of came to an ugly end starting around 1978.

[Chuck Bryant]

Yeah. And, you know, one person's great disaster movie is another person's schlock. It all kind of depends because some of the ones listed here as sort of being the lazier versions, Avalanche and Meteor. That's not one movie. That would be pretty great, though, actually. Sure, it'd be Meteor, then Avalanche, probably. But those are two different movies. The Hindenburg, I thought that was okay from being a kid and watching it.

[Josh Clark]

I didn't see that one.

[Chuck Bryant]

Haven't revisited. But Then Rollercoaster. I, as a child, loved, loved that movie about a terrorist.

[Josh Clark]

I've never seen it.

[Chuck Bryant]

It's, you know, again, I don't know if it holds up, but it's about a terrorist that's gonna blow up a rollercoaster. You know, he's targeting amusement parks.

[Josh Clark]

So are the people on the roller coaster, like, having to go on it or stay on it over and over again, like it can't stop or something like that?

[Chuck Bryant]

I don't think so, but, like there's the bombers in the park and I just, you know, I'm having these fleeting memories. It's probably terrible, but, you know, as A, you know, 10 or 11 year old, it was great.

[Josh Clark]

Yeah, I gotcha. And then there's flood with an exclamation point. Shout out to Laura, who helped us with this, who came up with this list of lazily named disaster movies. Kind of like they were phoning it in.

[Chuck Bryant]

Yeah, Roller Coaster isn't the best name, I'll admit.

[Josh Clark]

Okay, all right, I'm going to watch that one, though.

[Chuck Bryant]

All right.

[Josh Clark]

But a lot of people who think about this kind of stuff point to the swarm from 1978 as the one that was like, yeah, this is over. Not only was this over, but Irwin Allen's career was over because he had not one, not two, but three disaster film flops from 1978 to 1980. And that really ended the boom.

[Chuck Bryant]

Yeah, that was pretty much it. The Swarm kind of. I don't know if Nicolas Cage, if they were referencing or paying homage to that with the bees thing. Later in the Wicker man, it became a very popular meme. The bees.

[Josh Clark]

Oh, I didn't know that.

[Chuck Bryant]

Yeah, from Nicolas Cage. But in this movie, in the Swarm, there's a pilot that yells, bees, bees. Millions of bees.

[Josh Clark]

Right. And the bees take down an Air Force helicopter.

[Chuck Bryant]

Of course they do.

[Josh Clark]

And the way that they're overcome is somebody figures out how. I think it's Michael Caine leading the cast. He's the hero. He figures out that they can lead these bees out to an oil slick in the ocean and then set the oil slick on fire and no more bees.

[Chuck Bryant]

That's. Hey, I think that's a pretty decent, you know, disaster movie solution.

[Josh Clark]

Okay, fair enough. But I was reading a criticism of that movie by Tyler Sage, I think, on a site called Ultimate Classic Rock, of all Things. And Tyler Sage says that the casts seems either faintly embarrassed by the proceedings or confused about what's supposed to be actually happening. I mean, that's all you need to know. Like, that's not supposed to happen in a movie, you know?

[Chuck Bryant]

No, it's not. So Alan had a black mark on his record with that, with the Swarm. And then beyond the Poseidon Adventure. They tried to recapture that magic in 1979 movie released seven years later, even though it took place the very next day of the original movie.

[Josh Clark]

Yeah. And that was Michael Caine, too, but also Sally Field, Telly Savalas, Peter Boyle, and, like, if your cast like that can't keep a movie.

[Chuck Bryant]

Yeah.

[Josh Clark]

Like, make it good, then there's something really wrong with it.

[Chuck Bryant]

Oh, I thought you were about to say Afloat.

[Josh Clark]

I almost did. And then I was like, no, Josh, do not say that.

[Chuck Bryant]

He did produce perhaps one of the worst entries Irwin Allen did of the genre. I don't think it was his swan song, but it was definitely the end. In 1980, a movie called When Time Ran out that did have Paul Newman. It was about a volcano at an island resort. But he was very much forced into this movie because of his contract. I don't think he at all wanted to make it. They cut the budget. Warner Brothers did, so they didn't even have the money to make it look okay. And it was just. It was really bad. There's a pretty good quote in here too, right?

[Josh Clark]

Yeah. The eruption, when it finally comes, is a wonderfully cheesy amalgam of wobbly back projection, bathtub tidal wave, and scared exc expressions from the cast.

[Chuck Bryant]

Oh, man.

[Josh Clark]

So then because of all this, because these movies just got worse and worse, but then also, like the high drama that was played straight, it was just ripe for parody. And like you said, Airplane was the one that you really don't need to mention any other parody. It's it. As far as disaster film parodies go, it just completely captured it perfectly.

[Chuck Bryant]

Yeah, and that movie holds up pretty well, I have to say. It's still a fun watch.

[Josh Clark]

Yeah, for sure. Okay, I think we've made it to the end of the 70s. The first real disaster boom has come and gone, and things quiet down throughout the 80s. And we'll let you think about this quietly through this ad break.

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[Chuck Bryant]

All right, we're back and we're going to talk about the resurgence of disaster movies in the 1990s. And I may have mentioned it on this show before, I'm not sure, but this is one of my legendary predictions, my friend. I can't remember it, but it was one of the very, very, very early 90s disaster flicks came out. I wish I could have pinpointed which one it was, but I remember very distinctly at the time in college telling my friends, I was like, you watch? I was like, they're gonna start making all of these movies again just like they did in the 70s, and there's gonna be a ton of disaster movies. And it literally happened like starting that year.

[Josh Clark]

Man, did you hear that from the ghost standing in the middle of the street?

[Chuck Bryant]

No, no, no, no, she whispered it to you. It's probably pre ghost, but yes. Sharknado, Jared from Subway, Hugh Jackman and disaster movies. The only four things I've ever predicted.

[Josh Clark]

I don't know, I think some more are going to come to the fore over the coming years.

[Chuck Bryant]

Chuck Stradamus.

[Josh Clark]

It could only have been one of just a few movies because can't remember what it was. Yeah, this whole, this 90s disaster boom started and peaked within a two year period. And it got started off, you. You could say in retrospect, it was started off by Outbreak, which came out in 1995. It's an epidemic disaster movie.

[Chuck Bryant]

Yeah, that counts.

[Josh Clark]

I think most people don't point to that and say that kicked it off. It's more like they say Twister or Independence Day in 1996 kicked it off. And then, yes, you would definitely lump Outbreak into it. But it was probably one of those two movies.

[Chuck Bryant]

Yeah, there was a movie called Avalanche in 1994, so they were dabbling in that world, but it was not a big movie at all as far as like capturing attention. I think Twister for sure. And that may have been the one actually where I was like, oh, man, you. Because that is what I think of as like typical disaster. I don't. I know this is controversial, but I'm not sure I put Independence Day in disaster movies. There's something about when you add like zombies or aliens and stuff, it just tweaks it slightly for me from classic disaster. But again, just my opinion.

[Josh Clark]

Well, okay, so even if you accept not with an A, but an ex Independence Day from this list, then you still have Twister.

[Chuck Bryant]

I think it was Twister.

[Josh Clark]

I remember the entire country was talking about Twister.

[Chuck Bryant]

Yeah. I famously said, emily's favorite movies of all time are every independent film ever made in Twister.

[Josh Clark]

Yeah. And I mean, it's a really good movie. Bill Paxton's amazing in it. Helen Hunt does great too. Like, it's a good movie. And one of the reasons I think that it did kick off that second boom in disaster movies was that you could take the disaster formula, but then apply emerging CGI computer assisted special effects that were at the time, it was like, holy cow, we can do this now. Like the White House being blown up by the alien ship in Independence Day. Like, you just had not seen stuff like that before. This was all very new. And they were using it sparingly enough, too, that it didn't look.

[Chuck Bryant]

Yeah, for sure. It was like. Those were really great special effects at the time. Twister looked really, really good. We should also mention, too. I know we didn't go over this, but it's just now occurring to me. Philip Seymour Hoffman in Twister is also a kind of a classic disaster movie trope character, which is sort of a side character to the guy in the chair. You ever heard that? Like the computer expert that just literally sits in a chair the entire movie and figures stuff out.

[Josh Clark]

Yeah. And usually has a smart mouth.

[Chuck Bryant]

Always. This is sort of an adjacent thing, though. Philip Seymour Hoffman's character, which is sort of. He's not in a chair, but it's the wisecracking, irreverent kind of, you know, he's wearing the Hawaiian shirt when everyone else has on, like, tactical gear. That's, you know, but super smart in figuring stuff out. I'm not sure what they call that in disaster movies, but it's their version of guy in the chair, I think.

[Josh Clark]

I don't think people have written enough about disaster movies for anyone to name it. So call them. Call them what you want.

[Chuck Bryant]

A Hoffman.

[Josh Clark]

There you go. He was the Hoffman of the movie. And maybe one of the first.

[Chuck Bryant]

We gotta talk about Titanic. It's a disaster movie, but it's got so much story and romance. It's definitely a sub genre within it.

[Josh Clark]

I think Bill Paxton was in that too.

[Chuck Bryant]

Yeah. RIP man, what a great guy.

[Josh Clark]

Oh, I forgot he was gone.

[Chuck Bryant]

That was so sad.

[Josh Clark]

Yeah, it was sad. So one of the other things, Too, that fueled this 90s resurgence of the disaster boom is that these movies, some of them, Titanic, Independent State, Twister, they're among the highest grossing films of all time.

[Chuck Bryant]

Yeah.

[Josh Clark]

So just like in the 70s, studios were like, we can spend lavishly in a production, but we're still going to make back 10 times or more what we put into it. So they're like, good, let's start making disaster films. And very quickly, after some of these really creative, original disaster films you could see in theaters virtually at the same time. Disaster films about the exact same topic.

[Chuck Bryant]

Yeah, that was the thing for a little while, I think. I was still getting Premier magazine at the time, and I remember they started writing about these productions being kind of trying to outrace one another to get to the box office first, maybe to their disadvantage as a production. But very famously, the two biggest examples, or I guess four, are Armageddon and Deep Impact, about a meteor striking the Earth, you know, to basically wipe out humanity. And then Dante's Peak and Volcano. Neither of those were that great.

[Josh Clark]

No, they weren't. I don't. Was Volcano with Tommy Lee Jones? Is that the one?

[Chuck Bryant]

Yeah. And Hesch. RIP again.

[Josh Clark]

Yeah. And Dante's Peak was Pierce Brosnan and Linda Hamilton.

[Chuck Bryant]

Oh, Linda Hamilton. That's right.

[Josh Clark]

And that's a really good example of, like, just how disaster films, like, minimize women and their contributions. Linda Hamilton was well known by this time as a female action star. Like, she was in the Terminator movies. She was a total ba.

[Chuck Bryant]

Yeah, Sarah Connor.

[Josh Clark]

Right. But in this movie, apparently, she's like, a single mom who's totally dependent on Pierce Brosnan to help her and her kids. She's like. She whimpers at times, like.

[Chuck Bryant]

Yeah.

[Josh Clark]

God. That's just one of the big problems with the genre. Like, if you can just kind of hold your nose and make it through stuff like that, then you can enjoy them. But if you focus on things like that, you're probably not gonna like disaster films.

[Chuck Bryant]

Yeah, agreed. What a waste of Linda Hamilton. What a shame. I gotta shout out a few more that weren't listed here from the 90s. Hard rain. Remember that one? Christian Slater and Minnie Driver. No, it was a flood movie. You know, what was it about? It was about a very hard rain.

[Josh Clark]

Okay.

[Chuck Bryant]

Just won't stop raining. Friend. Shout out friend of the show. Minnie Driver. Listen to her wonderful podcast on our own network. Many questions.

[Josh Clark]

Very nice.

[Chuck Bryant]

I don't know if you remember this one. Firestorm with NFL legend Howie Long.

[Josh Clark]

Mm, no.

[Chuck Bryant]

Yeah. That was one of the bad ones. I think he was like a forest fire, like a fire jumper kind of guy.

[Josh Clark]

So far, these ones you're shouting out sound like riftrax candidates.

[Chuck Bryant]

They probably are. And then also some of the one word titles. There was a movie called Tornado. There was a TV movie called Tornado Warning that starred Gerald McCraney from Simon and Simon.

[Josh Clark]

Nice. I love that guy.

[Chuck Bryant]

There was another movie called Flood, a second movie called Flood. And then there was one from 1999, which is sort of when things started to peter out, called Storm with Luke Perry and Martin Sheen.

[Josh Clark]

Wow, that is. That's some 90s casting. Minnie Driver and Christian Slater. That screams 90s pretty hard too.

[Chuck Bryant]

Yeah, for sure.

[Josh Clark]

But like you said, there's one other thing the 90s definitely contributed to the hero scientist, where it wasn't necessarily some, you know, tough dude. It was the guy who had the smarts to figure out how to deal with this or knew what was coming. That's another trope from disaster films, especially now. Usually the hero is the only one who can see the impending disaster. No one will believe him. And then he ends up having to save everybody else's. Took us because no one believed him and didn't take any measures to thwart the disaster from happening.

[Chuck Bryant]

Right. And once again, you were saying he. Because all of these movies failed the.

[Josh Clark]

Bechdel test for sure, 100%.

[Chuck Bryant]

And there's also a thing that popped up in the 90s which was like the rival scientist. If there was a hero scientist, a lot of times there was an. Well, not anti hero because that's still a hero. Just the anti scientist who was still a scientist. I'm clumsily working my way through this. But they thwart the hero. It's usually a government scientist or something or maybe an official. And they dismiss everything like that. The hero scientist is saying.

[Josh Clark]

Right. It can also be a government official very frequently. They get their comeuppance pretty commonly in 90s on disaster movies. Yeah.

[Chuck Bryant]

What do you call, like Die Hard? That's not a disaster movie, is it?

[Josh Clark]

I've seen it listed.

[Chuck Bryant]

Yeah, I guess it could be.

[Josh Clark]

To me it's just a straight ahead action film.

[Chuck Bryant]

I totally agree.

[Josh Clark]

But it does Christmas movie, like you would say, all the people in. All the people in Nakatomi Plaza, that's a disaster. To them.

[Chuck Bryant]

Yeah.

[Josh Clark]

The world's going about its business as usual, but to them inside, they're in the midst of a disaster. They have to survive. I don't know. I think just. I don't know. I think so. The same thing with Speed. In Speed, Keanu Reeves, the hero was a SWAT member.

[Chuck Bryant]

Right. Not in every person.

[Josh Clark]

Right. Die hard, John McClane, he's a cop. Even though he's off his beat, he's still a cop. Like, the hero has to be some sort of everyman who may or may not possess some special sort of skills or knowledge that help him overcome this problem. And then his mettle that he may not even have known that was there, is tapped and he leads other people to safety.

[Chuck Bryant]

Yeah, for sure. But, you know, as the 90s wore on with things like Luke Perry's movie RIP once again in 99, things really kind of stopped in the wake of 9 11. It just wasn't something that people wanted to see for a little while. So there was a lull. You knew it would come back early 2000s. Had a few of them here and there. There was one called the core in 2003, where the inner core of the Earth ceases to rotate and scientists once again have to bomb it to get that thing kick started. Just like using the paddles in the error.

[Josh Clark]

Right, Clear. Yep. What was that? 2003. So, yeah, the very next year was the Day After Tomorrow. And that, to me, is the bridge between the 90s disaster films and the ones that kicked off in the 2010s.

[Chuck Bryant]

Agreed.

[Josh Clark]

It is awesome. It's got a great cast. The scientists are the heroes. There's a bunch of different stuff going on. The world is being threatened. There's amazing special effects of things just going haywire.

[Chuck Bryant]

There's wolves.

[Josh Clark]

There's wolves. Yep. And then that scene of the tsunami flooding New York, there's a shot that's the exact same shot in deluge of the tsunami coming to. So I've read that it was probably an homage to that.

[Chuck Bryant]

Oh, that's kind of cool too.

[Josh Clark]

Yeah.

[Chuck Bryant]

2009 was a pretty big year. This when they really started to come back, you know, pre 2010s with the movie, the Mayan calendar anxiety movie 2012 came out.

[Josh Clark]

Do you remember that?

[Chuck Bryant]

Yeah. That was Roland Emmerich, right?

[Josh Clark]

Yes. No, but I mean, do you remember living in that time where people were actually like, a little nervous about. It was like Y2K Lite.

[Chuck Bryant]

Yeah. I mean, we did a podcast on it.

[Josh Clark]

We totally did.

[Chuck Bryant]

Yeah.

[Josh Clark]

Yeah. And if I remember correctly, we told everybody, it's totally fine. The Mayan calendar doesn't actually say the world's gonna end. Cause a new calendar starts.

[Chuck Bryant]

That's right. And we're all here right now. So thankfully that came true. 2012 was not a great movie, but it did because of the scope of just the world ending. They could be like, hey, let's just do any disaster we want anywhere all across the world.

[Josh Clark]

Not a great movie. I watched that one yesterday too.

[Chuck Bryant]

I didn't think it was very good.

[Josh Clark]

Oh, I liked it a lot. I think, to me, and I know you know this, but to me, 2012 is basically up there with the Towering Inferno. As far as best examples of a disaster film go. Okay, there you go.

[Chuck Bryant]

My favorite disaster film is not listed here, but it is from the 2010s. As far as being an actual great, great film is Steven Soderbergh's 2011 film Contagion.

[Josh Clark]

Yeah, that is a good one.

[Chuck Bryant]

It is. I mean, it's a disaster movie, but it doesn't play like one because it is so realistically scary and doesn't have that sort of summer movie kind of schlocky appeal. But it's a disaster movie for sure.

[Josh Clark]

Did you, like me, detect a note of hostility when the medical examiner pulls Gwyneth Paltrow's face, like, roughly off of her skull during her autopsy?

[Chuck Bryant]

I don't remember that part.

[Josh Clark]

It seemed like that was gratuitous. Like there was like Soderbergh had a problem with Gwyneth Paltrow.

[Chuck Bryant]

Gwyneth Paltrow, maybe.

[Josh Clark]

So, yeah, that was a really good movie too. And that would be an example of some of the highbrow ones that started to come out in 2010. Like, like we said, the Impossible. There's a Korean one called Pandora that came out in 2007 about a nuclear meltdown. Sully. About Captain Chelsea Sullenberger's landing in the Hudson river where not one person died. The plane, I should say landed a plane.

[Chuck Bryant]

Yeah. That was Hanks, right?

[Josh Clark]

Yeah, yeah. He was in every single movie that was out at one point, I think.

[Chuck Bryant]

Yeah, he went through a string of playing real life characters here and there.

[Josh Clark]

That's right.

[Chuck Bryant]

Some of those weren't great, but I did like the one about the Somali pirates, Captain whatever his name was.

[Josh Clark]

Captain Hoffman.

[Chuck Bryant]

Yeah, that was it.

[Josh Clark]

So one of the other things that the 2010onward disaster films did was at the very least the studios figured out, like, hey, these are kind of like easily translated internationally. And we don't mean the dialogues translated easily, although it definitely is.

[Chuck Bryant]

Yeah, for sure.

[Josh Clark]

And because everything's so morally cut and dried, people anywhere can get what they're seeing, even though it's an American made film about Americans. But also in these movies that are like a worldwide catastrophe, you have the opportunity to take down landmarks all over the world. So in France, they can see the Eiffel Tower going down. They're like woo, France. And then one of the other things too is because of these huge all star casts, you can easily cast foreign actors or actors who are really big in the country they hail from and that'll up the box office too. In that country.

[Chuck Bryant]

Yeah. It's all a formula. The Rock started being in a lot of these. There was one of the few movies I've ever walked out on was San Andreas in 2015 with Dwayne the Rock Johnson. I did not think it was very good at all. He followed that a few years later. You liked it?

[Josh Clark]

I didn't see it in theaters though. I think if I had paid 20 bucks to see it, I probably would have been upset.

[Chuck Bryant]

Yeah. And then he was in Skyscraper. Not to be outdone by San Andreas, another not so great movie a few years later in 2018. But again, some people love all the Rock's stuff.

[Josh Clark]

Sure.

[Chuck Bryant]

It's just my dumb opinion.

[Josh Clark]

I had an idea or a thought that I wanted to share. Chuck, let's hear it about the 2010s. Boom. It didn't burn out in one decade. They're still making straight ahead 2010 style disaster films. And I was thinking that the reason why is because there's so many more studios now putting out so many different types of movies that it hasn't become a glut of so so movies. Or even if there are so so disaster movies, there's still room to make other good ones rather than just three or four studios going all in on disaster films for the same few years.

[Chuck Bryant]

Yeah. Just spacing them out as, you know, like just a something you can return to. That's a pretty dependable release. But not like, hey, let's release nine of these in the next two years.

[Josh Clark]

Exactly. There's a wider variety, so it's been allowed to just kind of continue on. And in my, my opinion, it's gotten better. Like Leave the World behind was really good. The Wave, a Norwegian one that came out in 2016, was like highly acclaimed. Don't Look Up. Did you see that? The satire from Adam McKay?

[Chuck Bryant]

Yes, I did.

[Josh Clark]

It was pretty good actually. I liked it a lot. But it satirizes government and people not taking climate change seriously. And it's a disaster film, but it's not a parody of disaster films. It uses disaster films to satirize that stuff.

[Chuck Bryant]

Yeah. Which is. That's an interesting take for sure, you know.

[Josh Clark]

You got anything else?

[Chuck Bryant]

No, I feel like I need to watch more. I didn't actually watch any full disaster films. Again, in preparation. Like you did. So this has inspired me to go back and watch some of those from the 70s that I never saw.

[Josh Clark]

Definitely watch earthquake and watch airport 75.

[Chuck Bryant]

75. And I still haven't seen Towering Inferno.

[Josh Clark]

Oh, definitely see that too.

[Chuck Bryant]

Yeah. All right, done.

[Josh Clark]

Okay, great. Well, since Chuck agreed to see some movies that I thought he should see, we've unlocked bliss in our mail.

[Chuck Bryant]

I'm going to call this follow up to Morgana the Kissing Bandit. Hey, Chuck and Josh and all that help make your show awesome. My wife and I are longtime listeners, but first time writers. My wife Jennifer and I love having you entertain and educate us, especially on long distance trips with the family. You help keep us awake and focused with a pleasant side effect of putting our 5 year old Ben and 7 year old Eleanor asleep. That's great. I love it when we can lull children to sleep.

[Josh Clark]

We live to give.

[Chuck Bryant]

We are on spring break traveling to my in law's house right now and during the drive, one of our episodes we listened to was Morgana the Kissing Bandit when we arrived at our destination to ask my father in law if he remembers her since he is the biggest sports enthusiast I know. Get this dude. He said of course he sees her all the time because she lives down the street.

[Josh Clark]

What?

[Chuck Bryant]

You ended your podcast with a mention that you didn't know she was still alive and what happened to her. And we wanted to let you know she's still alive and enjoying retirement with a full life.

[Josh Clark]

That is awesome.

[Chuck Bryant]

And cherry on top, this is written to us by John Ritter.

[Josh Clark]

Wow. My mind is coming apart at the seams right now, Chuck.

[Chuck Bryant]

Maybe best listener mail ever. So big hello to John Ritter and your wife Jennifer and Ben and Eleanor.

[Josh Clark]

Yes, hello and happy travels to you guys. And hats off to your dad too for knowing Morgana the Kissing Bandit.

[Chuck Bryant]

Yeah, and hats off to Morgana. I'm glad you're doing great. Hopefully this message gets to you.

[Josh Clark]

Yes, this message brought to you by John Ritter. If you want to be like John and get in touch with us, you can send us an email. Send it off to stuffpodcastheartradio.com.

[Chuck Bryant]

Stuff youf.

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[Chuck Bryant]

You listen to your favorite shows.