What a disaster: Bullz-Eye ranks the definitive disaster movies
With the rather dismal performance by Wolfgang Petersen’s remake of “The Poseidon Adventure” – Josh Lucas gnashed his teeth so much, he looked like a rabid dog – it appears that we have seen the death of the disaster movie for the foreseeable future, if not for good. Okay, we know to never say never when it comes to Hollywood’s tendency to pilfer its history; after all, they thought that remaking “Sabrina,” “Bewitched” and “The Stepford Wives” were good ideas. Still, “Poseidon” managed to take in only $22 million of its reported $160 million budget, and while $22 million is a lot of money, it would have to make that much every weekend for the next two months in order to break even. Good luck with that, Warners.
As the mother of all popcorn movie genres sinks into the sunset – and we confess, we’re more than a little sad to see it happen – Bullz-Eye takes a tearful look back at our favorite disaster movies of all shapes and sizes, from birds and viruses (talk about life imitating art: now we have bird viruses) to aliens and tornadoes, with the hope that we’ll get to see stuff getting blow’d up good.
Check out the list here.
How about best parodies of disaster movies? I would put Airplane! at the top of the list.
Kind of a small genre, though. There’s that one, and…um, “The Big Bus”? And that’s about it, really…
waaaaaayyyyy of the mark buddies. first of all armeggeddon was the greatest disaster movie of all time. second of all the core, come on, that was the worst movie i have ever seen. deep rising too, i spent more time laughing at those movies then actually giving a crap what was going on in them. and third of all Volcano, 28 days later, and independence day deserve better rakings than that crap. Way to go!
“Armageddon” just didn’t do it for us. We discussed it and realized that we couldn’t bring ourselves to put both it and “Deep Impact” on the list…and, at the end of the day, I’d watch Morgan Freeman, Robert Duvall, Vanessa Redgrave, Maximilian Schell, and Teo Leoni over Bruce Willis, Ben Affleck, Liv Tyler, Billy Bob Thornton, and Steve Buscemi any day. Well, maybe not the last two…but Freeman and Duvall trump Willis and Affleck instantly, so it becomes a moot argument after that.
As far as “The Core,” I think my boy David has my back on this when I say that it’s a disaster movie done with a wink, which is why it’s such a fun ride. When it comes to “Deep Rising,” though, that’s his baby, and I’ll let him praise it; he’s seen it more times than I have, so it’s only appropriate…
Oh, and thanks for reading and commenting!
I love this site. Good work…