Disaster films are surprisingly tough to define. What makes them different from an action movie or a monster movie? Who cares? They’re great! Escape with us as we cover the the ins and outs and the history of disaster films and recommend some good ones.See omnystudio.com/listener for privacy information.
Chapter 1: Who are the hosts discussing disaster films?
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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 going to be sitting around rapping about one of our favorite things to talk about, and that is movies. Let's go to the movies. You had a little Katharine Hepburn thing going on there. Ethel Merman? Katharine Hepburn. It was Katharine Hepburn singing Ethel Merman. Okay.
That's how I took it.
I'd like to see that. Yeah.
Yeah, we are going to go to the movies, Chuck. And in particular, a specific kind of movie that the more I dug into, the more I realized is one of my favorite types of movies.
Oh, yeah?
Yeah, 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.
Yeah, yeah.
And I was like, yeah, it's one of my favorite movies. And the reason why is because I love disaster movies. Love them.
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Chapter 2: What defines a disaster film compared to other genres?
Okay, but then there's also movies like Speed, and Speed checks off a lot of the boxes. Yeah, not a disaster movie, though. You would not call it a disaster movie, even though it really could. If you really wedged it in there, it would qualify. But there's just a couple of 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.
Not an disaster movie to me.
It ends up on lists. It's part of the animal attack subgenre of disaster films, which is a subgenre of action.
Chapter 3: What are the common characteristics of disaster movies?
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. Yeah. And you can't say exactly what it is that you feel personally like doesn't count. But someone, you know, someone else might think it counts. It's not like this is something you can say is very cut and dry, you know.
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. Yeah. And it was hard. Nobody's ever 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. Yeah.
Well, maybe this can be that. And maybe you can like, I don't know, start a website, joshdefinesdisaster.com.
And I'll just put this article on there and that'll be that.
All right. Should we go through some of these? Because you did a bang up job. Thank you. The first thing you needed in a disaster movie is a disaster.
Sure.
But this can be a lot of different things. A lot of time it's a human made thing. Then that varies from climate change movies, which we've seen a lot more of lately to like pandemics. And sometimes like it like I guess a disaster. Some things like Towering Inferno are a bit of a mashup because you can have like the threat of a structural collapse.
So that is a human made thing, but it might be brought upon by like a fire or flood or something.
Yes. There's overlap. Nobody said you can pin down disaster movies pretty easily.
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Chapter 4: How do stereotypes and representation appear in disaster films?
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 the one that one of the 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.
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. I don't remember that. 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 in the FAA has to step it up. And the other guy was presenting counterpoint. He was like, I say let them die. Oh, my God. It's way funnier in the movie.
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 like most of the A-list cast will make it out alive unless they're really trying to like pull one over on you in a scream sort of way.
Yes, and you teased something just now. Some people will definitely not survive. 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, you know, 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. Yeah.
And the woman is basically there to essentially be saved and maybe help out some.
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.
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.
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Chapter 5: What is the role of the hero in disaster films?
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. Right. So I'm curious how our African-American listeners feel about this at this point in 2025. Yeah.
Yeah, there's usually about as many black characters as there are women characters in disaster movies. Yeah. But like you said, similarly, they're often the president, like Morgan Freeman or Danny Glover or something like that.
I'd vote for Morgan Freeman.
Yeah, for sure. But I heard the reason, you know, he wears those diamond studs in his ears all the time.
Yeah, he's been rocking those for a while.
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.
That's why he does that?
That's what I heard.
That's incredible.
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Chapter 6: What are some notable examples of classic disaster films?
Yeah, they had to train him. I only saw Armageddon once, so I'm pulling a lot of this from distant memory.
Yeah, I'm more a deep impact dude.
Oh, yeah? That's what I heard.
As a matter of fact, I'm not entirely certain I've ever seen Armageddon.
Yeah, you know, it was okay. It was fairly, you know, schlocky, big budget sort of stuff.
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.
Yeah, it's it's summer movie popcorn fair. 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. Right.
So within these the 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, an Ethan Hawke movie. I don't know that one. Oh, it's great. It was on Netflix. Okay. 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.
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Chapter 7: How did disaster films evolve in the 1970s?
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 how they recreated that was just harrowing.
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?
Let's do it.
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Chapter 8: What are some iconic scenes and themes in disaster movies like The Towering Inferno and Earthquake?
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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 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. Yeah.
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.
Right.
Especially in the 70s, but then again, as we'll see in the 90s resurgent, things like tornado, flood, stuff like that.
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