Category
📺
TVTranscript
00:00It's the biggest ship, the tallest building, the most amazing theme park ever built.
00:29And the size means stability, luxury and above all, strength.
00:34But the warnings have been ignored and the moment has come for disaster to strike.
00:46Now a maverick preacher, astronaut, paleontologist or paleoclimatologist must take the lead.
00:54Surrounded by state-of-the-art special effects and an abundance of helicopters.
01:04In Secrets of Cinema I explore the conventions which underwrite the movies we love the most
01:09and examine the techniques filmmakers use to keep us coming back for more.
01:13Tonight I'm looking at one of the oldest and most spectacular genres of all.
01:17I'll show you how to stage and survive a disaster movie.
01:24Back in the days before Star Wars disaster movies were the biggest event films available.
01:34Whether it was a first run theatrical feature or a bank holiday TV premiere
01:39entire families would gather round to enjoy watching famous actors facing life or death situations.
01:45Be it fires, floods or something altogether more fantastic.
01:50I remember being taken to see The Poseidon Adventure when it first opened in Christmas 1972.
01:55It was a film you had to watch with your parents because it had an A certificate
01:59and kids under 14 required adult accompaniment.
02:02Luckily it appealed to young and old alike.
02:08A few years later in 1975 I saw The Towering Inferno three times in the same week
02:14returning compulsively to the ABC Turnpike Lane to relive the jaw-dropping adventure over and over again.
02:26Both The Poseidon Adventure and The Towering Inferno were produced by Irwin Allen
02:30the so-called master of disaster whose name is indelibly associated with the genre
02:35and whose hits were a mainstay of 70s cinema.
02:38Indeed according to one assessment no less than 53 disaster movies were released in that decade.
02:46But disaster movies existed long before Airport kicked off that boom period in 1970
02:53and they continued long after Airplane looked set to kill them off in 1980.
02:58Land too fast use your emergency brakes. Red handle's right in front of you.
03:03That doesn't stop you.
03:09So what makes this genre so compelling and indestructible?
03:13Well perhaps because along with the visceral thrill of seeing temples crumble,
03:17worlds shake, ships sink and towers fall,
03:20disaster movies like horror films often work as modern morality tales
03:25reminding us of the natural order of things by terrifying us with visions of chaos and apocalypse.
03:32We may often imagine that the visual thrills of disaster epics like Titanic are somehow unique to cinema.
03:40But look at this. It's a fragment of early film shot in the London Hippodrome in 1902.
03:48This 89 second sequence captures the finale of Bandit,
03:52an action-packed theatre show in which a mill explodes into flames
03:56and in the ensuing flood, a bridge collapses and speeding horses plunge into a mill pond.
04:03It's easy to see a direct line from stage productions like Bandit
04:07to the cinematic spectacles of the silent era.
04:12In 1923, Cecil B. DeMille's The Ten Commandments helped set in Tablets of Stone,
04:17the template for that most hardy of disaster movie hybrids, the biblical epic.
04:23Juxtaposing a modern-day morality play with eye-popping scenes
04:27of Old Testament sinfulness, destruction and miraculous redemption.
04:36Now, of course, the Bible is packed with bloodshed, plagues and natural disasters,
04:41from the great flood of Genesis via the ten plagues of Exodus
04:45to the apocalyptic visions of Revelation.
04:48And such powerful stories have been the inspiration
04:51for equally breathtaking works of art.
04:55Like Bruegel's 16th-century masterpiece The Tower of Babel...
05:01..and John Martin's visionary 19th-century work The Last Judgement.
05:07Meanwhile, this painting by Russian artist Karl Breulov
05:10inspired Edward Bulwer-Lytton's 1834 novel The Last Days of Pompeii,
05:15a salutary tale of a decadent culture destroyed by its own excess
05:19that will be retold again and again on screen.
05:23Here, in glorious super-total scope.
05:31In each of these examples, the spectacle of disaster
05:34is closely linked with a clear moral message.
05:37The wages of sin are death, or, more precisely, spectacular death.
05:45EXPLOSIONS
05:51In the 1930s, when the term disaster film was first being used in Hollywood,
05:56audiences were flocking to films like In Old Chicago,
05:59based on the Great Fire of 1871...
06:05..and MGM's San Francisco, in which Clark Gable felt
06:09the moral reverberations of the 1906 quake.
06:15EXPLOSIONS
06:22But by the 1950s, with Cold War tensions creating an uneasy chill
06:26across the world, moviegoers began to turn to more outlandish tales
06:30of Armageddon.
06:38The most enduring of these is Japanese director
06:41Hiro Honda's Gojira, or Godzilla,
06:44created in the fallout of America's Bikini Atoll H-bomb tests.
06:49The special effects may have been fairly simple,
06:52featuring a man in a lizard suit so heavy
06:54that he regularly collapsed from dehydration and exhaustion.
06:58But the effect is astonishing, striking a chord with audiences
07:02who had seen entire cities wiped out by nuclear weapons.
07:07The 50s also gave us not one, but two major feature films
07:11based on one of the most infamous disasters of the 20th century,
07:15the sinking of the Titanic, a long-standing staple of cinema.
07:26It was Roy Ward Baker's 1958 film A Night To Remember
07:30that became the key Titanic text, and remained so
07:34until James Cameron's disaster epic swept the board at the 1998 Oscars
07:39and placed disaster movies once again at the top of the box office.
07:52In the wake of 9-11, many pundits predicted
07:55that disaster movies were dead.
07:57How could we find films like The Towering Inferno entertaining
08:00in the shadow of that terrible attack?
08:03But sure enough, after a very brief hiatus,
08:06disaster movies were back on the menu.
08:08In 2004, The Day After Tomorrow helped usher in a new wave of films
08:12about environmental disasters,
08:14using increasingly sophisticated digital effects
08:17to bring us visions of destruction on a global scale.
08:23And the genre has a truly worldwide appeal.
08:27In 2006, Bong Joon-ho's pollution-driven creature-feature
08:31disaster movie hybrid The Host became a record-breaking South Korean hit.
08:43While Eruar Utag's The Wave was the biggest-selling film of 2015 in Norway
08:48and the country's official submission for the foreign-language film Oscar.
08:57But whatever the country, from the earliest biblical epics
09:01to the most modern CG spectaculars,
09:04these movies do adhere to certain key tropes and themes
09:07which recur time and again.
09:09Time!
09:10One-oh-two.
09:11I think we'd better pick your kids up after school.
09:15So let's try to break the genre down
09:18and examine how disaster movies have become more popular.
09:22Let's try to break the genre down and examine how disaster movies
09:25have become modern parables,
09:27combining a cynicism about human nature
09:30and suspicion of human achievement
09:32with uplifting tales of heroism, sacrifice, redemption and communal effort.
09:37Together, those elements can create the perfect cinematic storm.
09:53As a rule, disaster movies don't begin with a disaster.
09:57Instead, they first need to establish the place where disaster will hit
10:01and the people who'll be caught up in it.
10:04And the more splendid it all is, the better.
10:07See how we're encouraged to ogle all that 1912 luxury in Titanic.
10:12Or the dinosaurs in Jurassic Park,
10:15which, back in the early days of digital effects,
10:18were almost as amazing to the audience as they were to the characters.
10:33Importantly, many of these places and settings are man-made,
10:37prideful exercises in defying nature and tempting fate.
10:42Like building a large conurbation near the junction of two tectonic plates
10:46a subject particularly close to Hollywood's heart.
10:50And these man-made wonders are also, we're assured, perfectly safe.
10:55I don't believe that you're familiar with the many modern safety systems
10:59we have designed into this building.
11:01We've got them all.
11:03Remember, when anyone says that, it's usually a good idea
11:06to drop what you're doing and get the hell out of it.
11:09Oh, God!
11:12Because, unbeknownst to most of the cast,
11:15there have been ominous rumblings,
11:17like the worker killed by the mysterious creature in the crate
11:20at the start of Jurassic Park.
11:24Often, these ominous rumblings are literally ominous rumblings.
11:29Hmm. That was a jolt.
11:32But the expert scientist's early warning is rarely taken seriously.
11:38You have to start thinking about large-scale evacuations right now,
11:42especially in the northern states.
11:44Evacuations? Yes.
11:46Have you lost your mind, Hall? I have to go.
11:50Mr Vice President, if we don't act now, it's going to be too late.
11:57Often, the warning is ignored because of greed.
12:01Like the shipping company that won't let the Poseidon take on ballast
12:05in case it delays the voyage.
12:07You irresponsible bastard.
12:10Or simple cost-cutting in The Towering Inferno.
12:13Excuse me. Am I the only subcontractor you encourage to cut corners?
12:17Excuse me. Where did you save the other four million in Doug's original budget?
12:21So now we've established our location and our potential threat,
12:25let's turn to who's being threatened.
12:28And as with every good genre,
12:30we can see certain types of character appearing again and again.
12:35First, there's the reluctant hero or heroine,
12:38smart but also spry enough to handle an action sequence.
12:41They often have important specialist skills and knowledge,
12:45such as Sam Neill's paleontologist in Jurassic Park
12:49and Paul Newman's architect,
12:51designer of the tower in The Towering Inferno.
12:56The hero is often in conflict with the disbelieving naysayer,
12:59like the mayor in Jaws with his dogged refusal
13:02to see the disaster in front of him
13:04because he doesn't want to scare the tourists away.
13:08For Christ's sake, tomorrow's the 4th of July
13:10and we will be open for business.
13:12It's going to be one of the best summers we've ever had.
13:15Go ahead, pull.
13:16Throw in a kindly grandmother figure,
13:18particularly suitable for veteran Best Actress Oscar winners.
13:23And maybe a kid with convenient expertise in computer systems or ship design.
13:28The ship's generators create enough electricity
13:31to light Charleston, South Carolina, and Atlanta, Georgia.
13:35Shelby? That's right. Cable. Thank you.
13:38And don't forget the callous snob who leaves others to die
13:42and may even be responsible for the disaster in the first place.
13:53A persistent vice of disaster movies,
13:55worthy of some divine retribution in its own right,
13:58is the way that female characters have so often been relegated
14:02to love interest or secondary status.
14:07But there are notable exceptions, like Kate Winslet's Rose in Titanic.
14:13Not only is she the main protagonist of the story,
14:16she gets her own share of the action too,
14:19in a film set in 1912.
14:21Come on, Hollywood, catch up.
14:28I've got the gun! I've got the gun!
14:32Now, it's worth remembering that apart from the disaster itself,
14:36the biggest draw of the classic 70s disaster movie was the all-star cast.
14:40The premise is simple.
14:42Hire as many familiar faces as you can
14:44and keep us guessing who's going to be killed.
14:47Canny producers saw this as a way to bring in audiences
14:50ranging from young to old and from across different demographics.
14:55Pulling in American football fans by giving OJ Simpson
14:58one of his first roles in The Towering Inferno
15:01and reaching out to a more, well, specialist audience
15:04by putting Emmanuelle star Sylvia Cristel on The Concord in Airport 79.
15:11I was surprised to see your name on the crew list this morning.
15:15Life is full of surprises.
15:17This tells us something else about 70s disaster movies,
15:21that they were, in fact, the fusion of two genres
15:24that have long been popular with audiences.
15:27The disaster spectacle, which, as we saw earlier, predates cinema,
15:31and the ensemble film,
15:33in which multiple plot lines interweave in a single location.
15:39That dates back to the 1932 classic Grand Hotel,
15:42the fifth ever Best Picture Oscar winner.
15:45It, too, was an all-star vehicle,
15:47packed with some of the biggest names of the early talkies,
15:50like John Barrymore, Wallace Beery,
15:53and a famously antisocial Greta Garbo.
15:56I just want to be alone.
15:58You're going to be very much alone, my dear madame. This is the end.
16:03Oh, thank you.
16:07So, now we've gathered all our characters,
16:09why not, for added irony, throw a party?
16:11Just as long as it's somewhere they can't easily escape from,
16:14like the middle of the ocean
16:16or the 135th floor of the world's tallest building.
16:19And, of course, we know from the Bible and the ancient Romans
16:23where all this excess leads.
16:27Because the warnings can no longer be ignored.
16:30Humankind is about to be judged for its pride and arrogance.
16:34Something disastrous this way comes.
16:45Oh, my God.
16:54The thrill of watching disaster strike,
16:57of experiencing grand-scale destruction on the big screen,
17:00lies at the core of the genre's appeal.
17:08It's the moment when both the characters and we, the audience,
17:12are helpless bystanders.
17:14The difference is, they're caught in the middle,
17:16whereas we've paid to watch from the sidelines.
17:19And here's where we get our money's worth.
17:22It's time for the effects teams and stunt performers to go for broke.
17:30Look at this scene from the 2004 disaster epic The Day After Tomorrow,
17:34in which a vast wave engulfs New York.
17:38Now compare that to this scene from the 1933 picture Deluge,
17:42the first film in which the Big Apple was destroyed on screen.
17:48In The Day After Tomorrow,
17:49the effects were rendered through digital wizardry,
17:52variously cooked up by nine separate effects houses,
17:55including George Lucas's Industrial Light and Magic.
18:00For Deluge, the process was more physical.
18:03Here, model-maker Ned Mann built scale miniatures of Manhattan buildings,
18:07which were cleverly designed to collapse in sequence at different rates.
18:15These miniatures were then filmed being flooded and destroyed,
18:19with the cameras shooting at an over-cranked frame rate,
18:22which, when slowed down to normal speed,
18:24made everything look bigger and more substantial.
18:30These movies were made seven decades apart,
18:33and the techniques they employed are hugely different.
18:36But the overall effect is the same,
18:39that gasp-inducing moment when the audience sees something
18:42that simply boggles the mind.
18:48Such effects have always played a key role in disaster movies,
18:51and their impact is the result of a number of different film-making disciplines
18:55and techniques working together.
18:58Look at this earthquake sequence from the 1936 hit San Francisco.
19:03The physical effects are fairly straightforward,
19:05but notice how the impact of the scene comes from the editing,
19:09a frenetic montage which really conjures up the chaos of the quake.
19:27The very first Oscar for Best Special Effects was awarded in 1940
19:31to The Rains Came, a grandiose Daryl Zanuck production
19:35boasting monsoon rains and earthquake-assisted floods,
19:38conjured up by technician Fred Surson and photographer E.H. Hanson.
19:47Significantly, The Rains Came beat such other best effects contenders
19:51as Gone With The Wind and The Wizard Of Oz,
19:54officially placing disaster movies at the cutting edge of effects technology.
20:02Fast forward 30-odd years to the era of The Poseidon Adventure
20:05and The Towering Inferno.
20:07While we tend to think of those movies as Irwin Allen films,
20:10it's important to remember that Allen wasn't the director of either of them.
20:14Those were, respectively, Ronald Neame and John Gilliaman.
20:17But Allen did put himself in charge of the special effects sequences,
20:21and in the world of disaster movies,
20:23that pretty much made him the auteur of those films.
20:32The effects on The Poseidon Adventure were essentially mechanical,
20:36intercutting shots of the real Queen Mary ocean liner
20:39with studio interiors and a 22-foot scale model of the ship
20:43which could be capsized in a water tank.
20:47In this famous sequence, as the ship turns over,
20:50hydraulic platforms like those used in the film San Francisco
20:54were used to tilt sections of the set.
20:56But simple camera tilts were also employed
20:59to make the levels appear more extreme.
21:01In many of these shots,
21:03people who seem to be falling vertically to their death
21:06are simply dancing horizontally past the tilted camera
21:09with their feet out of view.
21:11In other shots,
21:13trampolines were used to throw the performers through the air.
21:17For the most memorable stunt,
21:19Ernie Orsatti got paid a mere $150
21:21to fall backward through an elegant skylight
21:24that has now become a deadly glass floor,
21:27making itself a place in disaster movie history.
21:33Erwin Allen was working in an era before digital effects.
21:37These sequences had to be physically achieved on set
21:40with all the risk that brings.
21:42Remember, three extras drowned during the flood scenes
21:45of Michael Catiz's Noah's Ark back in 1928.
21:48But physical effects often age better than computer graphics,
21:52not least because they look so real.
21:58Turn it off! I'm sorry!
22:03Even Jurassic Park, which along with James Cameron's Terminator 2
22:07was one of the first digital effects-driven blockbusters,
22:10used a full-size puppet model of a T-Rex head in this attack scene.
22:15But it's not just what you see in a disaster movie that matters.
22:19For Universal's 1974 blockbuster Earthquake,
22:22the filmmakers used sound to turn the movie
22:25into the equivalent of an amusement park ride
22:28in which the audience could literally feel the Earth move.
22:31Sensoround was developed by Universal
22:34in conjunction with the Sir Winn Vega Sound Company
22:37to generate powerful, low-frequency noises
22:40that would be felt rather than heard during key sequences,
22:44something that was seen as a major screen innovation.
22:50The sound of the Earthquake,
22:52the sound of the earthquake,
22:54the sound of the earthquake,
22:56the sound of the earthquake,
22:58the sound of the earthquake,
23:00the sound of the earthquake...
23:07This scene must have been particularly unnerving
23:10for the audience at Earthquake's first run
23:13at Grauman's Chinese Theatre in Hollywood.
23:16The sensoround effect was reportedly so pronounced
23:19that bits of plaster were shaken from the ceiling
23:22and a net had to be deployed to catch any potential falling masonry.
23:26This, of course, added to the thrill of the movie.
23:29Apparently, the theatre managers threw in some larger chunks of rubble
23:32just to heighten the anxiety.
23:40In doing so, they were simply continuing
23:42the carnival showmanship traditions of trash maestro William Castle,
23:46who, back in the late 50s, famously wired up cinema seats
23:50with electrical buzzers for the tingler
23:52to make audiences feel the fear.
23:55SCREAMING
23:59Interestingly, at exactly the same time
24:01that Earthquake was shaking theatres in the mid-'70s,
24:04Castle was promoting his final film, Bug...
24:07SCREAMING
24:09..a disaster movie in which mutant, fiery cockroaches
24:12are released into the world by an earthquake.
24:15SCREAMING
24:18Sensoround was an expensive and comparatively short-lived gimmick,
24:22but we can see its legacy in today's sophisticated modern sound systems,
24:26which, together with Stephen Price's superb score,
24:29make this initial disaster sequence in Gravity
24:32such an extraordinary cinematic experience.
24:35Explore! Over, explore!
24:38SCREAMING
24:40SCREAMING
24:49Additionally, director Alfonso Cuaron made Gravity in 3D,
24:53and I think it's one of the rare cases where the technique
24:56has been used with genuinely immersive results.
25:01Houston, we've lost visual touch.
25:05But audiences, it seems, can't resist a gimmick,
25:08and we can see the legacy of Sensoround and William Castle's buzzing seats
25:12in the current craze for 4DX presentation,
25:15in which patrons sit in chairs which shake and roll with the picture,
25:19turning the cinema into a fairground ride.
25:22And once again, we're reminded that cinema has its roots
25:25in carnivals and theatres...
25:28..and in the Victorian extravaganzas
25:30that gave audiences cantering horses and crashing floods
25:33so spectacular they would make the auditorium shake.
25:39DRAMATIC MUSIC
25:49Often in a disaster film, the shock of the initial catastrophe
25:53is followed by a sudden change of pace, even a deathly quiet,
25:57as the characters come to their senses
25:59and try to take stock of the situation.
26:03We come face-to-face with the human cost of the disaster.
26:09It's a sobering moment, when images speak louder than words.
26:17Here, it's not just the landscape that's shaken up,
26:20it's everybody's role in the social order.
26:24It's time for new leaders to emerge, like Gene Hackman's Reverend Scott.
26:30Please, go to my stations.
26:37As the officer passes on his instructions,
26:39it's like he's passing Hackman the mantle of responsibility
26:43to rescue the passengers.
26:46In Jurassic Park, the formerly child-phobic Sam Neill
26:50finds himself taking on the duties of a protective parental figure.
26:55Now, Max, listen, listen.
26:58Max, I'm right here.
27:00I'm going to look after you, but I have to go help your brother,
27:03so I want you to stay right here and wait for me.
27:05He left us. He left us!
27:08But that's not what I'm going to do.
27:12While in The Wave, Arnadal Torp is the mum
27:15who has to calm the hysterical male characters
27:18and figure out a way to escape the rising water that's trapped them.
27:22Come on!
27:24Leave me out of this! It's useless!
27:26Would you rather have stayed out here?
27:28OK, calm down, calm down.
27:30Now we wait until the water has risen above the door.
27:32Then it's a lower pressure, and then we try again, OK?
27:36With rescuers often out of range or out of action,
27:39an escape plan is usually essential.
27:41Do you think it might be a better idea if we went up?
27:43What the hell are you talking about?
27:45I mean, it seems to me that any rescue attempt
27:47would have to come through the hull.
27:49The hull? You mean through the bottom?
27:51My God, that's right.
27:52And look how quickly and effectively
27:54the Poseidon adventure gets its plan across.
27:57Rather than one character just lecturing the others,
28:00the plan is devised before our eyes through an argument,
28:03which also gives a foretaste of conflicts further down the line.
28:07Wait a minute, how the hell are you figuring
28:09to go through the bottom of the boat?
28:11It's solid steel.
28:12Af, sir, at the outlet of the propeller shaft.
28:16Look, kid, this isn't some toy boat in a bathtub,
28:19so you let us figure it out, huh?
28:21I'm sorry, sir, but Charlie, the third engineer,
28:24he told me that back by the shaft,
28:26the hull was only one inch thick.
28:28Look, kid, do you know how thick one inch of steel is?
28:31It's one inch less than two inches.
28:33It's interesting to note that from this point onwards,
28:36the Poseidon adventure appears to play out in close to real time,
28:40increasing our sense of being trapped with the characters,
28:43as does Gravity, in which George Clooney's Kowalski
28:46literally sets the clock ticking.
28:48Set your watch for 90 minutes.
28:51Why 90?
28:53We have debris at 50,000 miles an hour.
28:56If you factor in our current orbit,
28:58then I figure we've got about 90 minutes
29:00before we get our asses kicked again.
29:02Of course, not everyone may want to sign up for the plan.
29:06As in the day after tomorrow, when the survivors argue
29:09about whether it's safer to stay
29:11in the New York Public Library or leave.
29:14We stay inside, we keep warm and we wait it out.
29:17The snow is getting deeper by the minute.
29:19We'd be trapped here without food, supplies...
29:22It's a risk, yeah. ..and unnecessary risk.
29:25No, no, no, it's not.
29:26We've wasted enough time talking about this.
29:28Come on, people, let's go.
29:30Look, look, look. Just look for a second.
29:32Come on, everybody. One second. Let's get going.
29:34The storm is going to get bad. It's going to get really, really bad.
29:37You're not going to be able to survive in it.
29:40And it's in those difficult choices
29:42that much of the power of a disaster movie lies,
29:45something Irwin Allen astutely identified
29:48as the key to the genre's appeal.
29:50If we were in the position of the characters,
29:52who would we listen to? What would we choose?
29:55Because the right decision can quickly make the difference
29:59between life and death.
30:10CHEERING
30:15So we've narrowed down our big cast to the key characters
30:18and there's no turning back.
30:20We know where they're heading,
30:22but what else will they have to face to get there?
30:34The big effect's initial set piece
30:36is followed by what's usually the middle and longest section
30:39of a disaster movie,
30:41where knock-on catastrophes create an extended obstacle course
30:44with our protagonists trying everything
30:47from dodging fireballs in a camper van...
30:51..to fleeing a herd of stampeding dinosaurs...
30:56..and speedboating through a flooded skyscraper.
31:02Just one of the many extreme transport methods
31:05used by The Rock and his family in 2017's San Andreas,
31:09the planes, trains and automobiles of earthquake movies.
31:21But the obstructions aren't only there
31:23to pile extra layers of tension onto the catastrophe
31:26and create suspense.
31:28Crucially, they also help develop character
31:31and explore the nature of heroism.
31:34Action man Steve McQueen turned down the role of architect
31:37in The Towering Inferno
31:39because he thought the part of fire chief was more heroic.
31:44But look how, having designed the building,
31:46Paul Newman's architect takes responsibility for his creation,
31:50here putting his own life on the line to get others to safety.
32:04Hold on!
32:06Easy now.
32:08Hold on, Angela!
32:10I'm going to hold you. Get your arms around my neck!
32:13This is a key disaster movie trope,
32:15the flawed character who is tested and discovers their inner strength.
32:21One of the best scenes in Titanic
32:23comes when Rose has to wheel an axe to free a shackled Jack
32:26as the ship takes on water.
32:28What makes it so effective is the fact that it works on multiple levels.
32:32There's not one but two threats.
32:35Possible drowning or possible maiming.
32:38There's also an element of black comedy
32:40in Rose's less-than-accomplished axe handling.
32:43Good. Now try and hit the same mark again, Rose. You can do it.
32:53OK, that's enough practice.
32:55Come on, Rose. You can do it.
32:57It's a heroic moment which cleverly reverses
33:00the old silent melodrama cliche
33:02of men rescuing women tied to railway tracks.
33:05Above all, it's also a love scene,
33:08and that central romance did as much as any amount of effects and stunts
33:12to make Titanic the most successful disaster movie ever.
33:24Characters may have become separated from each other
33:27at this stage of the story,
33:29but the characters have to switch between different locations and situations
33:33without losing momentum.
33:36Steven Spielberg masterfully choreographs parallel action in Jurassic Park.
33:41Laura Dern has evaded velociraptors to switch the park's power back on,
33:45but unbeknownst to her,
33:47Sam, Neil and the children are climbing the compound fence,
33:50believing it to be deactivated.
33:52A simple obstacle suddenly becomes a race against time,
33:56and to save the day, ironically, becomes potentially lethal.
34:01Disaster movies. Damned if you do, damned if you don't.
34:05I'm coming up. I'm coming up to get you.
34:07I've got to get Tim. OK.
34:09I'm going to count to three.
34:13One.
34:16Two.
34:21To keep the drama going,
34:23it's essential to raise the stakes throughout the film
34:26and pile the pressure on the characters.
34:30In Gravity, Kowalski chooses to sacrifice himself
34:34as he and Stone struggle to get inside the space station.
34:38Please, please, please don't do this.
34:41Please don't do this.
34:43Please don't do this.
34:48We're going to make it alive.
34:51No!
34:54Note the fleeting cruciform image
34:56as he gives up his life to save Sandra Bullock's heroine.
35:01Subtly reminding us of disaster movies' roots in biblical tales.
35:07It's a point of no return in Cuaron's multiple Oscar-winning film
35:11as Dr Stone is left completely alone.
35:14With no-one to help the inexperienced space scientist
35:17secure her survival, the only remaining character
35:20is to rely on her own ingenuity and courage to secure her survival.
35:27We may think of this genre as being about big budgets and big costs,
35:31but the one-person tale of disaster and endurance
35:35can be just as nail-biting as we follow a lonely hero...
35:40Argh!
35:43..marooned on an idyllic desert island...
35:46Anybody?!
35:48..cut off from the shore with only a great white for company...
35:52..or stuck between a rock and, er...
35:55Argh!
35:57..a rock.
36:00In the claustrophobic thriller Buried,
36:03which borrows its central trapped trope
36:05from many larger-scale disaster movies,
36:08Ryan Reynolds struggles to deal with the unenviable fate
36:11of being buried alive...
36:12Argh!
36:14..and seems to compete with Sandra Bullock for a heavy-breathing Oscar.
36:18Argh! Argh!
36:20Argh!
36:23Solo disaster movie protagonists have only their own wits,
36:27their will to survive
36:29and, if they're lucky, a cell phone to help them.
36:35Hello? Donna, it's Paul.
36:37Hey, how's it going?
36:39OK, I need to talk to Linda.
36:41She's not answering her phone.
36:43I've got a problem. I've been held hostage by a group of guys...
36:46Oh, you have now really owned.
36:48But if you leave a message, I'll get back to you as soon as I get in.
36:51Bye-bye.
36:52The conflicts and heated arguments of large ensemble cast movies
36:56are replaced by visceral, real-time moments of solitary anguish
37:00for their lonely central character.
37:03Argh!
37:05Argh!
37:07Compare the plight of Ryan Reynolds in Buried
37:10to that of Nicholas Cage and Michael Peña
37:13in Oliver Stone's World Trade Centre,
37:15a disaster movie directly inspired by the 9-11 tragedy
37:19that critics once said would put paid to the genre.
37:24Based on the real-life stories of John McLaughlin and Will Jimeno,
37:28two Port Authority police officers trapped beneath the rubble
37:31of the Twin Towers,
37:33World Trade Centre eschews grand-scale spectacle for isolation,
37:37putting the drama inside the heads of its main characters.
37:43Cut off from the world, the film's heroes are visited
37:46by hallucinogenic visions, such as this almost Bunuelian sequence
37:51in which Jesus appears holding a bottle of water.
37:54Once again, religion is a recurrent factor.
37:59Now compare that with this trippy montage from Danny Boyle's 127 Hours.
38:06This rock has been waiting for me my entire life.
38:09Argh!
38:11This rock!
38:14And its entire life, ever since there was a bit of meteorite
38:18a million, billion years ago.
38:20How the fuck did this end?
38:22Dark space has been waiting...
38:26..to come here.
38:29Right, right here.
38:32In these disaster movies in microcosm,
38:35the hero must overcome both the physical and mental obstacles
38:39they face, but the underlying tension remains the same.
38:42Will he or she make it out alive?
38:50Amid the mountains of obstacles,
38:52disaster movies need to throw in signs of hope,
38:55which keep the rollercoaster ride running
38:57and the audience on the edge of their seats.
38:59Here in Frank Marshall's true-life disaster movie Alive from 1993,
39:04the stranded survivors of an air crash in the Andes
39:07are given a glimmer of salvation
39:09when a passing plane seems to spot them.
39:12Can they see us? Of course they can!
39:15Hey, here we are!
39:23He dipped his wings! He dipped his wings!
39:26Similarly, back on the SS Poseidon,
39:28Gene Hackman's group become hopeful
39:30when they encounter more survivors.
39:33My God, there are other people still alive!
39:36But this is classic disaster movie false hope,
39:39designed to add an extra layer of dramatic tension and despair,
39:43like in Alive, when it slowly dawns on the stranded rugby team
39:47that a rescue party may never arrive.
39:51Why haven't they dropped us any supplies?
39:53Why haven't they dropped us any supplies?
40:00They could have done that by now.
40:02They would have done that by now.
40:08False hope can provoke conflict too,
40:11with Hackman's makeshift congregation turning on each other.
40:14If all those people think they're right by going up there,
40:17maybe we should go with them, and not you!
40:20That's brilliant, that's brilliant!
40:22They've decided to drown themselves, so that makes it all right.
40:25That's typical. Everything by the night...
40:28Unsurprisingly, it soon becomes clear
40:30that the other group are heading towards their doom,
40:33with the smoke and off-kilter camera angles
40:36lending them a zombie quality, like the living soon-to-be-dead.
40:41These false dawns are powerful twists
40:44that make it look like all is lost.
40:46But is it? Well, not quite.
40:53In Roma, Alfonso Cuarón's semi-autobiographical drama
40:57which won him Best Director at the 2019 Oscars,
41:00the characters take a trip to the cinema.
41:03Roma is set in Mexico in the early 70s,
41:06and the movie being screened is Marooned,
41:09John Sturges' 1969 tale of astronauts stranded in space.
41:17It's a nice nod to the precariousness
41:20It's a nice nod to the precursor of Cuarón's own Gravity,
41:24for which, incidentally, he also won a Best Director Oscar.
41:29And Marooned also features one of the cleverest examples
41:32of a key disaster movie trope,
41:34the crazy last-ditch plan
41:36when all other options for rescue have been exhausted.
41:41Shall we move the tower back in 12 minutes?
41:43You give the order and we'll do it.
41:46Houston Flight, is the rescue craft go for Point Charlie?
41:50We can hit Point Charlie, yes,
41:52but from there on in, the pilot will be on his own.
41:54Rescue, can you rendezvous without an on-board computer programme?
41:57You just get me in the ballpark.
42:00Then we are go for launch.
42:02Not only does the rescue mission in Marooned
42:04involve an experimental craft
42:06that's never been passed as safe for manned use,
42:09NASA also have to launch it through the eye of a hurricane
42:12that's passing over Cape Canaveral.
42:15Go!
42:23It's an idea echoed on a much larger scale
42:26in Christopher Nolan's Interstellar,
42:28where Matthew McConaughey and his crew are fired through a wormhole
42:31to find habitable worlds for humanity
42:33as Earth faces ecological disaster.
42:42What is that?
42:46It's...
42:48Distorting space-time.
42:52Don't! Don't!
42:55The thing about these plans is that they're often
42:57pretty much suicide missions.
42:59That's captured in a memorable exchange in The Towering Inferno,
43:02when Fire Chief Steve McQueen's bosses try to persuade him
43:05to kill the blaze by blowing up the water tanks
43:08at the top of the tower.
43:11How do I get back down?
43:16Oh, shit.
43:19Sometimes the plan isn't really a plan at all,
43:22just a final desperate option,
43:24a choice between certain death
43:26and sawing your arm off with a blunted pocketknife.
43:37Aside from the ship turning over,
43:39the most intense sequence in the Poseidon adventure
43:42is when the characters are forced to swim a lengthy,
43:45flooded section of the vessel in the hope of reaching safety beyond.
43:49But if they don't take the plunge, they'll end up drowning anyway.
43:53How many people in the audience must have held their own breath
43:56as they watched this scene?
43:59Which Shelley Winters described as her reason for taking the movie,
44:03making personal sense of the grand-scale destruction.
44:07The climax of The Towering Inferno
44:09offers more spectacular and straightforward thrills.
44:12When Steve McQueen and Paul Newman blow up the water tanks,
44:15we're reminded of films like The Guns Of Navarone.
44:19And they're similarly satisfying, climactic explosions
44:22that signify mission accomplished.
44:25It's a bit like watching a movie,
44:27but it's also a bit like watching a movie.
44:30It's a bit like watching a movie,
44:32but it's also a bit like watching a movie.
44:35Mission accomplished.
44:38The Poseidon adventure is sterner and bleaker,
44:41with characters killed at random, even in the final minutes.
44:49This pushes Gene Hackman's Reverend Scott
44:51into one of the most extraordinary tirades in popular cinema.
44:56Will you not get up and fight for us?
44:59But, damn it, don't fight against us!
45:01Leave us alone!
45:05How many more sacrifices?
45:07How much more blood?
45:18How many more lives?
45:21With its anger and anguish, it's worthy of an Old Testament prophet,
45:25and it brings us right back to the biblical underpinnings
45:28of disaster movies.
45:30Like Moses, Reverend Scott leads his people to the Promised Land,
45:33but never enters it himself.
45:43Moses in the story of Exodus is, of course, from the Old Testament,
45:47where no matter how bad things get, floods, plagues,
45:50humanity gets a second chance.
45:52But what about when there aren't any second chances?
45:55That's the theme of the last book of the New Testament, Revelation,
45:59the ultimate disaster.
46:04REVELATION
46:10Since the invention of atomic weapons,
46:12movie-makers and audiences alike have found it surprisingly easy
46:15to contemplate the end of all life on Earth,
46:18or at least human civilisation.
46:21Where the hell?
46:23Are the Russians involved, sir?
46:25That's all I've been told.
46:26Just came in on the red phone.
46:28My orders are for this base to be sealed tight,
46:30and that's what I mean to do, seal it tight.
46:32Now, I want you to transmit plan R, R for Robert, to the wing.
46:38Plan R for Robert.
46:41Stanley Kubrick's Doctor Strangelove,
46:43or How I Learned To Stop Worrying And Love The Bomb,
46:46shows how easily the insane system of mutually assured destruction
46:50is set in motion by a paranoid general.
46:54One of our base commanders, he had a sort of,
46:58well, he went a little funny in the head.
47:01You know, just a little funny.
47:04And he went and did a silly thing.
47:09Well, I'll tell you what he did.
47:11He ordered his planes...
47:15..to attack your country.
47:17Well, let me finish, Dimitri.
47:21Let me finish, Dimitri.
47:23Well, listen, how do you think I feel about it?
47:27Kubrick and the many faces of Peter Sellers
47:29show us just how farcically an impending nuclear confrontation
47:33and plans for mankind's survival could play out.
47:38The ironic finish of Strangelove,
47:40with Vera Lynn singing We'll Meet Again as the mushroom clouds rise,
47:44remains one of cinema's few really final finales.
47:49Don't know where
47:52But I know we'll meet again
47:57Some sunny day...
48:00Nuclear weapons wreak a different kind of havoc
48:03in the ingenious and economical 1961 British sci-fi disaster movie
48:07The Day The Earth Caught Fire.
48:09Weapons tests knock the earth off its axis,
48:12resulting in catastrophic climate change.
48:17London becomes an arid desert, with the Thames a dry riverbed
48:21and the population rioting over water shortages.
48:24Part of this movie's odd, edgy, low-budget realism
48:27comes from scenes shot in the actual offices of the Daily Express
48:31and featuring Arthur Christensen, the one-time editor of that paper.
48:36They say that those two bangs did more than alter the tilt.
48:39They made an 11-degree shift in our orbit.
48:43And we're moving towards the sun.
48:46The clever, ambiguous ending to the picture leaves us hanging
48:50and shows us two alternative newspaper front pages.
48:53World Saved and World Doomed.
49:02There's very little ambiguity on display 37 years later
49:05when the impending destruction of all life on the planet
49:08was the subject of not one but two big-budget Hollywood films
49:12with virtually identical plots.
49:15In Deep Impact, the reason for the crisis is not human meddling
49:19but what insurance companies call an unavoidable act of God,
49:23a big, bad comet heading at the Earth.
49:28That idea is reprised in Armageddon,
49:30the biggest box-office hit of 1998
49:33and the work of my least favourite Hollywood director, Michael Bay.
49:37Brash, noisy and bombastic...
49:42..the polar opposite of the understated The Day The Earth Caught Fire,
49:46is the Donald Trump of disaster flicks.
49:50What is this thing?
49:51It's an asteroid, sir.
49:53How big are we talking?
49:55Sir, our best estimate is 97.6 billion...
49:58It's the size of Texas, Mr President.
50:00Yes, sir.
50:01The potentially apocalyptic threat
50:03in Alex Garland's sci-fi disaster fusion Annihilation
50:07is far more mysterious and unexplained.
50:11Arriving from space,
50:13a strange and seemingly unstoppable phenomenon called The Shimmer
50:17begins changing and consuming the world.
50:21Natalie Portman is one of an all-female group of military scientists
50:25who have to enter The Shimmer and unlock its secret.
50:29OK, so we know what happened to the last group. They went insane.
50:33There was something alive inside that man.
50:35No, that was a trick of the light.
50:37What?
50:38I've been a paramedic for ten years, all right?
50:40I've scraped people off the side of the road.
50:42You see some weird shit. That was a trick of the light.
50:45Fear and anxiety permeate this underrated and intimidating world.
50:49It's a place of fear and anxiety.
50:51It's a place of fear and anxiety.
50:53It's a place of fear and anxiety.
50:55Fear and anxiety permeate this underrated and intriguing hybrid
50:59of sci-fi, horror and disaster movie,
51:02which Barack Obama smartly named as one of his favourite films of 2018.
51:14Anxiety is the main emotion explored in a Japanese film made in 1955,
51:19just a year after Gojira,
51:21and which taps into the same concerns in a very different way.
51:25In Akira Kurosawa's I Live In Fear,
51:28businessman Toshiro Mifune is so paralysed by the terror of nuclear war
51:33that he ruins his family's life planning for it.
51:37HE BREATHES HEAVILY
51:46A theme taken up by Jeff Nichols' Take Shelter,
51:49with Michael Shannon as another prophet of doom.
51:52I see you!
51:55Goddammit!
52:00You think I'm crazy? Huh? Is that what he told you?
52:04In fact, the doom-mongers even have their own films.
52:07In recent years, we've seen the rise of a particularly niche brand
52:10of end-times movies,
52:12films made by and for fundamentalist American Christians
52:15who believe that all those things foretold in the Book of Revelation,
52:19which, let's be honest, most of us first heard about through the Omen movies,
52:23really are just about to happen.
52:26The highest profile of these are the Left Behind series,
52:29based on a run of best-selling books
52:31about the tribulations of the sinners left behind at the end of days
52:35when all the faithful, i.e. the expected audience for the film,
52:39are transported bodily to heaven.
52:42There's a spiteful edge to these movies,
52:45which is exposed in Michael Tolkien's forgotten but brilliantly heretical
52:49masterpiece The Rapture.
52:51The film follows the struggles of sinner-turned-born-again believer
52:54Mimi Rogers as she's put through a series of Job-like trials,
52:58including making such a hideous sacrifice that when the rapture
53:02finally arrives, she refuses to be saved.
53:05And furthermore, like Jean Hackman in The Poseidon Adventure,
53:08she indicts God for his divine cruelty.
53:12If life is a gift, if it really is a gift,
53:16and there really is a heaven...
53:18There really is a heaven.
53:20..then why should I thank Him for the gift of so much suffering, Mary?
53:26So much pain on the earth that He created.
53:30Let me ask Him why.
53:34Tell God you love Him.
53:39I can't.
53:41In Lars von Trier's Melancholia, Kirsten Dunst plays another anti-heroine
53:46whose internal struggles appear to provoke the Day of Reckoning.
53:50Grappling with clinical depression,
53:52Dunst's Justine dismantles her own wedding party
53:55and seems to bring about the end of the world
53:57through sheer force of solipsistic angst.
54:00Melancholia tackles the difficult theme
54:03that we're all locked into the shelters of our own psyches
54:06and sometimes we wish everything would end just so our own pain will stop.
54:12It tastes like ashes.
54:17SHE SOBS
54:23It's all right, sis.
54:27It should come as no surprise that von Trier,
54:30who's famously wrestled with depression himself,
54:32should have created one of the most weirdly beautiful
54:35and haunting destructions of planet Earth in the movies.
54:45In some ways, all films about the end of the world
54:48play upon morbid yet beguiling fantasies
54:51about release and salvation.
54:54But more traditional disaster movies don't offer such finality.
54:58Instead, they ask us to look to the future.
55:09So, after all this chaos and carnage, what have we learned?
55:14Well, don't live in New York, for one thing.
55:17Of all the world's cities, it's been destroyed the most times on screen,
55:20at least 69 by one recent reckoning.
55:24Followed by LA on 27, is this Hollywood masochism or wishful thinking?
55:30And then Tokyo, most often by giant monsters.
55:34And you know what? We won't always have Paris.
55:41Don't ignore any strange signs or omens, however odd they may be.
55:46Oh, and stick with the dog. They always survive.
55:51But seriously, as we've seen time and again,
55:54disaster movies, like horror movies, are rooted in morality tales.
55:58Stephen King once wrote that many horror stories
56:01contain a morality that would make a Puritan smile.
56:04And disaster movies similarly teach us to watch our step,
56:08while reminding us how grateful we should be
56:10that we're not the ones caught in the nightmare.
56:14But the genre isn't just about punishment and judgement.
56:19Look at San Francisco, where the earthquake seems like an act of God
56:23sent to teach a lesson to club owner Clark Gable.
56:28But in the wake of the quake, he discovers redemption.
56:32And somehow that redemption offers a new beginning,
56:35not just for Gable, but for the rest of the world.
56:39And somehow that redemption offers a new beginning,
56:42not just for Gable, but for all the survivors.
56:52For me, the most thoughtful disaster movie ending
56:55is altogether more down-to-earth,
56:58as Paul Newman's architect sits at the foot of his ruined tower.
57:04I don't know.
57:06Maybe they just ought to leave it the way it is.
57:09Kind of shrine to all the bullshit in the world.
57:14But Newman's final exchange with Steve McQueen's fire chief
57:18shows he's learnt perhaps the most important lesson of all,
57:22humility.
57:24You know, one of these days,
57:26we're going to kill 10,000 in one of these fire trenches.
57:29And I'm going to keep eating smoke and bringing out body
57:33Somebody ask us how to build them.
57:49OK, I'm asking.
57:54You know where to reach me?
57:57Whether they carry an explicitly moral message or not,
58:01disaster movies have an irony at their heart.
58:04By reminding us that we're alive, by showing us the spectre of death,
58:08their displays of destruction are strangely uplifting,
58:12leaving us, like the survivors at the end of the story,
58:15ready to face the world anew.
58:56AVAILABLE NOW