In a predictable turn of events, the world did not end. The Mayans were wrong. Please pay your mortgages. Buy food. Feed your pets. Go to work on Wednesday. If perchance you were looking forward to the vague end of the world, I can commiserate. I’ve often gone to see movies centered on an “end of the world” trope only to be sorely disappointed in one way or the other. There are a few solid movies with this premise – A Friend for the End of the World and Melancholia come immediately to mind – but they are most often outweighed by mediocre schlock banking on people being sated by decent visuals. Here are the 5 Most Disastrous Disaster Films.
5. Armageddon: This flick is always hit and miss. It’s uberstylized, which can be fun, but it’s also a mishmash of saccharine moments, inorganic romances, and perfunctory regret. Plus, Ben Affleck was just about unbearable at this point, which probably also fueled the critical kamakazis against Pearl Harbor, but I digress. What disrupts this film the most is the ridiculous premise that a bunch of blue-collar deep-core drillers could actually be shot into space, land on a hurtling asteroid and stay on it long enough to destroy it. The paucity of experience they have in anything outside of their occupation would probably be an issue, as would a little thing called gravity. The speed of the asteroid would shake each of these workers off like fleas from a dog. And finally, the most powerful H-Bomb ever created would be needed to send this asteroid off course. Something they probably wouldn’t trust to a guy more familiar with the ocean that space.
4. The Day the Earth Stood Still (2008): Remade from the 1951 film of the same name, this Keanu Reeves vehicle is heavy on special effects and an incoherent script. While the original film was set in the time of the Cold War, focusing on potential nuclear annihilation, the newer film’s premise is that we must recognize our impact on the environment. This is certainly relevant given the ping-pong discourse that is global warming, but Reeves’ brooding Klaatu (an alien in human form who wishes to address the UN) is more cold than convincing and ultimately boring.
3. 2012: Dear Roland Emmerich, you can’t outrun an earthquake in a car – unless you’re John Cusack. I give this 2011 movie credit for bringing to light the Mayan prediction before anyone else, but that’s where the praise stops. I understand Emmerich’s ideas here in trying to recreate a Genesis tale, replete with flooding, arks, and civilization restarting around Africa, but the screenplay is so unnecessarily weighty and the film so long that it should be charged with changing the Earth’s elements solely based on its carbon footprint. And, you can’t outrun at earthquake in a car!
2. End of Days: Schwarzenegger meets the devil sounds like an action-packed premise, but End of Days can’t decide whether it’s ripping off The Omen, Rosemary’s Baby, or The Exorcist. With his creepy eyebrows, high cheekbones, and Irish accent, Gabriel Byrne is a perfect choice for the devil incarnate, and Robin Tunney isn’t bad, but does he really need to be priest – Father Thomas Aquinas no less? And does Arnold need to be Jericho? How about York’s (Robin Tunney) doctor, Abel? Riddling a film with Biblical names does not make it deep, profound, or good. It makes it transparent and obvious. And, if God was just going to capture the Devil and lock him in Hell for all eternity, why didn’t he do it in the beginning of the film? Why does he wait for Jericho (Sheesh again!) to impale himself on a sword?
1. The Day After Tomorrow: I was able to look past the tidal wave that came from New Jersey. I bought into the notion that a battleship could make its way around the island of Manhattan and navigate itself through the convoluted downtown streets and up Fifth Avenue to the Research Library. I even suspended my disbelief long enough to concede that perhaps no scientist in the entire freakin’ world saw this massive climate change coming until it was 48 hours away. What I can’t buy into are the wolves. Wolves that happen to be on a battleship that arrives at the library. Wolves that can open doors. Wolves that are impervious to the bitter cold that marathons after all humans, leaving frosty interiors in its wake. But the wolves? Their fur is like an adamantium North Face jacket. But ultimately, they are no match for the cross-armed, brooding Jake Gyllenhaal, who, throughout, seems to recognize the superb inanity of this film.
