Movies

Movies: Natural Disasters Movies

A movie is a recorded sequence of video images displayed with sufficient rapidity as to create the illusion of motion and continuity. Its development begins in 1824 with the thaumatrope, an optical illusion machine that has a lantern to create the appearance of moving images, since then making movies has evolved to today’s booming technology. In fact, India is the country that produces the most number of movies with around 1,000 movies filmed annually in various languages, followed by Nigeria and the United States. There exist around 27 genres of movies based on adventures, science, history, drama, romance, action, disasters, horror, musical, family, etc. This time, I will focus on the movie genre that revolves around natural disasters or cataclysmic movies. 

Recently, we have seen the emergence of hundreds of films based on natural disasters. When we see these movies we worry and ask if it is possible for things like that to happen. In this case, we affirm that is a fiction film. We can establish how fictional or real these types of movies are.

In first instance, we have the natural disasters or cataclysms movies, those that are greatly exaggerated. Movies like 2012 (2009) that shows the end of the world; or the most recent, San Andreas (2015) where the southwest of the United States is devastated by an earthquake and a tsunami, are criticized by scientists and films critics for being exaggerated in the form of showing the magnitude of the earthquakes and tsunamis. Scientists say that this can happen, but not in the form that these movies show it. Other movies like Volcano (1997), where a volcano in the middle of a city destroys everything around; Knowing (2009) where a geomagnetic solar storm burned completely the Earth and  Deep Impact (1998) where a comet impacts the Earth and produces a cataclysmic including a mega tsunami; are only some movies with that problem. However, we must understand that movies are really intended to show only a fictional part of the force of nature.

On the other hand, we have seen these natural disaster movies that show that some of them have happened in real life, in some parts of the world. For example, the movie The Impossible (2012) recounts the dramatic moment when a tsunami hit the coast of Thailand in 2004.  The same case happened with the movie Pompeii (2014) which was inspired by the eruption of Mount Vesuvius in 79 A.D. This volcano buried Pompeii, a city of The Roman Empire. Another example can be The Perfect Storm (2000) which tells the story of a fishing ship that was lost at sea after being caught by a hurricane in 1991. The movies Into the Storm (2014) and Twister (1996) approach the reality of what happens each year in the states of the center of United States with tornados. Although, these have not happened yet, movies like The Day After Tomorrow (2004) where a series of extreme weather events usher the globe in a new ice age; Avalanche (1978) where an avalanche destroys everything in its path; and even Poseidon (2006) that depicts a rogue wave turning upside down a cruise, show us examples of what could happen if Global Warming and climate change continue to increase, according to scientifics.

        As we can see, the main objective of these movies is to demonstrate what has happened, what can happen and what cannot possibly happen due their great exaggerations of the natural disasters that have made themselves memorable throughout history. While these movies reflect this, others transmit a lot of feelings. Love, happiness, sadness, horror and worry are only some of these feelings that each movie genre can give to people. Also, movies inform, teach, entertain, can give or take way hope and they can make you feel identified with its characters and situations. We know that behind these movies there are a lot of people working in each detail of the films. These groups of people have the labor of entertaining and bringing us all of these explicit or implicit messages in each movie.