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From Issue 11, July 2003: Disaster Movies by Alby James (Complete Article: From time to time we will publish full articles on our website, particularly when connected to an event, promotion or scheme.) The first of the UK Film Council's three new ’25 Words or Less’ genres now open to writers is the Disaster movie. What are the genre characteristics that make Disaster movies stand out? Alby James is our intrepid guide. Amorous Dean Martin (Dino) is the pilot of a plane who has to deal with the news that there’s a bomb hidden somewhere on the plane, that his stewardess girlfriend is pregnant and that he has a little old lady on board who’s a professional stowaway. Burt Lancaster is Dino’s harassed brother-in-law and Chicago’s airport administrator having to deal with a blizzard, a plane stuck in the snow blocking the best runway, his snobby wife wanting a divorce, his girlfriend/assistant saying she’s going to move to San Francisco, protestors outside the main terminal threatening to sue if the secondary runway is used, and his boss wanting him to close down the airport. George Kennedy is the chief engineer whom Lancaster summons back to the airport to help prepare for the landing of Dino’s plane, but he has to leave behind a wife who’s desperate for quality time to sort out their problems. These are the plot lines of the 1970 film Airport (direction and script by George Seaton based on the novel by Arthur Hailey) that swept me off my feet when I was an impressionable 16-year-old and made me want to become an air traffic controller. This movie had everything: thrills, spills, surprise, suspense, mystery, danger, romance and bravado. It was the film that put the Disaster movie on the map. Though others preceded it, they did not catch the audience’s imagination so spectacularly. The 1970s was the decade that established the Disaster film, a sub-genre of action films that saw a revival in the 1990s influenced by increased technical know-how. Where the 1970s films were about spectacle and movie stars, the 1990s films pumped up the volume and concentrated on shots of the natural disaster destroying homes and sweeping up or crushing lots of digitised people. Airport was so successful at the box office that it spawned three sequels starting with Airport 1975, in which a Jumbo jet crashes into a small plane, injuring the captain and killing the first officer and flight engineer, and forcing the first stewardess to take the controls until the air force is able to land another pilot on the plane to avoid disaster. Airport ’77 followed, in which another Jumbo, this time full of VIPs and priceless art treasures, is hijacked and, flying low in fog to avoid radar, hits an oil derrick and crashes into the sea; it comes to rest on an underwater shelf somewhere in the Bermuda Triangle, with the thieves dead but the passengers safe in their airtight compartments until rescue comes. The third sequel, The Concorde: Airport ’79, tells of a plane that comes under attack from missiles because one of the passengers has evidence in her handbag of wrongdoing. Aside from these films there were other cracking spectacles in this genre such as The Poseidon Adventure (1972, direction by Ronald Neame and Irwin Allen, script by Wendell Mayes and Stirling Silliphant based on Paul Gallico’s novel); The Towering Inferno (1974, direction by John Guillermin and Irwin Allen, script by Stirling Silliphant based on two books, The Tower and The Glass Inferno); and Earthquake (1974, direction by Mark Robson, script by Mario Puzo and George Fox). More recently we’ve had Apollo 13 (1995), Outbreak (1995), Daylight (1996) Twister (1996), Independence Day (1996), Dante’s Peak (1997), Volcano (1997), Armageddon (1998), Godzilla (1998) and the mother of them all, James Cameron’s Titanic (1997) which, while it cost an all-time high of $200m, also raised an all-time high of over $600m at the box office and remains at the top of the blockbusters chart. Independence Day, at number 14 in the chart, raised $300m, Twister (27), raised $241m and Armageddon (47), raised $201m. Clearly, if all the ingredients are right, the Disaster movie is a major money-spinner for the studios because is it a real crowd-pleaser. So what defines the genre and what gives it its special qualities? To start with, the main plot is effectively a plot of fortune, an action-adventure in which the main interest lies in what happens next in a story full of jeopardy. It requires a hero of realistic proportions who finds it in himself to triumph over great adversity. With Charlton Heston, Gene Hackman, Steve McQueen and Pierce Brosnan as markers for this character-type (the heroes are mostly male but that does not have to be the case today), we’re talking about characters who cope well under pressure, who are sufficiently intelligent and awake to solve the many puzzles and surprises the plot throws up, and who are able to overcome the strong adversary among the group who always wants to go another way as they endeavour to survive the life and death situation. The protagonist in a disaster film seems to thrive on conflict, which explains why he seems to grow in stature as the stakes rise. Let me go one further; such characters verge on being messianic since their desire to save others is what seems to propel them through all situations. This drive may even cause them to sacrifice themselves at the climax so that the others may survive, as Gene Hackman’s vicar character does in The Poseidon Adventure. They are the kind of characters who make us feel good about mankind and reassure us that despite all the difficulties that we may have to face in the world today, we shall always overcome. Independence Day and Armageddon take this to the limit. The next crucial element of the Disaster film is the disaster itself, this being the main antagonist. Bad weather, an earthquake, tornadoes, an exploding volcano, a fire, a flood, these are archetypal disaster antagonists. They establish a compelling dramatic question that asks, ‘How are they going to get out of that?’ Survival seems impossible and we know that our characters need to be almost superhuman to do so. On a par with these are dilemmas caused by criminals or accidents, as in the first three airport films, The Poseidon Adventure and The Towering Inferno. When the USS Poseidon capsizes, it seems impossible that any of the passengers or crew can survive. The fact that only a handful of survivors do survive reinforces the enormity of this tragedy. A Night to Remember (1958) and Titanic (1997) are the two best film renditions of the Titanic sinking disaster. What made the tension of these films so powerful was that in The Poseidon Adventure the survivors were trapped inside the ship, climbing up towards the hull in the hope of meeting rescuers at a thin point where the rescuers could hear their tapping and use cutters to free them before the ship sank; in the Titanic story we knew that the ship was considered unsinkable and so there weren’t enough lifeboats on board to save everybody and rescuing ships could not arrive before the ship was due to sink. In the first Airport film the blizzard had a crippled plane stuck on the main runway while the aeroplane coming in had a bomb on board somewhere. In all these films, the stakes were very high, producing voyeuristic, visceral and vicarious emotional responses from the viewers. Unlike the Die Hard trilogy, in which the victims’ jeopardy is dependent on the hero, Bruce Willis’ character, being able to overcome the criminal antagonists, in Disaster films the hero has to overcome an inevitable end. Planes will run out of fuel so even if the bomb is found and disarmed, the plane must land sometime, bad weather or not, and it may not be able to land at another airport because it’s beyond reach or closed because of bad weather. Our hero must, nevertheless, save the passengers. A fire in a skyscraper built with cheaper than recommended materials for fire protection, which starts above the reach of the fire engines’ tallest ladders, will take hold and destroy the building, killing everyone unless someone can find a way of saving a few. If a huge passenger ship is holed badly, it will sink, taking most of its passengers and crew down with it. Spacemen cannot stay in space without food and oxygen so when a fault is found, it must be fixed otherwise all will die. This is the stuff of disaster antagonists and writers mustn’t confuse them with those found in the Thriller or the Horror film. Also, there must always be an Ernest Borgnine-type secondary antagonist who challenges the hero and raises doubts in the survivors’ minds about his ability to lead them to safety. The dramatic shape of the Disaster film has a Central character who often dreams of changing his life (normally through a romantic liaison, thus, establishing the love interest sub-plot), and his Ordinary world already looks brighter because of his hopes for what this will lead to. The Inciting Incident then occurs that hooks the central character and audience into the quest to save everyone from the clear and present danger. The Special World, unusually, persists through to the climax of Act Three when the threat is finally overcome or avoided. Only then do we return to the Ordinary World for the resolution. Along the way we encounter a range of survival skills and dramatic spills, heartache as a few of the survivors falter and die, and elation when the hero triumphs over the impossible. There may be gunfights (or at least physical fights) and chases and races against time as the hero endeavours to reach the next point of safety when he or she can take a breather. If it’s a natural disaster, there will also be many shots of the encroaching doom. Short-term fears and long-term hopes or long-term fears and short-term hopes are often dashed by the twists of the plot. This is a plot-intensive genre and the writer has to give it the very best of attention. It is worth remembering that while the resolution of the dilemma caused by the disaster forms the main plot, the other characteristic of this genre is that they are mixed genre films. The best of them have Romance genre sub-plots and even Family film sub-plots. The cast must therefore be designed to create these diversions from the main action and build our empathy and sympathy with those under threat. They should include children, grandparents and lovers in crisis. These are films that remind us of the meaning of life, the people we most care about and who makes us really happy. When you stare death in the face like this, you know who really matters to you and what you must do. The best of these films do all this. Finally, in disaster films the central character is always racing against time. This means that the story normally takes place over a matter of hours rather than days and, as the clock ticks by, the intensity increases to almost unbearable levels. The Disaster film is also realistic in tone and the viewer will often leave the film feeling exhausted; they are emotional rollercoaster-rides of the highest order. So, is this a genre for you? Well, in these days of SARS epidemics, global warming and fears of major terrorist attacks, the public is ripe for some new encounters. Cheap air travel may bring incurable diseases right into our major centres of population from a secretive society in the Far East before the health organisations of the world have even been told that the disease exists. Tornadoes have been seen in southern coastal areas of England and we have had floods in all parts of the country in recent years. Whatever next? That’s your challenge. Alby James is the Head of Screenwriting at Leeds Metropolitan University. How to submit to 25 Words or Less
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