The Lure of Disaster: The Iliad to Modern Blockbusters
Humans have always been fascinated by stories about terrible things happening to other humans. One of the oldest stories in Western civilization, The Iliad, describes the destruction of Troy by its enemies, the Greeks. But of course, before Troy is destroyed, the story introduces us to the people inside the city. Thus, when we finally reach the violent climax, we are swept up in the personal cost of the Trojan War.
To judge by the enormous box office earnings for movies like 2012, the same basic formula is still effective today. In this paper I will present a brief history of disaster movies, starting with the silent film era and continuing on through some more recent movies. Throughout, I hope to illustrate the way directors get us to care about the characters, and then unleash the forces of disaster against them. In the hands of a true artist, this formula can create exciting, interesting drama.
Disasters in Silent Films
Disaster movies have been popular since the beginning of cinema. Directors of the silent film era readily understood the value of good disaster. Such works tend to fall into two categories, personal dramas and epics.
Personal dramas focus on an individual working out a private problem against a backdrop of impending catastrophe. The Last Days of Pompeii, for example, capitalizes on the excitement inherent in the eruption of Mount Vesuvius and the devastation that we, the modern viewers, know will follow this cataclysmic event. Because the majority of the movie focuses on the people of Pompeii, living their lives unaware of the impending eruption, the disaster, when it finally comes, is all the more overwhelming.
The main character is a girl named Nidia, who struggles to gain the attention of her beloved, a powerful citizen. As at least one critic has observed, this creates an interesting