20 Ways Disaster Movies Have Evolved: Then vs. Now

Disaster movies do not look so interesting these days. Between the pandemic, climate change, smug billionaires, the ongoing rise of the far right, and Disney continuing to give us so much Star Wars we don’t even care about Star Wars anymore, clearly an entire genre devoted to destruction and misery hits way too close to home. Of course, the interesting paradox here is that big disaster spectacles nevertheless continue to rule the box-office. So we do like that. Yet by the time we saw a poster for Moonfall at the theater, we could not but groan and be like “really, Roland? Another one? When will it stop? When are you going to take control of your addiction, Roland Emmerich?”

Where were we? Oh yeah, disaster movies. They’re not the best or the smartest (especially not the smartest), but even if the genre has sorta disappeared from cultural relevance during the last few years (and yes, this includes whatever movie you’re thinking of as a counterexample), they still have a tiny place in our heart. Not so much as, say, radical ’90s cartoon intros, but still, they’re there somewhere. Thus, from old-timey disaster movies to our current CGI hellscape, we now take a walk down memory lane to compare disaster movies and the overall disaster genre then and now (along with a scrappy dog we saved during the opening earthquake of our movie Memory Lane, directed by Roland Emmerich, and which also sucks, Roland).