3. Outbreak (1995)
If Deep Impact errs on the side of being too grounded for a fun disaster movie, Outbreak almost errs on the side of being too thrilling, especially at the height of the COVID-19 pandemic. When director Wolfgang Petersen’s film about a virus sweeping across the country matched real-world events, it became way less fun and way too real, breaking the escapist contract that the best disaster movies make.
Now with the worst of the pandemic behind us, we can approach Outbreak as the big, fun Hollywood nonsense that it was meant to be. The director of Das Boot and The Perfect Storm, Peterson knows how to do big, sweeping adventure, and he’s brought along the perfect cast, including New Hollywood vets Dustin Hoffman and Donald Sutherland and big stars of the era, Morgan Freeman and Renee Russo. Outbreak is all spectacle, something that needs to be enjoyed at the proper distance from the actual events it portrays.
2. Twister (1996)
In many ways, director Jan de Bont’s Twister is the ideal ’90s disaster movie. The screenplay by Michael Crichton and Anne-Marie Martin has just the right mix of science and tropey character growth to carry the audience along. The cast, if somewhat overstuffed, is full of ringers, from Philip Seymour Hoffman and Lois Smith to Alan Ruck and Jami Gertz, to all-time “that guys” Patrick Fischler and Sean Whalen. And it has the ideal leads for a big budget B-movie of the era in Helen Hunt and Bill Paxton.
Most importantly, Twister has twisters, giant tornadoes that rip through the landscape in incredible set pieces. De Bont understands the inherent comedy of cows flying across the sky, and the terror of a room exploding around a person. He knows how to portray the ecstasy that follows a life-threatening event, so that we viewers, like the thrill-seekers onscreen, can’t wait to chase down another tornado, jumping right back into the disaster we just survived.
1. Titanic (1997)
As great as the last few entries on this list are, let’s be honest—there’s an iceberg-sized gap between even Twister and our number one, Titanic. And it all comes down to James Cameron, a filmmaker whose ambition, sensibilities, and talent demand a budget that scares Hollywood, and then provides even greater returns.
With each passing year, as the celebrity furor around Leonardo DiCaprio and Kate Winslet fades and the Celine Dion megahit drops from our radios, the filmmaking brilliance of Titanic stands out more. The first half of the film does the heavy lifting so effortlessly, we don’t even realize we’re being taught the character relations, the class structure, and the layout of the ship. When the boat starts to go down, we’re never confused about where the characters are, allowing us to sit back and feel: feel the tragedy of the love story, the anger at arrogant injustice, and the awe of everything falling apart. Titanic truly is the king of the disaster world.
