John Guillermin
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Nothing is subtle, and Ioan Gruffudd's cowardly tycoon is a copy of Richard Chamberlain's engineer from The Towering Inferno, but Johnson, a human edifice, is more than equal to the preposterous destruction.
Oblivious to both narrative logic and the laws of physics, the cliché-filled “San Andreas” doesn’t nearly have the star power of earlier, better disaster movies it borrows from like “The Poseidon Adventure,” “Earthquake” and “The Towering Inferno” — which featured Paul Newman as the tower’s architect, a role played here by an embarrassed-looking Ioan Gruffudd (as Gugino’s fiancé).
Meanwhile, Mrs The Rock is romancing a slick architect who – like Paul Newman in The Towering Inferno – has just designed the tallest building in San Francisco.
The film in fact would be a paltry thing indeed without its commendably imperturbable star, especially given a shifting landscape that no longer finds the modern-day equivalents of Ava Gardner, Shelley Winters, or Fred Astaire (who was Oscar-nominated for The Towering Inferno, of all things) willing to climb onboard such spectacles as they were once wont to do.
Contagion (2011)
Directed by Steven Soderbergh
influenced by The Towering Inferno (1974)
Themes Plot
In fact, Soderbergh has cited the Allen-produced The Poseidon Adventure (1972) and The Towering Inferno (1974) as inspiratuons, though the Allen-directed The Swarm(1978) may be closer than anything else—only with a greater degree of governing intelligence and considerably more polish.
Think The Towering Inferno, as done by Anthony Trollope.
Back in the ‘70s when movies like The Towering Inferno and The Poseidon Adventure were huge, people gathered in droves to watch their favorite actors brave calamities of epic proportions, be it a raging fire, a ground-shattering earthquake or even a killer swarm of hyper-intelligent bees.
Now while such a large cast makes "Contagion" sound like "The Towering Inferno" for the hypochondriac set, it plays its cards remarkably close to the vest.
The cavalcade of noted actors and the "world in peril" angle would seem to make the film a natural heir to deeply stupid yet inexplicably enjoyable flicks like The Towering Inferno, Earthquake and in the '90s, when disco returned to the charts and disaster movies to the megaplex (cosmically linked events, one could argue), Dante's Peak or Outbreak.
But the Christie adaptations that followed — “Death on the Nile” (1978), “The Mirror Crack’d” (1980), “Evil Under the Sun” (1982) — were half-baked suspense films that felt, collectively, like the fading embers of a genre.
Death on the Nile (previously adapted in 1978) is not quite as enjoyable as Orient Express , primarily because the first hour of the movie takes too long to get out of the harbor and spends too much time on various non-essential activities before finally diving into the sleuthing of whodunit.
"Death on the Nile" is in almost every conceivable way a step down from Branagh's last outing with the character, to say nothing of the Peter Ustinov-led version from 1978 or the David Suchet television adaptation of Christie's novel from 2004.
Sluggishly directed by Kenneth Branagh, the unnecessary remake of the 1978 film version of Dame Agatha Christie’s Death on the Nile is a curiously boring misfire.
Even if one has seen the 1978 DEATH ON THE NILE, which starred Peter Ustinov as detective Hercule Poirot, and/or read the book, and/or just figured out what has to be happening from the set-up, there’s still fun to be had following the clues and figuring out who did what and why and how the central crime goes unsolved as long as it does.
Writer-director Rian Johnson, still being nerd-roasted for his smash-hit Star Wars installment, The Last Jedi, happily acknowledges his influences in constructing Knives Out—primarily Agatha Christie novels and the movies made from them (Death on the Nile, Evil Under the Sun), as well as pictures like Gosford Park and the super-tricky Deathtrap.
The best-known examples of the form – almost all of them Agatha Christie adaptations, such as And Then There Were None (1945), Murder on the Orient Express (1974), and Death on the Nile (1978) – tend to be clever, star-studded little tchotchkes, eliciting a fleeting sensation of gratification but no lasting artistic impression.
On the surface, Knives Out is very much like one of the star-studded old movie adaptations of Christie novels like Death on the Nile and Murder on the Orient Express — the kind of films where the posters featured all the actors' faces in tiny boxes.
Beyond dependable Christie fare like Death on the Nile (1978) and Murder on the Orient Express (2017), there’s Clue (1985), Gosford Park (2001) and now, Rian Johnson’s Knives Out.
(Murder on the Orient Express was last year’s release and Death on the Nile won’t arrive until 2020.)
Before "Death on the Nile" is released late next year, I hope its makers take a lesson or two from Rian Johnson's fun, ingeniously witty "Knives Out," which not only puts a modern twist on the classic whodunit, but is also one of the most purely entertaining movies to come around all year.
Murder on the Orient Express (2017)
Directed by Kenneth Branagh
influenced by Death on the Nile (1978), The Towering Inferno (1974)
In spite of the script’s heavy reliance on exposition, the ending cleverly nods to another Christie novel and film, “Death on the Nile.”
For more of Agatha Christie’s twists and turns, see “Death On The Nile” (1978) with Peter Ustinov as Hercule Poirot and a cast including Bette Davis, David Niven, Angela Lansbury, Maggie Smith and Jack Warden.
Movies always get Poirot wrong by casting swaggering British actors in the role: Albert Finney in the 1974 version of Murder on the Orient Express, Peter Ustinov in 1978’s Death on the Nile and subsequent films.
If you like this try: the original version with Albert Finney and other movies based on Agatha Christie stories like “Death on the Nile”…
Casting another actor in the Poirot (this time Ustinov), Death on the Nile was a slightly lesser affair than Orient Express .
He's legitimately entertaining in this (the "French" accent occasionally slipping into "Inigo Montoya" notwithstanding, and with the ending of MotOE directly leading into Death on the Nile, Branagh could easily spend the latter years of his career playing Poirot in more movies — not much chance of that in the Jack Ryan universe, alas (RIP Viktor Cherevin) — and that’d be swell.
He has long since surpassed the previous title-holder, producer Irwin Allen (“The Poseidon Adventure,’’ “The Towering Inferno’’), to become the Cecil B. DeMille of his generation, purveying jaw-dropping sensation yoked to cheap sentiment and appallingly (or is that appealingly?)
Of course, in the tradition of such ensemble-rich Hollywood disaster flicks as The Towering Inferno (1974) and Earthquake (1978), 2012 offers up a lot of talented actors getting paid obscene amounts of money to ham it up in support roles in front of a green screen – Woody Harrelson, Thandie Newton, Stephen McHattie, Jimi Mistri and George Segal all get to ask 'What was that?", roll their eyes a lot and die or fall in love.
Even “master of disaster” Irwin Allen liked to shake up the status quo in such films as The Poseidon Adventure and The Towering Inferno, but Emmerich has no imagination: His A-listers live, his support players die.
Unlike something like the original "Poseidon Adventure" (which Emmerich steals from liberally, especially in the film's last half-hour) or "The Towering Inferno," "2012" practices none of the craft of the classic suspense movies.
No, this one is closer in spirit to the oddball sequels and spinoffs that have cropped up from time to time over the years that have taken the giant ape into increasingly weirdo situations in the likes of “Son of Kong” (1933), which offered up a kid-sized take on the story, the immortal “King Kong vs. Godzilla” (1962), the slightly-less-immortal “King Kong Escapes” (1967) and the jaw-dropping “King Kong Lives” (1986), in which the big ape was brought back to life from his plunge from the World Trade Center with an artificial heart the size of a car and hooked up with a similarly-sized female ape who give birth to his child in the climax.
The Day After Tomorrow (2004)
Directed by Roland Emmerich
influenced by The Towering Inferno (1974)
Plot
Walker and Helen Reddy as a singing nun, while The Towering Inferno found a role for O.J. Simpson.
It's a little better than "Earthquake" but not as good as "The Towering Inferno," because it doesn't star Steve McQueen and Paul Newman.
Ever since the early 70's, moviegoers have approached watching disaster epics -- like "Earthquake," "The Poseidon Adventure" and "The Towering Inferno" -- with a guilty pleasure, train wreck-style sensibility.
If you grew up watching "Earthquake!" or "The Towering Inferno" -- or even their latter-day counterparts "Twister" and "Deep Impact" -- you'll be pleased to see "Day" follows the disaster movie playbook to the letter.
Independence Day (1996)
Directed by Roland Emmerich
influenced by The Towering Inferno (1974)
Themes
As satisfyingly hokey and full of Designated Colorful Characters as any of the great 1970s human-face-of-disaster epics ? the four Airport sagas, The Towering Inferno, etc. ? on which director Roland Emmerich and producer Dean Devlin (the 1994 Stargate team, who also wrote the screenplay) drew for inspiration.
Before you know it remakes of Agatha Christie’s Murder on the Orient Express and Death on the Nile are getting greenlit.
But, look at classic Christie versions like “Death on the Nile“, “Murder on the Orient Express” and “Evil Under The Sun”.
I think I liked See How They Run even more because I didn't like Kenneth Branagh's Death on the Nile earlier this year.
Kenneth Branagh adapted two of Christie’s most famous Hercule Poirot novels, Murder on the Orient Express (2017) and Death on the Nile (2022).
It’s an atmospheric movement that reminded me of a demonic survivalist cover of The Towering Inferno or even Die Hard .
Instead, The Meg trails lazily in its wake, constantly reminding you — just as Skyscraper did with The Towering Inferno and Die Hard — that there are better films of its ilk that you could be watching instead.
War of the Worlds (2005)
Directed by Steven Spielberg
influenced by The Towering Inferno (1974)
Visuals
Some of the spectacular visual effects — like an enormous bridge crumbling and a capsizing ferry hurling passengers and cargo into dark churning waters — recall the skeltering big-budget chaos of such '70s disaster epics as "The Towering Inferno" and "The Poseidon Adventure."
There were films like “The Towering Inferno” and “Earthquake,” the kind of exercises in star power where you would think, hey, that’s O.J. Simpson as the head of security.
But when the legendary actors finally got together in 1974, they made The Towering Inferno.
Somewhere between producer Irwin Allen ( The Towering Inferno , The Poseidon Adventure ) and director Michael Bay (the lamentable Transformers series) there is Roland Emmerich, the gleeful and unapologetic German-born orchestrator of apocalyptic mass destruction.
In Moonfall, he kind of does both, adopting tropes largely invented by ‘70s disaster king, Irwin Allen (The Poseidon Adventure, The Swarm, The Towering Inferno) and giving them a modern, larger than life update.
In Independence Day , The Day After Tomorrow , and 2012 , he dutifully follows the template set by earlier films like The Towering Inferno .
Far more often, you get the incidental absurdity of vehicles like San Andreas or 2012 or any number of disaster “classics” going back to The Towering Inferno and other luminaries of the early era.
Ever since Irwin Allen passed from this mortal coil and took his terrifically tacky disaster films with him (The Poseidon Adventure, The Towering Inferno), the only person capable of capturing his campy kitsch craziness in the wake of an Armageddon is Roland Emmerich.
President Barbie (Issa Rae, The Lovebirds) makes sure the laws are in place with the all-female Supreme Court, while Lawyer Barbie (Sharon Rooney, Dumbo ), Dr. Barbie (Hari Nef, Bad Things ), Physicist Barbie (Emma Mackey, Death on the Nile ) and Writer Barbie (Alexandra Shipp, tick, tick…BOOM! ) spread their wealth of knowledge when they aren’t accepting awards or hanging at the beach with Robbie’s “Stereotypical” Barbie.
Recently, the likes of Death on the Nile and Hulu's No Exit have pleased amateur sleuths with tales of shady criminals making the lives of a small ensemble absolutely miserable.
Except that it wasn’t the kind of whodunit similar to say, Knives Out or this year’s Death on the Nile but more of a mystery drama that explored the grim nature of Chef Slowik’s multi-course agenda in a darkly comic manner.