Ronald Neame
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Inspired by popular pseudoscientific claims that the Mayan calendar predicts the world will end on Dec. 12, 2012, the film is a sort of disaster-genre greatest hits collection, gathering the tidal waves from "The Perfect Storm" and "The Poseidon Adventure," the temblors from "Earthquake," the volcanoes from "Volcano" and "Dante's Peak," the fireballs from "Armageddon," and other special-effects traumas into that paradoxical form of entertainment that allows viewers to escape their real-life woes by imagining something far, far worse.
He has become the modern day “Master of Disaster,” a title once bestowed on filmmaker Irwin Allen thanks to the success of his back-to-back blockbusters The Poseidon Adventure and The Towering Inferno.
Rumoured to cost some $260 million (U.S.) – figure most of it went for CGI – 2012 liberally lifts from the Irwin Allen playbook, especially The Poseidon Adventure, right down to the cruise ship turned turtle by a gigantic tsunami.
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.
When the ill-fated cruise ship of The Poseidon Adventure (1972)?a film Emmerich and co-writer Harald Kloser reference here more than once?was capsized by a tidal wave, my 10-year-old self may have understood that flesh-and-blood stuntmen, not actors, were hanging off those upside-down cocktail tables, but I still feared for them and, by extension, for the film's characters.
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.
Mix into this some The Poseidon Adventure (1972) reminiscences and maybe even Jacques Tourneur’s late period Vincent Price schlock War-Gods of the Deep (1965) and this sometimes-competent underwater creature feature doesn’t appear to have an original concept or idea lurking anywhere in its superficial recesses.
Greenland (2020)
Directed by Ric Roman Waugh
influenced by Meteor (1979), The Poseidon Adventure (1972)
Visuals Plot
One thing that Greenland has going for it is that it offers better visuals than 1979’s Meteor (although that stinker had Sean Connery in a role not typically mentioned in his career retrospective).
Since then, we’ve had everything from Abel Gance’s troubled 1931 French sci-fi thriller La fin du monde , in which rioters and revellers await doomsday, to 1979’s star-studded Meteor , about cold war enemies working together to fend off an approaching threat.
Natalie Wood! Henry Fonda!) Meteor back in 1979.
Maybe it’s that flooded ballroom scene from 1972’s “The Poseidon Adventure.”
The Day After Tomorrow (2004)
Directed by Roland Emmerich
influenced by The Poseidon Adventure (1972)
Dialogue
Emmerich is more of a kindred spirit to the late schlockmeister producer Irwin Allen ("The Swarm," "The Poseidon Adventure") than he is to Michael Moore, and "Day" is far more effective as a guilty-pleasure popcorn extravaganza than as any kind of a serious political statement.
I almost lost it when someone yelled, “It’s a wall of water coming toward New York City!” because that’s the most laughable line in The Poseidon Adventure (1972), too.
Triangle of Sadness (2022)
Directed by Ruben Östlund
influenced by The Poseidon Adventure (1972)
Plot
It’s a madhouse sequence which plays like Pasolini’s version of The Poseidon Adventure (1972), and hits a zenith the remainder of the film doesn’t quite reach.
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 fact, "San Andreas" wants to be "The Poseidon Adventure," but it doesn't have Gene Hackman as a tough-talking minister and Shelley Winters as a champion swimmer gone to seed.
The most fertile wave of celluloid disaster porn came in the 1970s, when maestros of mayhem like producer Irwin Allen churned out star-studded cataclysms like The Poseidon Adventure and The Towering Inferno .
With nowhere to go but into the submerged portions of the cave system, our clutch of disposable characters make stupid mistakes and die one at a time, slasher-style, though the film's obvious debt is owed rather to the disaster films typified by the work of producer Irwin Allen in the 1970s (the sheer quantity of water particularly reminded me of The Poseidon Adventure ), especially given the incredibly expected way that Josh and Frank patch their torn relationship as a direct result of their shared danger.
Famed blockbuster filmmaker Irwin Allen would be pleased as punch to see that his tradition of big, loud action flicks that pits man against nature-induced disaster, such as "The Poseidon Adventure" and "The Towering Inferno," is still alive.
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.
The Magdalene Sisters (2002)
Directed by Peter Mullan
influenced by The Prime of Miss Jean Brodie (1969)
Geraldine McEwan, best known for her title performance in the 1978 television mini-series, "The Prime of Miss Jean Brodie", gives an award-deserving performance with her portrayal of the malevolent matron, Sister Bridget.
Dead Poets Society (1989)
Directed by Peter Weir
influenced by The Prime of Miss Jean Brodie (1969)
Plot
It's been done before, many times, and better in movies like "Goodbye, Mr. Chips," "To Sir, With Love," "The Prime of Miss Jean Brodie," "Mr.
Sure, it’s still a concept episode in its way (or two, I suppose, doing The Poseidon Adventure in space alongside an hour of Jack Bauer-style, real-time 24 action)…
Captain America: The Winter Soldier (2014)
Directed by Joe Russo
influenced by The Odessa File (1974)
The Russos, transparent about their influences, pepper Winter Soldier with knowing winks to The Odessa File and The Boys From Brazil—to say nothing of the appearance of Three Days Of The Condor star Robert Redford as a jaded politician.
Harry Potter and the Philosopher's Stone (2001)
Directed by Chris Columbus
influenced by The Prime of Miss Jean Brodie (1969)
Richard Harris turns in his all-time best performance as headmaster Albus Dumbledore, Maggie Smith (whose on-screen teaching roles extend from The Prime of Miss Jean Brodie to Sister Act) brings just the right tone of dry asperity to Professor McGonagall, and Robbie Coltrane is a half-giant with a heart to match as Hagrid.