I grew up watching disaster movies. Here’s what I’ve learned | Hadley Freeman
From Armageddon to Outbreak, there’s something reassuring about their predictability, now more than ever
For reasons I don’t need to spell out, I’ve been thinking a lot about disaster movies recently. I had to leave my home yesterday, something I – a deeply lazy person – avoid even in the healthiest of times, and it really was extraordinary how cinematic London was looking. Being American, London always looks cinematic to me, but on this occasion it seemed a lot more 28 Days Later than Mary Poppins. Public transport was so empty that when a busker came into the train carriage it was just him singing Send In The Clowns directly to me, an audience of one. It was simultaneously the most romantic/awkward thing that has ever happened to me, and I was so moved/mortified that I gave him a fiver and rushed back to the safety of home, like everyone else.
As a teenager of the 90s, I grew up watching disaster movies. Some people (my parents) might have thought that all those hours spent at the Odeon with Armageddon, Twister, Titanic and (perhaps most pertinently) Outbreak were yet more grains of sand of my life that I was merrily chucking into the void. In fact, I was nobly preparing myself for this moment. Disaster films teach us that, even while the world becomes scary and unmanageable, there are only half a dozen types of people, and there is something deeply reassuring about that predictability, now more than ever. So ask yourself: which disaster movie cliche do you want to be?