How to write the perfect disaster movie

[AdamSmith]

Bit of Brit drollery occasioned partly by the new, evidently dreadful 'Day the Earth Stood Still' remake...

How to write the perfect disaster movie

As Roland Emmerich prepares his latest epic and The Day the Earth Stood Still invades cinemas, we offer a 10-point plan for the ultimate disaster film

Roland Emmerich, the king of the disaster movie, is back. Not content with sending a tidal wave crashing over Manhattan in The Day After Tomorrow or allowing aliens to destroy the White House in Independence Day, Emmerich, in his new film 2012, is gearing up to unleash volcanic eruptions, huge cracks in the surface of the earth, enormous typhoons – and more floods.

If you can't wait for that, today sees the release of a remake of The Day the Earth Stood Still, in which alien spheres suddenly turn up all over the world – including one in Central Park – heralding an attack on the planet that only Keanu Reeves can prevent.

Any of this sound at all familiar? Allow me to refresh your memory with this 10-point guide to the perfect disaster movie.

1. Pick a good disaster

A lot of the best disasters – asteroids, aliens, earthquakes, tsunamis – have already been taken, sometimes twice, as in the embarrassing simultaneous releases of Armageddon/Deep Impact and Volcano/Dante's Peak. So you'll have to be a bit creative. Pick something unusual: what if gravity started going sideways instead of straight down, say?

Your opening scene should show life seemingly going on as normal – think of Will Smith going out to get a paper at the start of Independence Day. Your lead character should get up one morning, rumpling his hair and yawning, and head for the bathroom to clean his teeth. He turns on the tap, oblivious to the first signs of disaster about to strike. Gradually the stream of water begins to veer towards him. The soapdish suddenly tips off the shelf and crashes to the floor, and he starts to lose his balance. He falls flat against the bathroom wall, water streaming over him from the tap. Shaking his head, he pulls a small bottle of whiskey out of his dressing gown pocket and looks at it disapprovingly.

2. You need a scientist

A scientist or professor of some kind – middle-aged, handsome – is crucial to a good disaster movie. We should first see him hard at work in the lab or out on a mission (perhaps briefly wearing glasses), as he starts to get the first inkling of what's going wrong. Perhaps some animals in a zoo have been spooked by unusual weather, or a car has been blown down a motorway upside down for no apparent reason. Baffled, he takes his findings to an older mentor, who adds a fact of his own: enormous wasps three times their usual size have been appearing all over the Arctic, say. It's the missing piece of the puzzle. "You've got to take this to the president," the mentor tells him.

3. You need a hero

This is not the scientist. The hero has to be a bit more down to earth, a bit of a rough diamond. Flawed but noble – like Bruce Willis in Armageddon. A guilt-ridden cat burglar with an adopted, terminally ill orphan son would be perfect.

4. Send your scientist to the White House

A quick meeting with the president of the United States seems to be the first stop for all worried scientists in disaster movies. But don't make it too easy. A sceptical and slightly sinister vice-president or secretary of state should stop him at the door to the Oval Office. He doesn't want to listen to any of this mumbo-jumbo about sideways gravity. "But this might be our only chance to save the world!" the scientist tells him.

"Listen, Professor, you go back to your theories," sneers the veep, "and leave saving the world to us."

5. Mayhem across the globe

Now it's time for you to up the stakes and sacrifice a couple of foreign cities – or even a minor American one like Chicago (you're keeping New York and LA back for later, of course). London or Rome would be perfect. Shanghai or Tokyo are great, too. In his lab, the scientist turns on the TV news (preferably a branded channel affiliated with the film studio) to see foreign buildings crashing down into the streets. Reporters jabber to camera and slide helplessly down the middle of the road. "It's started," murmurs the scientist.

6. Mayhem in New York

As the scientist tries to alert an unbelieving public, things should really get serious: it's time to hit New York. In a flurry of special effects, the city should spectacularly fall over to one side as the effects of the disaster take hold, with various New York archetypes such as hip students and phlegmatic waitresses thrown across the streets while yellow cabs flip over and roll into the sides of skyscrapers and water towers fly off roofs and burst against fire escapes.

It is crucial at this point to destroy an iconic building in a breathtaking scene you can feature in the trailer. A lot of New York's most famous buildings have been used before, however – some more than once – but how about the Guggenheim museum? You could have it flip on to its side and roll all the way down Fifth Avenue like a wagon wheel.

7. Back to the White House

All this is enough to convince the president that the scientist is right, so he calls him back for a top-secret briefing in the White House situation room attended by dozens of worried-looking army chiefs. The scientist explains what is happening with a mixture of junior-school astronomy and outrageous psuedo-science, using whatever items are to hand, perhaps a ping-pong ball to represent the earth and a basketball to represent the sun.

At this point it's the scientist's role to set out the plot in full. "You're aware of gravity, right? If you drop something, it lands on the floor, instead of floating in the air. Like this." He drops an apple on the ground. "Now, this meteor that hit the sun was powerful enough to switch earth's gravity in a different direction. In England, in Tokyo, and now in New York City, gravity's stopped going downwards – and started going sideways." As the vice-president protests, the scientist continues: "As that meteor continues its journey into the heart of the sun, the whole of the earth will switch to horizontal gravity."

8. The scientist puts together his team

In a cave underneath Mount Rushmore, the president should introduce the scientist to a crack team dedicated to fixing the problem – which should turn out to include his attractive ex-wife as well as a droll Englishman. The three of them should come up with a plan to stop the disaster – the more unrealistic the better. A good one in this case would be to have someone jump off the Empire State Building like a diving board in order to activate a nuclear weapon that would destroy the moon and thus reset earth's gravity; anything like that, really. Watching a cable news channel as they discuss who could carry out this dangerous mission, the team sees a report from the devastated New York, where the cat burglar is leaping across sideways skyscrapers to save an old grandmother's life. "By Jove," says the Englishman, "I think we've found our man!"

The celebratory mood should be punctured by a brief phone call to the scientist from the head of the army with the upsetting news that "we lost Canada".

9. Last-minute setback

By now more and more parts of the world should have succumbed to the threat, and, after recalculating his figures for some reason, the scientist should report that there is a much smaller window of time than he thought to stop the sideways gravity before it destroys the whole globe. But while building the nuclear weapon to destroy the moon, something goes wrong, killing the hapless Englishman and damaging the weapon so that whoever sets it off will die with it. This should cause a huge row, with the cat burglar refusing to go through with the plan. A sentimental speech from either the scientist or his ex-wife will be enough to convince him, however, and he manfully agrees to sacrifice himself. Just before he sets off for New York, his little orphan son taps him on the shoulder, and whispers: "Mommy would want you to do this, Dad." The cat burglar puts his hand on the boy's head, and says: "I know, son."

10. Set-piece ending

All that remains now is to put the plan into action. The cat burglar clambers precariously along the Empire State Building, almost falling at least twice, and prepares for the dive of his life from the tip of the spire. The scientist and his ex-wife share a meaningful glance. A group of minor characters toast the end of civilisation with one last drink. Crowds gather in Times Square and other locations around the world to watch what's about to happen. In the Oval Office, a sombre president murmurs: "May God help us all."

The cat burglar dives. The scene cuts to outer space as the moon is destroyed. The sun tilts back on its axis, and back on earth gravity swings gradually back to its normal direction. Buildings right themselves and stand up straight again. Foreigners in turbans or Eskimo furs cheer and hug in far-off locations. The scientist reaches out for the hand of his ex-wife. And the little orphan boy runs up to his cat burglar dad for a dramatic hug, the Empire State Building back to normal behind them. He didn't die after all!

http://www.guardian.co.uk/film/filmblog/20...t-disaster-film

[caeron]

Wow, this had me in stitches. We just went to see The Day the Earth Stood Still, and in addition to being stunningly bad (though dare I admit entertaining), it nailed nearly all of these.

[Guest Conway]

5. Mayhem across the globe

Now it's time for you to up the stakes and sacrifice a couple of foreign cities – or even a minor American one like Chicago (you're keeping New York and LA back for later, of course). London or Rome would be perfect. Shanghai or Tokyo are great, too. In his lab, the scientist turns on the TV news (preferably a branded channel affiliated with the film studio) to see foreign buildings crashing down into the streets. Reporters jabber to camera and slide helplessly down the middle of the road. "It's started," murmurs the scientist.

I thought that every city in the world as under siege with the exception of Midtown Manhattan where the scientist works and lives in a $12 million dollar apartment with his ridiculously cute daughter. Everyone knows that Midtown is a hub for scientific research...and sweet children. Yeah, right.

[Guest StuCotts]

One of our local critics let his exasperation show by headlining his review "Klaatu boring nikto!" Then he went on to explain that the one surviving line from the original film didn't make it into the new version. Reading about it looks like a lot more fun than seeing it.

Conway, your pointed implication that Manhattan isn't the epicenter of everything worth preserving in the world is deeply hurtful to the delicate sensibilities of those of us whose souls tell us different. I dab at a tear.

[AdamSmith]

Keanu barada nikto!

Or rather, in this case, not.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Klaatu_barada_nikto

[Guest Conway]

Conway, your pointed implication that Manhattan isn't the epicenter of everything worth preserving in the world is deeply hurtful to the delicate sensibilities of those of us whose souls tell us different. I dab at a tear.

I failed to note that the scientist's wife, the coolest and hottest wife on the face of the earth, is killed by those directing the disaster (usually aliens or Russians) in the minutes following the producer's efforts to make you know how cool and hot she was.