In 1998 everyone was talking about the world ending on New Year’s Eve 1999. Y2K was coming and word was that everyone should be ready. Computers wouldn’t know what to do with the date change and so the world would cease to exist. Pack your bomb shelter folks!! Me and all my 19 year old wisdom thought, “what if the world ends on New Year’s Eve THIS year?” No one would be ready, it’s the perfect set up. So I actually got myself worked into a bit of a tizzy about it. I was visiting Amber and her friends in their hometown, and was very concerned that I would not ever see my family again. Of course a bunch of 19 and 20 year olds don’t stop their plans just because someone is being overly dramatic about the end of the world. In the car on the way to our chosen restaurant the song "It’s the End of the World" as we know it by R.E.M. came on the radio. OH MY WORD! I might have started hyperventilating, I really can’t be sure. Can you believe I had never heard that song before that night? It did not help my inner panic attack. And I believe everyone else in the car just cracked up laughing! Later that night I realized that because of time zones, the world couldn’t end at midnight for everyone. If it ended at midnight for the Eastern time zone then we in the Central time zone would have some time to prepare. After that I relaxed. (Yes, it was the thought of time zones that did it, no actual coming to my senses involved.)
In the spirit of the world ending I have compiled a list of disaster movies, those that I would watch again and the one I will not.
The Day After Tomorrow- I enjoyed this movie and would watch it again. It was a disaster movie with heart. The dad treks across the frozen waste land for his son, and since I live in the south I would have been fine. There is that whole plot to keep the impending doom a secret in the North because they aren’t going to make it and who really wants to cause all that panic. Probably not the best move by the administration (but I am sure they are covering up something as we speak). My favorite part of the movie is when everyone is in the library trying to figure out what books to burn to stay warm and they are arguing over whether to burn Friedrich Nietzsche. And one of the character says “uh…’scuse me? You guys? Yeah…there’s a whole section on tax law down here that we can burn.”
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| All my bags are packed, I'm ready to go, but not really, I'm just gonna throw your dad under the meteor. |
Armageddon- I would watch this one again. The only thing I really remember about it was thinking keep the dad, kill the boyfriend. You can always get another boyfriend.
Titanic- This one is not a good movie to watch the week before you are getting married. I have always been intrigued by the Titanic’s story (I say intrigued because are you really supposed to LOVE a historical tragic movie where a lot of people die?) The movie made learning the history behind the Titanic more real. I am a firm believer that it sank because that guy supposedly said “God himself could not sink her” Uh, yeah He can.
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| When Sandra Bullock drove into our hearts. |
Speed- I L.O.V.E. this movie. Seriously I watched this movie and Dirty Dancing both, every day for two months when I was a freshman in high school. Sandra Bullock was a newbie and Keanu Reeves was gorgeous. Dennis Hopper is crazy and horrible. Even though he wasn’t the worse bad guy ever, he was just kind of weird and I still don’t like him because of this movie. My favorite line is “Jesus. Bob, what button did you push?”
Space Cowboys –I would watch this again, I have good memories of the experience. But really what I remember is a dead Tommy Lee Jones floating in space.
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| Making the dying of a species, cute. |
The Land Before Time - This is a children’s classic and then the franchise got ruined because they made 27 more movies and none of the others are any good. Five dinosaur children survive the great earth shake and band together out of necessity to find the Great Valley. They are sad and determined but most importantly they are cute!! My brother and I used to quote the movie all the time. “I smell… I smell…I smell… um Ducky”
I Am Legend- I will never, ever, ever (to infinity) watch this movie again. It still haunts me. The hemocytes/dark seekers were truly terrifying to me. It was their special effects look plus their aggression. During the whole movie I was so thankful that he had his dog and then when she was bit, and he had to…well you know, and Will Smith cried because then he was truly alone. At the end of the movie when Will knows he’s a goner and they are beating on the special bullet proof glass to get in with this smug look on their faces… I just could not handle it. Some basketball players at the school I work at have this t-shirt where the player has an outlined face and it looks like a hemocyte. I can’t look directly at it.
Which disaster movies will you watch again?
Is there any end of the world movie you won’t watch again?
