Lord knows there are enough real disasters in
this world—earthquakes in Nepal, floods in Texas, droughts in California,
wildfires in California, mudslides in California . . . I don’t linger over TV images
of the suffering of real people in these rampages of Mother Nature. I feel for
the victims of these incidents, I contribute to the Red Cross and Doctors
Without Borders.
But I just can’t help myself: I love me a
good disaster movie! I’ve seen (and I own) ’em all, from THE TOWERING INFERNO to
TITANIC, THE DAY AFTER TOMORROW to 2012.
Volcanoes! Earthquakes! Rogue waves! Tsunamis! Flash freezes! Superstorms!
Tornadoes! Super-tornadoes! (I do hold the line at sharknados. Sorry, not
buying that one.) It’s the end of the world as we know it, and I feel fine!
I will tolerate any kind of disaster movie,
but a well-made, well-acted one is right up there with a day in the mountains
and fluffy kittens on my list of favorite things. So you know I was in hog
heaven sitting in the theater to see Dwayne Johnson (formerly “The Rock”) save
the day as a “swarm” of earthquakes of over 9.0 on the Richter scale take out
cities all along California’s San Andreas fault in SAN ANDREAS. Yes, it is finally
the day of reckoning for the Golden State, the one we’ve all known is coming,
the Big One! And we are all safe in our seats watching it happen.
As is the tried-and-true formula of disaster
movies, we meet the cast of characters in the first half-hour of the film:
Johnson’s Ray, a Los Angeles Fire Department rescue helicopter pilot (and
veteran) with a big heart to go along with his big muscles; his college-age daughter,
Blake (Alexandra Daddario, an up-and-comer), as resourceful and brave as he is;
his soon-to-be ex-wife Emma (Carla Guggino, LOVE her!), smart and sweet; the requisite
bad guy (Ioan Gruffudd), an architect whose building amazingly does NOT fall
down right away!; the scientist who warns everyone of the coming disaster (Paul
Giamatti, terrific as always); and other supporting players.
We get the warnings—a little landslide here,
a tremor there. A quake where there is no fault line, which destroys the Hoover
Dam. The scientist begins to see the scope of things. Then all hell breaks
loose as the entire San Andreas fault, which runs from L.A. to San Franciso,
begins to crack wide open. Whee!
The quality of special effects makes or
breaks a movie like this, and the effects are first class in SAN ANDREAS. The
entire L.A. basin ripples and waves like a sheet in the wind. Buildings topple
into each other and disintegrate into rubble. A tsunami carries a massive
container ship into the Golden Gate bridge, tearing a huge gap in that span.
Oh, and did I mention the Hoover Dam?
But none of these things would have meaning
if they put no one at peril. We have to care about the people in the film for
all this destruction to have any emotional impact. Carlton Cuse wrote the
screenplay for SAN ANDREAS. Cuse’s screen credits include TV’s LOST, BATES
MOTEL, THE RETURNED, THE STRAIN, and some of my personal favorite oldies, NASH
BRIDGES, BLACK SASH, THE ADVENTURES OF BRISCO COUNTY, JR. Cuse has a special
talent for combining action plots with character development, giving his
characters emotional depth and “history.”
Cuse
has done that with Ray and Emma and Blake in SAN ANDREAS, too. Blake had a
sister, who drowned on a family outing. Ray blames himself for not being able
to save her. At the beginning of the film, the incident and its consequences
have nearly destroyed the family—divorce is imminent, Emma is ready to move in
with her architect boyfriend, Blake’s headed off to school. But events
intervene and reconciliation becomes possible as Ray shows his stuff, Emma sees
her boyfriend’s true colors and Blake is forced to grow up fast. Nice character
development in the midst of all that mayhem, I say!
I’ve thought a lot about why I like disaster
movies so much. I think it’s because I have a secret fear of the Apocalypse. I’m
studying up on survival techniques, reviewing those Too Stupid to Live
actions-to-avoid. My favorite book as a kid was Swiss Family Robinson, and my favorite part of that book was the
ingenious way they salvaged and made use of what was left from the shipwreck. I
joined the Peace Corps later in life and lived without the luxuries of modern
life for a time in Africa. I learned some things about boiling water, let me
tell you!
But, as my karate teacher always said, the
First Rule of Self-Defense is Avoid the Situation. I won’t be living in
California—ever. I won’t be building a home too close to water or on a steep
mountainside. As long as a sharknado doesn’t come along, I should be okay.
Cheers,
Donna
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