To fair, at this point, I'm operating at a level of destruction that's it must be difficult for you, dear reader, to comprehend. I realised I shortchanged
San Andreas Quake and failed to answer the key question of what made it more awesome than a
10.0 Earthquake, itself a Richter-clenching, sphinter-shaking hullabaloo of literal seismic proportions. How do you go beyond that? With a 12.7, that's how. Oh and a hippopotamus. Honestly, all I remember is the hippo and if you'd seen it, you would too. High scores all round from the sway-o-vision™ school of bad acting. But I really should have mentioned the hippo. Apologies.
Lightning. Sadly neglected to a bit part so far in the numerous megatwisters and supercyclones. But it gets a proper outing in
Deadly Voltage. I know, I know, it's the current that kills you, but you try arguing with 'reverse proton flow.'
Super-Eruption. It's eruptin' time back at Yellowstone, this time we need to the handy skills of a couple of park rangers, evidently all the meteorologists and seismologists are busy nuclear bombing their ways out of other potential apocalypses. Still, gotta love a good park ranger uniform. I know I trust a good uniform. Also bonus points, for the first review I glanced at on Amazon declaring against this movie's 'feminist propaganda.' Quenching volcanoes is man's work, I tell you.
You know happens when you mix sea water and tectonic plates?
Age of Ice, that's what. This one was a bit special. I'm not sure if it benefited or was made worse by the fact they edited it with a Magimix.
Tornadoes are a bit meh. I mean, so what, they're only really terrifying if you're a barn (the barn always gets it). But do you know where there are no barns? NYC, that's where. So
NYC Tornado Terror ramped things up, multiple tornadoes forming in an urban space with no barns to sate them. I'm actually impressed with the subversive insertion of climate change into these movies, I mean it's not just a theory to these people. Possibly it's part of that feminist proganda. Oh and sentient ball lightening. Now that's deadly voltage. I'm taking off one point and then adding two for the terrible lip-synching that by end meant it seemed like they were doing each other's lines.
Earthfall is apocalyps-epic, Earth is knocked out of orbit. Yellowstone barfing up a couple of century's worth of lumpy magma is nothing compared to that. Tornadoes. That's Weather Channel-grade inclemency. Now they had a great plan to blast the Earth back using a huge natural gas deposit (some excellent foreshadowing from the intro scene). Sadly, they'd exhausted the $5 special effects budget before we got to see that, so the viewer is asked to take it on trust that it worked. Super plan, though, it's what I would have done.
I mentioned that I'm on the hunt for mockbusters to salt my disastereering.
Independence Day-saster, well, come on. That title. This one turned out to be disappointing in that it really wasn't as bad as the title promised and actually improved on the original. Better than Emmerlich might not be an aspirational goal. But anyway, this was oddly life affirming. Enough that I had to go and get myself another beer and contemplate whether or not these movies are rewiring my brain like a cheap electrician in a hurry.
San Andreas Mega-Quake. I'm not sure where this one chalked up on the Richter Scale. I confess, I'm no seismologist, but I didn't think you'd need to sway if you were, well, in a helicopter a hundred or so metres above the quake, no matter how mega it might be. And they say movies aren't educational.
Unhelpfully tag-lined 'I hope you can swim' (because really, you're going to need a boat),
Oceans Rising featured just that. And a boat. But really, if you going to predict a watery apocalypse, invest in a better ark rather than a superannuated leisure boat that didn't look seaworthy enough to manage two locks of the Grand Union Canal. Still, kudos for sailing it from NY to Switzerland. Look, sometimes you need a large hadron collider. Occasionally you might need two. Anyway, as arks go, it was like Noah opting to get a second-hand blow-up dinghy from Craigslist. (Incidentally, this was Noah's first plan, till it went wrong and he bought the 'lifelike' and perpetually surprised Blow-Up Brenda by mistake. God was angry but then God was always angry back then. But the second-hand Blow-Up Brenda really brough a new dimension to the phrase 'pre-loved'. This story isn't documented in most versions of the Bible, which is a shame. I can loan anyone interested my unabridged copy that has all the interesting bits kept in).
What spoils Christmas more than Uncle Bill vomiting on the turkey and grandma wetting the sofa? An
Icetastrophe. Self-replicating ice crystal from space. Smart chick (see feminist propanga above, gets in a rather brilliant 'it's a meteor
ite' after one meteor-reference too far). Male lead had an excellent chin. But you know, it's been age since there were any decent freckles. Honestly, this one was quite good, and yes, Santa got iced. Literally. I came close to punching the sky, but that might precipitated a dangerous weather phenomenon, so I settled for a small 'yeh!'
And finally for this episode,
Poseidon Rex because dinosaurs have been neglected so far and early that day a small screaming child had run past us screaming 'pterodactyl!' followed by her mother, in chase, who briefly explained 'she's scared by them.' I'm older than five and I'm still scared of them. We checked Peaslake quite carefully and found no saurian menaces. Possibly it had flown off. We did stumble across an actual pterodactyl movie later (featuring Coolio) but we'd already started this one (so that's on the watchlist, come on dinosaurs and rappers). This one easily surfed over into the so bad it's implausibly good boundary. It was actually fraught to pause for a drink, at any moment that beer might mega-erupt out of your nose. I'm not sure I can do better than the description provided.
Forced to pay off his debt to the murderous Caribbean crime lord, Tariq, instead, the American scuba-diver and treasure hunter, Jackson Slate, wakes up from its deep hibernation a massive, T-Rex-like sauroid off the coast of Belize.
