Natural Disasters Inspiring Film and Entertainment Over TIme
Extreme weather and the power of nature have inspired many aspects of the movie industry – as well as entertainment in general. Hurricanes, tornados, lightning and flooding are among the major weather events that have inspired many fiction films and created compelling documentary series. By looking at some examples and tracing back the history of this genre, we can get a better idea of why this theme is so popular.
How Current Pop Culture Portrays the Power of Nature
People have probably always been intrigued by and a little frightened of the incredible power of nature, especially when it manifests itself in storms and natural disasters. Many forms of entertainment rely on this simple fact alone, and others like to exaggerate natural phenomenon to give a fright to audiences. Filmmakers and content creators, whether for fact or fiction, can count on the power of nature to tell a compelling story and inspire awe.
Twisters is one of the biggest movies of the 2024. Showing a group of storm-chasers tracking powerful tornados in Oklahoma, it’s the sequel to 1996’s Twister. Going further back, we’ve seen the planet frozen in The Day After Tomorrow (2004) and the Earth’s core heating up to cause multiple disasters in 2012, which was released in 2009. The Earth’s molten core stops rotating in The Core from 2003 while 1995’s Waterworld shows the planet completely covered in water.
TV shows like World’s Deadliest Weather and Extreme Weather: Caught on Camera provide real-life examples of incredible weather situations. On the other hand, we can see lightning strikes used in games like Lucky Lightning, Lightning Roulette, and Coin Up Lightning in this Bitcoin casino. The power of nature is also explored here in animal-based slots like Great Rhino Megaways and Savage Buffalo Spirit. It’s also interesting to note that mythological characters like Zeus and Thor are often represented in slots as harnessing the power of nature, which may give us a clue as to how this trend began.
In terms of older movies, we can go back to The Day the Earth Caught Fire in 1962 for an early example of how extreme weather is shown. We can find plots based on erupting volcanos and devastating earthquakes from the mid-20th century onwards, but what was the first film to capture the power of nature? It was arguably 1933’s Deluge, which showed New York getting destroyed by a tsunami as a series of disasters hit the planet.
When Did This Trend Begin?
Although we can trace extreme weather movies back to the 1930s, it’s clear that the idea fascinated us long before then. The American Meteorological Society suggests that Homer’s Odyssey involves a cyclonic storm and a possible microburst event. Many other books and pieces of art from the past show us the power of floods, lightning strikes, and other natural events.
Going back further, perhaps we need to look at those mythological characters mentioned earlier. Zeus is the Greek God of Thunder and has a thunderbolt as his symbol. Poseidon controls the seas while other Gods are typically linked to certain aspects of nature. Norse mythology includes figures like Thor, who is closely associated with storms and lightning.
This look at Greek mythology suggests that ancient cultures used the power of their Gods as a way of trying to explain the mysterious power of nature. While science can now explain many of the phenomena that we see, humans have retained this fascination for extreme weather and the wider aspects of nature in modern types of entertainment.
With so many modern movies inspired by the climate, this is a genre that should continue to thrive for as long as the forces of nature carry on enthralling and captivating us.
