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If you are a betting person, or just enjoy matchups, here’s a concept for you: the mock movie tournament. Take eight to 12 films that have a common theme, and drop them into a single elimination bracket. You can find these all over the internet, or draw one yourself.
Grab a group of friends and have participants fill out their answers. Then re-watch these classics and compare notes. It works with many a genre, and I’ll happily get you started with 12 disaster movies (sans aliens) in no particular order. Fun fact: The actor William Fichtner stars in two top-tier disaster films: “Armageddon” and “The Perfect Storm.”
“The Core” (2003) – The planet is dying, and a pack of brave souls must burrow down to the very center of the world to restart Earth’s engines.
“Armageddon” (1998) – A group of maverick oil drillers are pressed into space service to blast an asteroid off its disastrous trajectory.
“Outbreak” (1995) – A small town goes on lockdown after a monkey introduces a dangerous new virus to its residents; meanwhile, the military will stop at nothing to contain it.
“Crawl” (2019) – A hurricane is not scary enough, so they added alligators and enclosed spaces to up the ante.
“The Perfect Storm” (2000) – A tropical storm meets cold front, creating a 150-foot rogue wave that meets a fishing boat in the middle of the sea in this terrifying true tale of the Andrea Gale.
“Contagion” (2011) – Virulent airborne germs rip through the global population, spreading death and fear with each new case.
“Geostorm” (2017) – Once-in-a-lifetime weather events converge to wreak havoc on land and sea – and can only be fixed from space?!
“2012” (2009) – The end is nigh, and a small-time limo driver turns action hero to get his family to the only safe place in the world: a series of superboats hidden in a mountain.
“The Day After Tomorrow” (2004) – Instantaneous ice age cannot stop a geologist from rescuing his college-age son who’s stuck above the freeze line.
“Deep Impact” (1998)– Morgan Freeman plays the president who attempts to calm a nation facing down a world-ending asteroid.
“Twister” (1996) – Storm chasers looking to decode the power of tornadoes track down and delve into an F5, exposing the carnage that they leave on towns, relationships and people.
“San Andreas” (2015) – The Rock takes on Mother Nature when LA is hit by the big one as the San Andreas fault breaks.
Here’s more options: “Titanic,” “The Impossible,” “Poseidon,” “The Wave,” “The Quake,” “Volcano,” “Dante’s Peak” and “Into the Storm.”
© 2020 King Features Synd., Inc.
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