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| | Disaster Films |
 | | The best disaster films comment upon the negative effects of advancing technology, demonstrate the 'hubris' of scientists and other individuals, deliver uplifting moral lessons of sacrifice, and provide a 'how-to' in terms of survival skills. |
 | | Most disaster films have large-scale special effects (especially in the recent past's mega-budget spectaculars), huge casts of stars faced with the crisis, a persevering hero or heroine (i.e., Charlton Heston, Steve McQueen, etc.) called upon to lead the struggle against the threat, and many plot-lines affecting multiple characters. |
 | | Big-budget disaster films provided all-star casts and interlocking, Grand Hotel- or "Ship of Fools" type stories, with suspenseful action, races against time, and impending crises in locales such as aboard imperiled airliners, trains, dirigibles, crowded stadiums, sinking or wrecked ocean-liners, or in towering burning skyscrapers or earthquake zones. |
| www.filmsite.org /disasterfilms.html (1340 words) |
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