The Science Fiction Horror and Fantasy Film Review
Mass Destruction Spectaculars refer to works that present stupendous displays of destruction on screen – buildings being demolished, things blown up, assorted natural disaster phenomena. The cause of this can be anything from alien invasion to giant monsters and Transformer robots.
The earlier antecedents of the mass destruction spectacular came in Japanese Monster Movies, while the puppet tv series of Gerry Anderson were famous for blowing things up. The genre gained momentum with the Disaster Movie, which depicted protracted mass destruction alongside the dramas of people caught in its midst or trying to prevent it. The mass destruction spectacular gained its true feet with the CGI effects spectaculars of the 1990s and beyond.
Mass Destruction Spectaculars are generally conducted on huge budgets, although there are also examples down the other end of the scale as per many Japanese Monster Movies and the B-budgeted cable disaster movies of the 2000s onwards.
The film that created the cult of anime in the West. Essentially a Cyberpunk version of The Fury, this has been construed as a series of climaxes that get progressively larger in scale until they almost reach a point of sensory overload
Another cheap Syfy Channel disaster movie featuring a cold wave that freezes everything in its path. As expected, this ignores basic science while offering cut-price digital mass destruction effects
A film that relentlessly celebrates its own brainlessness. Michael Bay directs an asteroid collision film amid plenty of loud noise, mass destruction, flag-waving patriotism and resolute heroism
It took DC Comics the better part of a decade to catch up with the massive success Marvel Comics are having on screen in crossing their characters over. Zack Snyder comes to the party offering up THE biggest headline double-bill in superherodom
Adaptation of the Battleship boardgame that emerges at best as wannabe Michael Bay. Imagine Pearl Harbor mashed up with a Transformers film and lots of bone-headed glorification of American militarism
A classic of the genre for a number of reason – it was the film that kicked off the 1950s fad for atomic monsters, featuring an archetypal story about a dinosaur brought back to life by atomic tests. It also featured among the very first screen credits for both Ray Bradbury and stop-motion animator Ray Harryhausen
A disaster tv mini-series about the most powerful storm in recorded history descending on Chicago just as a hacker disables the power grid. Most of this plays by the cliches of the genre.
Sequel to the tv mini-series Category 6: Day of Destruction ups the scale of the super-storm but is also better constructed as a disaster movie
A CGI disaster film about a journey to the centre of the Earth to restart the magnetic core. This is a film construed as no more than a series of spectacular self-contained disaster set-pieces, often irrespective of any of them making sense
In another of his big budget disaster spectacles, Roland Emmerich embraces environmental concerns about Global Warming. Here he (unscientifically) imagines the abrupt onset of a new Ice Age worldwide
Big serious attempt at creating an asteroid collides with Earth film, this came out the same year as Armageddon. Despite arraying much acting talent and effects artistry, this disappears into a melodramatic blandness
One of the overlooked Japanese monster movies directed by Godzilla’s creator Ishiro Honda concerning a giant alien blob that appears in the sky and sucks up coal and diamonds
Cult stop-motion animator Ray Harryhausen jumps aboard the 1950s flying saucer fad, making one of the era’s better alien invader films, climaxing in some great scenes with the saucers demolishing much of Washington D.C.
Disaster movie in which Los Angeles is devastated by an earthquake Size 7 on the Richter scale. Despite a script by Mario Puzo, author of The Godfather, this is the usual soap opera melodramatics
Another cheap Syfy Channel disaster movie about a superstorm created by an amok weather control experiment. The shoddy CGI effects and cliched pieces of canned drama fly thick
An extraordinary reworking of the Japanese kaiju series with stunning CGI effects sequences. This set a new standard and is among the best of the modern Japanese monster movies
Here Shusuke Kaneko revived the Gamera series of the 1960s/70s with a series of stunning effects. The result promptly set a new standard for the Japanese monster movie
The 1960s Gamera films were always a copy of the Godzilla films, aimed at a more juvenile level and with crappier effects. This was the second of them, somewhat better produced than the others and taking proceedings seriously
This was a fairly crappy and terrible Japanese monster movie from a rival company seeking to copy the success of Toho’s Godzilla films
Directorial debut of Roland Emmerich’s regular screenwriter Dean Devlin who has clearly been given orders to make another Emmerich film. Thus we get all the same effects-driven mass destruction spectacle, absurd science and pro-environmental messages
Much disliked English-language version of Godzilla from Roland Emmerich is a more watchable film than one might think. Emmerich does well when the film allows him to do what he does best – being a big, budget, massively scaled epic of mass destruction
A slightly different beast to its Japanese counterparts and an impressive revival of the series. Gareth Edwards, who made the excellent Monsters, delivers mass destruction on a mind-bogglingly vast scale in ways that approach painterly beauty
Reboot of the Godzilla series that forgets about all the sequels and acts as a direct follow-up to the original film. This uses top drawer effects technology of the era to create Godzilla as the fearsome creation he originally was
The 23rd Godzilla film where the effects were at such a peak for the genre that this became the first Godzilla film to be given a US theatrical release in fifteen years
The 26th Japanese Godzilla film, the fourth pitting him against Mechagodzilla. After a slow first hour, the film delivers all the exhilarating mass destruction sequences we expect of it as the monsters go head to head
The 28th Godzilla film, made for the series fiftieth anniversary and bringing every monster ever created by Toho together for a massive battle. The results are immensely satisfying
The very first Godzilla film. Essentially a copy of The Beast from 20,000 Fathoms, it has incredibly stark effect despite the primitiveness of the effects. In it you can see Japanese nation struggling to expiate the pain of the Atomic Bomb.
Follow-up to the 2014 US-made Godzilla. This introduces other monsters from the Japanese series and tries to create a shared universe. But when the film is all massively-scaled mass destruction, it seems hard to root for the monsters
The 33rd Japanese Godzilla film and the one to receive the greatest acclaim of any in the series so far, including the Academy Award for Best Visual Effects. This takes the series back to the beginnings
The 25th Godzilla film which employs director Shusuke Kaneko who had done amazing things reviving the Gamera franchise. Kaneko doesn’t quite deliver the epic expected of him but does produce an amazing effects spectacle
The 17th Godzilla film and the second of the modern era where Toho started to employ top drawer effects. Toho created a new nemesis, the plant monster Biollante, although this was not popular with the public
The twelfth Godzilla film. Under director Jun Fukuda, a juvenile inanity had by now come to dominate the series by this point. The special effects, often recycled from previous films, are very cheesy
The eighteenth Godzilla film and one of the best of the modern era. This has the most conceptually audacious plot of any Godzilla film and overflows with wild ideas involving time travel and changing the timeline
One of fantastic cinema’s great titles bouts is a spectacular effects show. At the same time, it also has one of the single most ridiculous script I have ever come across in the entire time I have been running this site
The 24th Godzilla film where Godzilla faces a giant prehistoric dragonfly. While the modern Godzilla films have readily adopted CGI and animatronics, the effects here are much more variable
The thirteenth Godzilla film and a point that the series was no longer taking itself seriously. On the other hand, this is something that actually works in the films favour to create a sublime silliness
Space Godzilla is one the strangest nemeses to turn up in these kaiju films – a blue counterpart of the Big G with a giant glowing mass of crystal on its shoulders. One of the more routine entries in the modern Godzilla series
The fourteenth Godzilla film, noted for the introduction of Mecha-Godzilla, a robot copy of Godzilla that became a recurring nemesis. By this point in the series, the effects and quality of production had become very shabby
The sixth Godzilla film and the point where the series started to become silly and juvenile in its focus. A weak entry featuring some of the shabbiest effects of this era.
The eleventh Godzilla in which Godzilla faces the pollution monster Hedorah. For some reason, this gets a listing in The Fifty Worst Movies of All Time, but there are far worse entries in the series
The fourth Godzilla film, the first in which Godzilla battled another Toho monster, namely Mothra. Colourfully enjoyable and taking itself more seriously than many of the entries that would follow
A follow-up to Godzilla vs Kong, this tries to offer more of the same but suffers another ridiculous script. This ended up being overshadowed by the acclaim that the Japanese-made Godzilla: Minus One received
The tenth Godzilla film and a low point of the series with the focus now going on the slapstick pratfalls of Godzilla’s son. Many special effects scenes are recycled from previous entries.
One of the other films from Godzilla creator Ishiro Honda. This has been incorrectly identified as a Japanese giant monster film but is mostly a colourful space opera about a rogue planet
Superior revived dinosaur amok movie. While the effects are the cut-price man in the monster suit ones, these are expertly achieved and the film comes with a surprisingly poignant twist that makes it stand out
There seems something redundant in 2021 with the world in the grip of a very real apocalypse about watching an old-fashioned mass destruction disaster movie about an oncoming comet impact
Greenland was a disaster movie on the familiar theme of a comet colliding with the Earth. This is a desultory sequel where the survivors emerge from the shelters to now have to survive in a changed post-apocalyptic world
The film that made Roland Emmerich’s name as a specialist in mass destruction spectacle. At heart, this rehashes a 1950s alien invasion film on a big-budget and adds blatantly sentimentalised American flag-waving
Roland Emmerich returns with more of the same. The problem is how to top the first film and here everything is so big and with so much happening that it cannot be taken in and slips into tedium
Zack Snyder’s reboot of Superman leaves you irritated in the first half of the film at its throwing chunks of comic-book canon out the window and the second half bored with the mass destruction orgy that drags on
An effort from the heyday of the 1970s disaster movie that was a big flop when it came out. Widely ridiculed for its bad special effects, it is a film I am partially prepared to defend, it setting aside the usual soap opera dramatics of these films to make an interesting parable about Cold War tensions. It also prefigures Armageddon with its plot of trying to divert a meteor on a collision course with Earth
Roland Emmerich returns to mass destruction with a film about The Moon on a collision course with Earth, which heads in some conceptually challenging directions
Giant mecha robots beating the crap out of giant monsters – what’s not to like? In comparison to the Transformers films, Guillermo Del Toro looks to find the soul of the robot jock – in essence, Transformers for grown-ups
Pacific Rim wasn’t Guillermo Del Toro’s best film but it was a fun attempt to imagine giant Japanese mecha robots battling giant monsters. This is a sequel but without Del Toro it is reduced to no more than one of Michael Bay’s Transformers films
The idea of Dwayne Johnson facing a giant gorilla in an adaptation of a 1980s arcade game doesn’t exactly shout out Academy Award material; on the other hand, appreciated as a zero expectation cartoon of a film and the mindless mass destruction spectacle it is, this works in a goofily entertaining way
A Chinese attempt to make a Michael Bay mass destruction spectacular depicting an Earth that has been overrun by massive plant growth
As the spectacle of mass destruction goes, you could hardly get more epic in scale than this. On the other hand, as someone whose hometown was obliterated by an earthquake in 2011, I find it offensive that such devastation is arranged for our enjoyment while the suffering and even the idea that anybody has been killed has been edited out
Cheap Syfy Channel CGI disaster spectacle about runaway plant roots – from the Garden of Eden, no less – growing to endanger the entire planet. Utterly formulaic and seeming to consist of no more than canned pieces of cliche action
The 29th of the Japanese Godzilla films. Coming after the longest gap in the series to date, this functions as a complete reboot of the original. Godzilla is reconceived as a fearsome creation amid epic mass destruction and what are hands down the best effects of any film in the series
Reboot of the old Japanese superhero series, conducted with the epic scale, mass destruction and dazzling effects of the more recent Godzilla films
Big-budget modern Japanese remake of a 1970s disaster movie in which Japan starts to catastrophically sink into the ocean. Despite revisiting the original with CGI spectacle, this is a film in which hardly anything interesting happens
Sixteen years after making Akira, Katsuhiro Otomo returns to direct a full-length anime, making a Steampunk work that is dazzling in its epic quality and vistas of mass destruction
A thinking person’s disaster movie depicting Japan’s sinking into the ocean
Disaster TV mini-series about the end of the world due to the sun about to go supernova. Cliche plotting, canned action scenes and bad science ensue
The fifteenth Godzilla film, the last of the classic series, featuring a return of Mechagodzilla from the previous film. Original director Ishiro Honda returns to the series and reclaims it from the juvenile focus it had taken over the last few films to make the best entry of the 1970s
Michael Bay takes on the 1980s toy phenomenon, turning it into a massive blockbuster filled with copious mass destruction and machines beating the metal crap out of each other
Are there any new creative directions that Michael Bay feels he he has to explore for a fourth Transformers film? All the Transformers beating the crap out of each other and copious mass destruction has become hard to tell one of the films from each other
The third of Michael Bay’s Transformers films. While the human scenes opt for a ghastly miscalculated sense of humour, the effects houses are at the peak of their game, even if Bay allows them to drag the mass destruction out to a numbing excess
The first of Michael Bay’s Transformers sequels has even better effects and more copious mass destruction to the point it washes over you without any effect
The seventh of the live-action Transformers films, the second made after Michael Bay stepped down from the director’s chair
The fifth of Michael Bay’s Transformers films. This comes with more of an outright comedy focus than any of the other films where Bay seems to be second-guessing his critics and spoofing his own peccadilloes in quote marks, only to produce the silliest entry in the series yet
Not the notorious bad movie but a sequel to Troll, the Norwegian-made effects spectacular about the revival of a giant troll. This is more of the same but with the effects pushed to a more spectacular level
Norway attempts to compete with the Godzilla films in the story of a giant troll amok and pull off a work that does the whole mass destruction spectacular well and with some top notch effects
After the massive success of Jurassic Park, anything with Michael Crichton’s name on it was hot property. This is made from his script about tornado chasers and is a rather entertaining film made with no other purpose that to keep producing a series of spectacular mass destruction scenes on an ever-expanding scale
Sequel to Twister, the Michael Crichton written film about tornado chasers, this updates the story to the 21st Century and aims for much more in the way of mass destruction spectacle
Roland Emmerich mass destruction spectacle loosely based around the supposed Mayan prophecies about the end of the world in 2012. Mostly just an excuse for massively scaled disaster sequences.
A disaster movie made early into the CGI era based around the ludicrous notion of an active volcano suddenly appearing in Los Angeles
Chinese attempt to make a Roland Emmerich-type mass destruction spectacle about the moving of the Earth. Much effects spectacle but the film suffers from plain absurd science
Prequel to the Chinese spectacular about the construction of an engineering project to move the Earth, this comes with some epic-sized effects sequences
First and best adaptation of the book, this takes liberties with the H.G. Wells original but smartly updates the book’s underlying anxieties to the Cold War era (in so doing becoming the grandaddy of the 1950s alien invader film) and providing what was top notch effects spectacle for the era
Where the legend of The Asylum and their low-budget mockbusters began, this was a cheap modernised version of the H.G. Wells novel that was released a day before the Spielberg film. Despite cheap effects, this adheres closer to Wells than Spielberg did and is better written than most Asylum product
Released just before the Spielberg film, this was an adaptation of the H.G. Wells novel set in the Victorian period that attempts to tell the story as it was written. The film has ambition way beyond the resources at hand but you cannot help but applaud what it tries to do
Steven Spielberg remakes the classic H.G. Wells alien invasion story, liberally rewriting it for the post-9/11 world. Not Spielberg’s best film but a more than solid work on most grounds
One of the most intensive and exciting action films of recent with humanity engaged in a furious battle with plants and killer robots
Classic George Pal produced effects spectacular where Earth faces destruction in the face of collision with an oncoming planet and the efforts to build an ark so that some might survive