We care so much more about the people whose stories we know that we'd rather have their efforts matter than have their efforts be meaningless but many more people survive.
All of what you wrote but this especially. We want things to mean something. That's probably why disaster movies were so huge back then. The special effects sure, but people cared about the characters, and even though a lot died, the survivors mostly earned it and the audiences were rooting for them along the way.
I also read the book first and the movie is much better. That's pretty much the whole of why disaster movies were so popular back in the 70s. This movie made us care about the characters in ways the book didn't, and made all of it meaningful. The whole cast was quite good and Shelley Winters was amazing. I saw it in the theater and the special effects were spectacular and believable.
Airport was an excellent disaster movie and Helen Hayes was glorious. Her 2nd Oscar and she earned it. It's a guilty pleasure for me, saw it several times in the theater and I own it. Dated but worth watching. The plane and the airport are settings instead of special effects extravaganzas competing with the characters.
The Towering Inferno was good but post-9/11 would be really tough to watch. Some of the characters know they're going to die and that would be ... too real now. Good movie though, for what it was. It also probably benefited from the way it was made. There were two popular burning skyscraper books and the production company sensibly bought both books and hired a screenwriter to merge them into one script.
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Date: 2019-05-26 07:21 am (UTC)All of what you wrote but this especially. We want things to mean something. That's probably why disaster movies were so huge back then. The special effects sure, but people cared about the characters, and even though a lot died, the survivors mostly earned it and the audiences were rooting for them along the way.
I also read the book first and the movie is much better. That's pretty much the whole of why disaster movies were so popular back in the 70s. This movie made us care about the characters in ways the book didn't, and made all of it meaningful. The whole cast was quite good and Shelley Winters was amazing. I saw it in the theater and the special effects were spectacular and believable.
Airport was an excellent disaster movie and Helen Hayes was glorious. Her 2nd Oscar and she earned it. It's a guilty pleasure for me, saw it several times in the theater and I own it. Dated but worth watching. The plane and the airport are settings instead of special effects extravaganzas competing with the characters.
The Towering Inferno was good but post-9/11 would be really tough to watch. Some of the characters know they're going to die and that would be ... too real now. Good movie though, for what it was. It also probably benefited from the way it was made. There were two popular burning skyscraper books and the production company sensibly bought both books and hired a screenwriter to merge them into one script.