Disaster films: Fiction, or already reality?

More than 2 million people die in a heat wave, global capitals are under water and the weather is completely unpredictable. In this new movie, a massive network of satellites now controls the weather, and for a while it works. But then something goes wrong, and the orbiting geoengineering station begins creating ice ages and cataclysmic disasters. A global megastorm threatens to destroy humanity.

This film is based on a real catastrophe, the December 2004 tsunami that killed more than a quarter of a million people in Southeast Asia. A family is torn apart by the massive wave and reunites in the midst of death and destruction. For many critics, the film, which starred Naomi Watts and Ewan McGregor, was nothing more than a melodramatic tearjerker, which ignored the real tragedy and pain.

This fable treated disaster quite differently. Six-year-old Hushpuppy (Quvenzhané Wallis) survives a storm surge in the swamps of Louisiana thanks to her unshakable imagination: "The whole universe depends on everything fitting together just right. If one piece busts, even the smallest piece... the entire universe will get busted." On a small budget, director Benh Zeitlin made an impressive debut.

In this German movie, people are struggling to survive in a bright, dusty, withered world. In "Hell," the sun has become the enemy of humanity, with its intense heat, deadly radiation and solar storms. The world's remaining humans do unimaginable things to each other to survive.

Director Roland Emmerich isn't known for low-budget indie movies. His blockbusters use every chance to maximize explosions and destruction. In this mother of all climate disaster films, six billion people freeze, drown or burn to death, victims of Mother Nature's wrath. The gigantic destructive orgy is as absurd as it is fascinating. Once again, the sun was to blame.

"2012" wasn't Emmerich's first crack at the natural disaster genre. In "The Day After Tomorrow," paleoclimatologist Jack Hall (Dennis Quaid) warns of an impeding climatic shift that will trigger a new global ice age. And, with plenty of CGI, that's exactly what happens. First, huge storms devastate the world, followed by destructive tidal waves and finally, the deep freeze.

Meteorologists trying to unravel the mystery of tornadoes, in order to develop a better warning system, go on the hunt for the titular "twisters." Homes, boats, trucks and cows go flying, as researchers on the brink of divorce, played by Helen Hunt and Bill Paxton, rekindle their relationship. In the end, they find themselves in the path of a huge F5 tornado. Who will survive?

The polar ice caps have melted, flooding the continents. Only a few people still live on artificial atolls or boats, including Mariner (Kevin Costner). Of course, there are also the bad guys, who kidnap a child with a tattoo on her back which promises to lead the way to the only remaining island on Earth, Dryland. Fun fact: A set was destroyed by a severe storm during the filming of the movie.

In 2022, New York is a jumble of wrecked cars, garbage, smog and homeless people. Meadows, flowers and birds are a thing of the past. People are fed with food substitutes, the most popular being Soylent Green, supposedly made from plankton. A detective (Charlton Heston) discovers, however, that the little biscuits are actually made of something much more disturbing: "Soylent Green is PEOPLE!!"