10 Disaster Movies To Watch If You Loved Godzilla: King Of The Monsters

Godzilla: King of the Monsters was a big moment for Godzilla fans but also brought in a newer audience to the franchise through its similarity to the disaster movie genre. Wider audiences had already seen Western disaster movies merged with Toho’s beloved monster franchise before in director Roland Emmerich’s first attempt at a Hollywood Godzilla movie in 1998 but King of the Monsters amped up the destruction and the Godzilla faithfulness to make something hopefully more enduring for fans.

If you are one of those fans, and you can’t wait for Godzilla vs. Kong, then make sure you check out these similar disaster movies if you haven’t already to get your fix of city-smashing destruction and apocalypse-stopping heroism.

10 2012

Roland Emmerich found greater success with the disaster genre without Godzilla than he did with him and one of his more recent hits was arguably an even greater influence on Godzilla: King of the Monsters than his 1998 Godzilla movie.

Scientist Mark Russell’s quest to redeem himself and save his estranged daughter echoes an archetype of the disaster genre that was played to perfection by John Cusack in this sprawling armageddon epic.

9 Volcano

Los Angeles becomes a war zone when a volcano forms at the La Brea Tar Pits and the city fights to control the blaze.

Tommy Lee Jones plays the grizzled disaster specialist out to protect his young daughter and save the day this time around and the city’s fight for survival actually reflects the social commentary of classic Godzilla better than most movies.

8 Dante’s Peak

It’s practically illegal–and, at the very least, immoral–to mention Volcano without also mentioning 1997’s other volcano disaster movie, Dante’s Peak.

Pierce Brosnan is the volcanologist teaming up with Linda Hamilton’s town mayor to survive an eruption in scenic Washington state and its similar-but-different approach makes it essential double-bill viewing with Volcano.

7 Into the Storm

Adding a first-person approach to shooting makes a relatively smaller disaster feel all the bigger in this found-footage take on the tornado movie.

A group of local townspeople and storm hunters fight to survive the twisters battering rural Oklahoma in this up-close-and-personal survival story.

6 Independence Day: Resurgence

Roland Emmerich returns to the iconic alien-invasion epic that cemented his name next to the disaster genre and truly sold Will Smith as a blockbuster action hero with this massive sequel to his original 1996 hit Independence Day.

Smith, sadly, doesn’t return for this sequel but a mountain of old and new heroes, armed with all the slick technology that modern effects can give them, means that the spectacle is never in short supply.

5 Geostorm

When a super-advanced series of satellites used to control Earth’s climate becomes hijacked and used to spread weather-based disasters across the globe, it’s up to the system’s disgraced creator (played by Gerard Butler) to solve the mystery.

The disaster genre is interestingly mixed with the political thriller in the big-screen directorial debut of Roland Emmerich’s producing partner Dean Devlin, with Devlin delivering all the numerous varieties of the explosively effects-driven goods that the pair had become so famous for.

4 The Day After Tomorrow

Dennis Quaid’s environmental scientist is ignored at the world’s peril when he forecasts a series of superstorms that will destroy the northern hemisphere in Roland Emmerich’s more climate-themed take on the apocalypse.

When the character’s son (played by Jake Gyllenhaal) is trapped in New York City by the biblical weather, The Day After Tomorrow becomes an epic rescue movie in a radically altered world.

3 San Andreas

L.A. just can’t catch a break in movies. Dwayne Johnson is the chopper rescue pilot out to save his broken family when the titular faultline goes haywire and starts to reshape California in this earthquake take on the genre.

San Andreas is ultimately no less sprawling a movie experience for focussing on just one state and no less action-packed despite having nobody for Johnson to fight.

2 Reign of Fire

Dragons return to conquer the modern-day Earth in this unique post-apocalyptic sci-fi action epic starring Christian Bale and Matthew McConaughey as the last survivors out to destroy the source of the swarm.

The beast-slayers of Reing of Fire are decidedly more low-tech than Monarch but fans of Godzilla: King of the Monsters will nonetheless have their monster-hunting thirst quenched by the movie’s spin on an apocalypse of fire-breathing reptiles.

1 Armageddon

The end of the world never looked as good as it did in Michael Bay’s seminal space disaster romance and its overcharged style made sure that the apocalypse movie would never be the same again.

Bruce Willis and Ben Affleck lead a charismatic team of oil rig drillers through NASA training and into outer space for an ambitious mining project to blow up an antagonistic world-ending asteroid with a surprising amount of its own personality.

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