people were really impressed by airports in the 1970s

the best piece of Airport franchise trivia in the world

the first Airport (1970) earned 10(!) Oscar nominations. also there was this late arrival in 1985 from the same producers.

the disaster movie craze of the '70s seems to have come from two distinct groups: the Airport franchise, and Irwin Allen, a successful TV producer who sensed a trend coming and grabbed onto it. Universal had Airport, so he brought this to Fox:

big ensembles were a staple of Hollywood for years, but new advances in special effects helped put these big casts into family-friendly adventure / disaster movies, instead of boring melodramas. Fox <and> WB paid for Allen's next one:

in the late '70s Irwin Allen tried to combine the two things he was good at: TV and disaster movies.

his return to feature films was... not great.

Allen's last two disaster movies premiered on TV in '82 and '83. Yes I've seen all of these.

but Airport and Irwin Allen were only part of the craze. everyone was making disaster movies throughout the whole decade

they were practically the superhero movie of the 1970s.

and of course we can thank Airplane! (1980) for helping to end the cycle, for at least a few years anyway. and it wasn't even the first good satire of disaster films.

i almost forgot this one. it's terrible!

some people compile these threads into something called an article and then sell it to a website. not me.

double checking to see if I missed anything interesting and you know what? a mad bomber movie is not a disaster movie. I'm sorry but we need to make some rules here

public service announcement for nerds: if you want to binge all four of the Airport movies, tubi has them but only until May 1.