Reverse the polarity of the neutron flow!

Em and I love to watch disaster movies of all kinds – epidemics, weather disasters, alien invasions and some supernatural stuff.  Of course most of them are cheesy (being on “Syfy” and all), but I’ve noticed they all have the same story line.  See if this sounds familiar:

·         There’s always a daughter named Kelly who hates her new step-mom because she thinks she’s trying to replace the Mom who died a year ago.

·         New Step-Mom is always a scientist or a news reporter or some other authority that people listen to.

·         Dad is always a cop, state trooper or military guy that’s been disgraced in some way.

·         The clueless Dad has a distant relationship with his independent daughter (Kelly) and she usually gets separated from the Dad at the beginning of whatever crisis is unfolding.  And she’s usually stranded with the StepMom that she hates.

·         There’s always a hero who everyone thinks is a quack that will have the solution, but no one will let him try it.

·         There are always two failed attempts to “fix the problem” before the third time’s a charm.

·         One guy who knows that the hero could do it, won’t let him and keeps the powers that be from knowing it.  He either gets killed off or realizes that the hero is right and lets him save the day.

·         At some point, the materials needed to thwart the disaster are inside some locked, secure building that the hero’s accomplices have to break into.

·         When they are arrested, the lone officer holding them always “goes against his better judgment” to let them out just in time to save mankind.

·         Toward the end of the movie, the hero’s sidekick is killed off.

·         The hero always stops the disaster at .02 seconds before total annihilation of planet earth.

·         At some point, nobody’s cell phone works and they have to go all MacGyver to communicate.

·         The primary disaster always misses the family members of the main characters by mere inches or minutes.

·         Even though everything around them is getting sucked into some vortex, including heavy vehicles and other people, the main characters have little more than their hair blowing around.

·         The Dad always finds the daughter completely unharmed and she’s now best friends with the Step-Mom…..they all live happily ever after.

Sometimes we’ll see a good one that defies all of the above, but most of them follow this general script.  The best part is that the disasters are not likely to EVER happen, what-EVER the real condition of our earth’s crust, our “fragile” solar system, the thickness of the ozone layer, the existence of aliens or the severity of the latest virus.  Frankly, I think they’re missing a whole genre of disaster movies by not doing one where human stupidity wiped out a large population.  Here, I’ll set up the opening sequence:  Somewhere in a Wal-Mart, far far away……