A few years ago I watched The Hurricane Heist (2018) because of the amazing use of “Rock You Like a Hurricane” in the trailer. A surprise to no one, the movie was a critical and financial flop, although it did hold true to its premise — it’s about a heist during a hurricane; nothing more, nothing less.
The more I recommended the movie for its sheer straightforwardness, the more I started to think: what if there were more movies in the Hurricane Heist universe? Then it dawned on me — all I had to do was look toward Sharknado for the answer.
In the mid-2010’s Syfy, who had long been known for their made-for-TV features, found themselves at the height of pop culture with the unforeseen success of the Sharknado franchise. With a third film in production, they decided to attempt something usually reserved for episodic TV dramas and comic book movies — a shared world.
So, they greenlit Lavalantula, a movie about lava tarantulas from an underground volcano, and tied the movie to Sharknado 3: Oh Hell No! with a guest appearance from series lead Ian Ziering. The movie was a success, even if it was only a minor one, and a sequel was put into production. A year later, 45 minutes into Sharknado: The 4th Awakens, Steve Guttenberg appeared to tease the upcoming 2 Lava 2 Lantula.
Movies that reference each other are not a new concept, even when Syfy attempted it with Lavalantula; in fact the Marvel Cinematic Universe was in full swing at the time. And while I don’t think it’d be feasible to reconstruct each movie with a MCU-like connection, the idea of working in phases which lead to a unifying event can work in any context. By working this way, each of the film’s characters have the time to develop on their own while the world around them continues to move toward a singular point.
With this framework in mind, and the knowledge that the only superpower needed to make it through a weather movie is plot armor and a little luck, connecting these films was easier than I expected.
Kicking things off with 1996’s Twister, Helen Hunt and Bill Paxton play a couple in the midst of divorce, as Hunt’s character Jo and her team of storm chasers attempt to insert a measuring device into several tornadoes. The movie would remain unchanged and work independently as a solid extreme weather film and a great beginning to what I want to create.
Volcano (1997) would come next. Starring Tommy Lee Jones and Anne Heche, the film finds geologist Dr. Amy Barnes (Heche) searching for evidence of a newly formed volcano under the La Brea Tar Pits. After it erupts, Michael Roark (Lee Jones) leads Los Angeles’ emergency management office to divert the lava through the city’s streets. Before Heche’s character begins searching for clues, I would add a brief phone call from her sister Jo where she explains that she’ll come and visit Oklahoma soon; the movie could then continue normally.
The third installment would be the criminally underrated Hard Rain (1998), which pits an armored car driver played by Christian Slater against a gang of thieves led by Morgan Freeman during a dangerous storm. At the beginning of the film, while the thieves sit in a bar discussing their plans after the heist, to create a narrative link I would have the televisions in the background play news footage from Twister and Volcano, noting to the viewers that the weather will only get worse.
This takes us to phase one’s unifying event: 2004’s The Day After Tomorrow. In the film Jack Hall, played by Dennis Quaid, is a paleoclimatologist who tries to warn the world that an increased greenhouse effect will cause devastating tornadoes, hurricanes, and storms leading to a new ice age. Because of the story’s global impact, it’s a perfect vehicle to bring back characters from the aforementioned films. Helen Hunt and Anne Heche would reprise their roles and act as characters who believe Jack Hall’s story. While escaping the freeze in New York, Hall’s son could be brought to safety by Christian Slater, returning as the driver from Hard Rain. By keeping these appearances brief and keeping the focus on the Hall family, the seeds are planted for a second set of films that raise the stakes even further.
This second wave of films would follow nearly the same formula and begin a decade later with Into the Storm (2014). In the movie, a small town is blindsided as deadly tornadoes that carve a path of destruction, meanwhile storm chasers try to witness the phenomenon up close. By setting the film in the aftermath of The Day After Tomorrow we’d see a planet not only afraid of severe weather, but actively wanting to prevent disasters from happening again.
Next would be San Andreas (2015) which takes place in the immediate moments after a 9.1 magnitude earthquake rocks Los Angeles and San Diego and finds a rescue pilot, played by Dwayne “The Rock” Johnson, journeying across the state to find his daughter. Throw in a line about him remembering what happened the last time LA was struck by an earthquake and how they had lava flowing through the streets and it fits right in.
The third film in this set is, of course, The Hurricane Heist. The movie vaguely echoes Hard Rain in its premise, but follows a treasury agent, a meteorologist, and his brother as they try to stop a group of rogue agents from robbing the Federal Reserve during a Category 5 hurricane. My only addition here would be having the agents mention that they had a massive score during the San Andreas quake a few years earlier.
Selecting a unifying event for this second phase is where things get a little tricky but both options include Gerard Butler. On one hand there’s 2017’s Geostorm in which Butler takes on the role of Jake Lawson, the creator of an international network of connected satellites that can control the climate from space after the world is repeatedly hit with catastrophic natural disasters. When the system malfunctions, and foul play is suspected, it’s up to Lawson to find out the cause of the problem and stop everything from being destroyed by a single global storm. On the other there’s Greenland (2020), where Butler plays an engineer named John Garrity who must take his family to safety as the bulk of a planet-destroying comet hurtles toward the Earth. With society crumbling around them, they race towards their only safe haven. Though both films could easily make reference to the events of the previous films in this phase, Geostorm feels like a concrete ending to this shared universe whereas Greenland seems like the chance to begin again down the road.
By taking the Sharknado approach over Marvel’s you could even include films like Pompeii (2014), The Perfect Storm (2000), and 2012 (2009) with the right lines or references; creating a network of films with incredible star power. Regardless of which ending we go with, use it as a catalyst to kickstart a new era of extreme weather films. Imagine stories of humanity trying to rebuild after an extinction level event and dealing with a world that’s incredibly hostile to them. Never-before seen weather systems, desperate and aggressive wildlife and plants with defenses mutated by cosmic radiation. If you wouldn’t watch Gerard Butler hack his way through a carnivorous forest chased by starving wolves in order to save his family then we can’t be friends.
It’s your move Hollywood, time to put the extreme back in extreme weather.
