Best Disaster Movies – Methodology
I searched far and wide for lists of best disaster movies of all time. Criteria included the movies being ranked, not just listed, and covering all time, not just a decade. The lists were generally created by groups, whether teams or committees or based on general public voting (like Ranker.com).
I was able to find 37 lists. I took the 37 lists and added all their content into a spreadsheet, noting the rank of every film. The total number was over 950 including all the repeats. I experimented with different formulas, trying to balance the value of being ranked high on any list and being included on the most lists. I ended up averaging the rankings each movie got (there were 118 that were on at least 2 lists) and dividing that average by a factor of the number of lists that movie was on. The lowest score meant a high ranking average on many lists. The complete spreadsheet is attached at the bottom.
The movies that were on the most lists (out of 37) were:
- The Day After Tomorrow (2004) – 34 lists
- Twister (1996) – 32 lists
- Armageddon (1998) – 27 lists
- 2012 (2009) – 26 lists
- Deep Impact (1998) – 25 lists
- Dante’s Peak (1997) – 25 lists
- The Poseidon Adventure (1972) – 23 lists
- The Towering Inferno (1974) – 22 lists
- The Perfect Storm (2000) – 22 lists
- San Andreas (2015) – 22 lists
- Titanic (1997) – 21 lists
- Contagion (2011) – 20 lists
Here are links to the lists I used along with dates the lists were created:
- Inspiration Feed – 5 Jan 2023
- OtakuKart – 4 Jan 2023
- The Digital Fix – 20 Dec 2022
- GameRant – 9 Dec 2022
- Letterboxd – 3 Dec 2022
- MovieWeb – 22 Nov 2022
- Reader’s Digest – 4 Nov 2022
- Wealth of Geeks – 30 Oct 2022
- Entoin – 16 Oct 2022
- Chillopedia – 14 Sep 2022
- Fiction Horizon – 12 Aug 2022
- UNB – 21 Jun 2022
- TimeOut – 8 Jun 2022
- It’s a Stampede! – 7 Jun 2022
- POPxo – 17 Mar 2022
- Esquire – 14 Mar 2022
- Vulture – 9 Feb 2022
- NME – 7 Feb 2022
- Atom – 3 Feb 2022
- BFI UK – 3 Feb 2022
- TicketFairy – 21 Jan 2022
- Slash Film – 3 Sep 2021
- The Chive – 29 Jun 2021
- Ranker.com – 7 Apr 2021
- Men’s Health – 29 Sep 2020
- Times of India – 22 Jun 2020
- Bontena – 4 Apr 2020
- Cultured Vultures – 11 Mar 2019
- Metacritic – 13 Oct 2017
- Hypable – 23 Aug 2017
- Goliath – 26 Sep 2016
- Irwin Allen News Network – 20 Sep 2015
- ET Online – 29 May 2015
- Entertainment.ie – 20 Aug 2014
- Orange County Register – 12 Nov 2009
- Rotten Tomatoes – no date
- The Top Tens – no date