Man V/S Nature in Cinema

For this activity we were each asked to select a movie of our choice that depicted the concept of man against nature. The movie that I chose was Poseidon. Poseidon is a Hollywood movie about a cruise ship that is on its way to New York. On the night of New Year’s Eve the whole ship is celebrating with the guests on board socializing at the cruise party. Amidst the movie’s many subplots we come across the main character of the film Dylan Johns, a professional gambler. Meanwhile the ship’s crew members notice that the ship is about to collide with a rogue wave and attempt at trying to dodge the situation. Dylan realises that there is no way the ship can escape being submerged by the rogue wave and plans an escape route. He is joined by a hand full of other passengers and the group somehow manages to escape just before the entire ship is overwhelmed by the rogue wave.

Now, a rogue wave is simply an abnormally large wave that occurs in the middle of the sea due to various natural reasons such as high winds. They are usually random and can occur at any time.

Therefore, the movie doesn’t exactly incorporate the notion of ecosystem-destroying human activities in particular. However this movie highlights how the people on the ship, despite knowing that there was a chance of their ship being drowned, continued to party, confident that they would be able to deal with the situation. They believed they would be able to control nature itself and survive. It was not until the very last moment that the passengers of the ship realized that the situation had become out of control and there was no chance of their survival. Man has always believed that he has the upper hand and has the ability to manipulate whatever he wants to. However, that is far from the truth. Poseidon is an example of the fact that no matter what mankind might believe, he must still be at the mercy of nature from time to time.