Gene Hackman's The Poseidon Adventure Performance Helped Legitimize An Entire Genre

In hindsight, the American cinema of the 1970s has two major legacies attached to it. On the one hand, there's the American New Wave aka the New Hollywood movement, in which "Five Easy Pieces," "Klute," "The French Connection," and other films like them eschewed the mainstream studio filmmaking formula in favor of telling stories that were creatively daring and heartfelt. On the other, there's the dawn of the blockbuster, a trend that continues to this day and whose beginning is most often attributed to Steven Spielberg's "Jaws" from 1975. But while "Jaws" gets the lion's (er, shark's) share of the credit for birthing the blockbuster, a good dollop of credit must also go to the other populist trend in American cinema during the decade: the disaster movie.

The disaster film had been around before the '70s in one form or another, but it's the version that was popularized during that decade which has allowed the genre to continue to the present day. Although 1970's "Airport" is often considered the watershed disaster film, it's 1972's "The Poseidon Adventure" which was the genre's make-or-break point. Directed by Ronald Neame, the film's producer Irwin Allen (who would go on to be dubbed "The Master of Disaster" thanks to the success of this film and its follow-up, "The Towering Inferno") advertised "The Poseidon Adventure" as an anti-New Hollywood film; the picture's promotional making-of short was even titled "The Return of the Movie Movie." Essentially, Allen wished to play up the film's spectacle-first nature in order to draw audiences in who wanted some escapist entertainment.

However, Neame's casting of Gene Hackman as the lead of the movie's all-star ensemble subverted Allen's plans to make "The Poseidon Adventure" a big, silly spectacle. In his role as Reverend Frank Scott, one of several passengers who struggles to survive after the luxury liner Poseidon is capsized in the middle of the ocean on New Year's Eve, Hackman gives all of his considerable prowess as a screen actor to the performance. As a result, "The Poseidon Adventure" couldn't be easily dismissed as a lark, and Hackman's work in the film not only helped legitimize the disaster movie but can also be seen as an early example of a great actor elevating a blockbuster movie.

To be fair, the screenplay for "The Poseidon Adventure" (as written by Stirling Silliphant and Wendell Mayes) is so overwrought and lofty that in the wrong hands, it could have indeed been a feature-length exercise in unintentional camp. Although there are some who still see the movie through that lens (helped, no doubt, by a pop culture joke that extends from Bette Midler to the still-popular '90s sitcom "Friends"), it's Hackman's commitment to the role and his performance which helps silence would-be chucklers. It's a bold choice to give a disaster movie about the survivors of a giant wave toppling a ship making their way through an upside down vessel to safety a decidedly ecclesiastical hero. It's even bolder to give that character a philosophy that skews close to being Randian (Scott happily preaches the idea that "God helps those who help themselves"), something that combines with the film's almost Biblical tone of hardship and strife to end up with someone who, at least on paper, shouldn't be likable at all, much less heroic.

Fortunately, the casting of Hackman as Reverend Scott helps alleviate all these potential pitfalls. The actor's natural orneriness (a quality which served him incredibly well in just about every performance he ever delivered) gives enough edge to the character so that his selflessness and generosity seems that much more genuine and pronounced. Of course, Hackman's sense of authority (if not superiority) easily explains Scott filling the role of the leader of the group that attempt to make an exodus from the ship instead of waiting it out. His chemistry with fellow tough-guy actor Ernest Borgnine (playing a cop, Mike Rogo) lends their moments of conflict an extra intensity, and his tenderness toward the teenage Susan (Pamela Sue Martin) as well as the middle-aged Belle (Shelley Winters) gives the character a much-needed extra dimension of humanity.

In another movie, with a lesser actor, Scott's final moment of self-sacrifice would seem like a cheap gimmick, and might've left audiences remarkably unsatisfied by the film. Instead, Hackman helps make it an indelible moment, a culmination of all the weighty themes that the film introduces which it otherwise probably wouldn't have been able to pay off. It's a scene depicting a man's crisis of faith that doubles as humanity's indictment of a supposedly benevolent higher power. That Hackman was able to deliver such a moment within a special-effects spectacle was a testament to his abilities.

Gene Hackman's performance in "The Poseidon Adventure" proved to Hollywood just how much value there was in casting a committed star in a leading role of a would-be blockbuster. With such a person involved, you weren't just getting marquee value but creative value as well. Though the template was already built, the success of "Poseidon Adventure" ensured that future disaster movies would make a point out of putting together as professional and eclectic an acting ensemble as possible. Thus, we not only got the even more star-studded cast of "The Towering Inferno," but also the flashy (and game) casts of films like "Independence Day" and "Armageddon" years later.

The ironic icing on the genuinely great cake of Hackman's performance in the film is that, for the actor, the gig may have simply been a for-hire role he casually tossed off. In a 2020 interview with Vanity Fair, Ben Stiller recalled approaching Hackman on the set of "The Royal Tenenbaums" in order to praise his work in "The Poseidon Adventure":

"The whole shoot, I was waiting to get up the nerve — because he's an intimidating guy — to tell him how much 'Poseidon Adventure' meant to me. So, two days before the shoot was over, finally, there's this quiet moment. I said, 'Gene, I just want to say it's just been amazing working with you — and I didn't say this before, but really for me, 'Poseidon Adventure' is probably one of the most important movies for me, ever, because it really made me want to be a filmmaker, to be in movies, and I saw it multiple times and it just really, really changed my life."

As Stiller recalled, Hackman responded to this by merely looking at him and saying, "Oh yeah. Money job," and then walking away. While it's possible that Hackman was simply having a bad day at work or wasn't interested in speaking about his past films at that moment, it's likely that the infamously no-bulls*** actor meant exactly what he said. Stiller continued:

"My world was shattered. Even if it was a money job for Hackman, it was the most incredible money-job performance I've ever seen."

Obviously, I completely side with Stiller's sentiments here. The fact that Hackman viewed "Poseidon Adventure" and his appearance in it as merely a paycheck gig doesn't diminish his work in the film. On the contrary, it makes it even more impressive — this is the quality of work the guy did when he didn't care. With Hackman's passing, we've lost one of the titans of American film acting, an artist who had such innate skill that he could deliver greatness no matter the material. It's a level of craft to aspire to, and for us cinephiles, it means the closest thing we can get to a guarantee of enjoyment is whenever we watch any one of his films. Like Scott's sacrifice, Hackman did all that he did for us.