Pandemic Double Feature: Outbreak (1995) & Contagion (2011)

Pandemic Double Feature:
Outbreak (1995) & Contagion (2011)

"The single biggest threat to man's continued dominance on the planet is the virus" - Joshua Lederberg Phd, Nobel laureate. 

Content Warning:  This one gets a bit political (how could it not really considering the subject matter) I believe in science and I believe in wearing face masks and following the guidlines suggest by the CDC and the WHO, and I believe in Vaccines, if you are an anti-vaxxer, anti-masker or politically conservative, maybe consider skipping this review please.

In 1995 when the film Outbreak was released, the world was looking at the ongoing HIV global epidemic, and the Ebola epidemic, and it had been a long time since the world had seen a full on pandemic, the last major pandemic was the Swine Flu (sometimes referred to by the racist term Spanish Flu) in 1918-1919, so the idea of a global pandemic seemed a bit of a fiction of the past, but there was potential that Ebola which tended to stick pretty local could potentially spread, and then of course a year later the world was shaken by the bird flu (SARS) Pandemic (which again thankfully was kept mostly localized), but it did make the cautionary tale of films like Outbreak seem a little more real.  Then, 25 years later in 2020 the planet would see first hand what a global pandemic that has (at the time of writing this) killed over 1.6 million people, over 300,000 in the USA alone (the hardest hit nation due to inaction from an ineffective government).   So how do films like 1995's Outbreak about an ebola like outbreak (epidemic), or the 2011's Contagion about a flue like pandemic, hold up to the real thing which we all witnessed in 2020 with the global Covid-19 Pandemic.   Both of these films dealt with Outbreaks, quickly spreading diseases, and the fight to create a vaccine to cure the viruses.   I personally thought that I would never live through something like this, it was something that happened elsewhere, or something that was the subject of global disaster films...however the reality is that this could have happened in 2009 with the H1N1 outbreak, but thanks to quick action by the WHO, CDC, and a government that was quick to listen to and act on the advice of scientists in the field, the impact was quickly mitigated, however it had the potential to be much worse.  Scientists are always watching new potentially deadly viruses and acting quickly to stay on top of them, and usually our governments are cooperative with them.  However like in the case of films like Outbreak, and Omega Man the government are to blame by mishaps with biological weaponry, which is a realistic danger.  Then of course there is global climate change, causing devastating changes in weather and temperatures all over the world, and not to mention the drastically melting polar ice caps, all of which could lead to new viruses being discovered or jumping species and infecting humans.  So we as a global people are lucky that we haven't had a global pandemic before now, and I don't think it will be nearly 100 years before the next one, so what will we as a people do.  I don't know I'm not a scientist, I'm a film critic, but I do know this, I wear a mask when I go out in public, and I wash my hands frequently, and I practice social distancing, and when this is over, I will still wear a mask in large gatherings like large shopping centers, and I will continue maintaining social distancing from strangers whenever possible.   

Outbreak, released in 1994 tells the story of how an ebola like virus jumped species and was transmitted from monkeys to humans, and how through a series of unfortunate events started an epidemic, which was thankfully localized to a small California town, where a smuggler tried to sell the monkey to a pet shop, and then released it into the forest when the pet shop wouldn't buy it. This film is a highly stylized and fictional Hollywood film, and though it did somethings very right, for the most part it was an science-fiction action film, and much of the heroic behaviors of the main characters were highly unrealistic, but made for a good edge of the seat exciting and dramatic film.   Overall a great film, just very fantastic and not rooted very deeply in reality. 

Outbreak was directed by Wolfgang Petersen, with a screenplay by Laurence Dworet and Robert Roy Pool, and is based on the 1994 nonfiction novel The Hot Zone by Richard Preston  (maybe more like inspired by than based on).   Outbreak features a star-studded cast with some of the biggest names in Hollywood in the 1990's.  Dustin Hoffman plays Colonel Sam Daniels MD, Rene Russo plays Dr Roberta "Robby" Keough MD, Morgan Freeman as Brigadier General Billy Ford MD, Donald Sutherland as Major General Donald "Donnie" McClintock, Kevin Spacey as Lieutenant Colonel Casey Shuler MD, Cuba Gooding Jr as Major Salt MD, Patrick Dempsey as James "Jimbo" Scott (patient 1), and Dale Dye as Lieutenant Colonel Briggs.  The film was distributed by Warner Bros, and was a commercial success with box office sales of $189.8 million against it's $50 million budget.

This was an exciting film, with a lot of action, and drama, and I remember loving it when I first saw it in the 1990s, and I felt do different when I watched it again tonight.   The cast is amazing, and everyone plays their roles really well.   The film however was met with mixed reviews from the critics, I mean as far as being a great and entertaining film, it is successful, but as a realistic film it struggles.   There is first of all no way that a president would okay dropping a bomb on a US City, no matter what the circumstances, that just isn't something that would happen.  Also, no matter how much of a rogue a member of the miliatar might be, there is no way that any of these characters would say and do the things that they do, I think the most realistic characters are civilians like Robbie who is a DR for the CDC, or Kevin Spacey's character.   Also vaccines are not created within minutes, and they don't instantly cure people, they take time, often times a matter of years before an effective vaccine can be created.  Quickly creating a vaccine in minutes, is how you could get something ridiculous like what we saw in the film I Am Legend where the cure for cancer caused a pandemic that wiped out the earth.   There are procedures and scientific process for a good reason. 

However this film did get a few things right, and that is the response of the people in the small California town.   American's have this thing about freedom, and they don't like anything that will take away those freedoms even if it is for the safety of everyone.   When they are told that they can't leave their town, or that they needed to stay in their houses, they took to the street and tried to fight the soldiers.   The jackasses in the four wheel-drive trucks that tried to get through or around the army blockade is the idiotic behavior that I could see some of these big pickup driving folks that live in my area, that refuse to wear masks and have confederate flags and American flags flying from their trucks.   Americans want freedom, but they can't handle their freedom, and refuse to follow even the simplest requests or even mandates that could prevent thousands of lives from being lost.   That is one thing that Outbreak shows very well, so despite its over the top Hollywood antics, it does get right the commentary on the fear and selfishness of the average American.  (note: when I say "American" I mean resident of the USA, I am not including all of the other Americans outside of the USA in that).

I definitely recommend checking out Outbreak if you haven't seen it before, it is an entertaining film, and definitely worth watching, but it is definitely a work of Hollywood fiction, and not rooted in any type of reality.  There are a few nuggets of truth and of actual factual information, but for the most part, it is a film designed to entertain.  It looks pretty, has explosions, and some emotional parts that brought me almost to tears.  As a Hollywood film, created to entertain, it does that superbly.   If you want something rooted more in reality, then you will instead want to check out Contagion from 2011.

16 years after the release of Outbreak, comes 2011's Contagion, which is a much more modern and real look at what a global pandemic would look like in the world in 2011.  Things have changed a lot from the world of 1995 where a film like Outbreak was made, now with the internet and having seen the dangerous effects of the bird flu virus, and the potential that a virus like that could become a global pandemic.   Contagion differs in a lot of ways from Outbreak, and I think maybe the biggest way is that it even though it also has a huge star-studded cast, it doesn't feel like a Hollywood film, it feels much more like a documentary with dramatic reenactment, than it does a Hollywood science-fiction film.   Contagion is rooted very much in actual factual information, and though 2020 has proven that it got some things a big wrong, it also got much of it right.   

Contagion is a film about a deadly Novel virus that jumped from a bat, to a pig, to a human.  A chef in china who was processing the infected pig, didn't  wash his hands and passed it on to an American business woman, who then spread it to other people in a Chinese Casino, then to her boyfriend in Chicago, and then to her family in Minneapolis (thankfully her husband was immune, and his daughter didn't come into contact with her, but their son however did contract it and die), and it spread to everyone that she came into contact along the way.   That is a very realistic look at how new viruses are spread.  This film ends up being really relatable to the 2020 Covid-19 pandemic, and even the initial jump to humans from a bat in China is eerily similar to the events of this film.  Though there are a few things that we have learned from 2020 that showed that this film was slightly incorrect, but for the most part it really has a lot of similarities to the reality that the world would face a mere 9 years after its release. 

Contagion was directed by Steven Soderbergh and written by Scott Z Burns, and distributed by Warner Brothers.  Contagion features a star studded cast that includes: Gwyneth Paltrow as Beth Emhoff (patient 1), Matt Damon as Mitch Emhoff (Beth's husband), Anna Jacoby-Heron plays Jory Emhoff (Mitch's daughter), Laurence Fishburne as Dr Ellis Cheever (of the CDC),  Sanaa Lathan as Aubrey Cheever (fiance of Dr Cheever), Kate Winslet as Dr Erin Mears (an Epidemic Intelligence Service officer for the CDC), Marion Cotillard as Dr Leonora Orantes (an epidemiologist with the WHO), Jennifer Ehle as Dr Ally Hextall (a research scientist with the CDC, who is working on a vaccine), Elliott Gould as Dr. Ian Sussman a dr at University of California San Francisco,  and Jude Law as Alan Krumwiede a conspiracy theorist blogger and anti-vaxxer.  The film was a critical and box office success, grossing $136.5 million against its $60 million budget.

A few very striking things about this film compared to a film like Outbreak is the realism of it, that is accomplished through a few different ways.  First the film is shot entirely in digital camera, to give it a documentary/home video feel to it, which helps to give it less of a "movie" look and more of a real look.  Secondly Soderbergh and Burns did a lot of research for the film, to make sure that their facts were as correct as they could be, some of the actors even met with scientists to get their performances right.   The science to the film is why it works as well as it does, and after the Covid-19 Pandemic in 2020 broke out the filmmakers have been repeatedly asked how they could so closely predict the future, and their response is that the science is there, we just need to listen to what the scientists have to tell us.   That's the thing, the president makes it seem like this was unexpected, and that no one would know what to do in this situation, but the fact is that if they would stop and listen to the scientists and the research that is out there, the answers are there, the problem though is that sadly listening to the scientists and putting the lives of people over the profits of business is not a ideal for the economy or the corporate interests, so instead of listening to what the scientific community tells us (wear masks, social distance, quarantine, wash your hands, ect) people listen to the government and their corporate leaders.  Who is more trustworthy, your doctor or your boss?   

Another thing that Contagion gets very right, is Jude Law's character of the conspiracy theorist blogger, who profits off the fear of others by spreading misinformation and lies.  I am not talking about the "Karen" that shares misinformation on social media, because they watched a youtube video by someone with "DR" in their credentials and ignorantly believed the misinformation must be truth because a dr said it.   Now I am talking about those who create those videos, and those who use a monetized platform to spread that misinformation, so that your ignorant aunt or uncle shares it on Facebook, and you have to block them to avoid getting into constant arguments.  Hey, I'm a blogger (though I don't get paid for it), I recognize I have a responsibility in the information that I put out there.   People like the character that Jude Law plays are one of the most dangerous elements in a global pandemic, because the misinformation that they spread causes not only defiance of the actual scientific facts being put out by the CDC and WHO, but more importantly these people cause fear.  Misinformation and fear are more dangerous than the pandemic itself.  I think that the most terrifying reality in all of this is that beyond just bloggers, Youtubers, and talk radio hosts spreading misinformation and conspiracy theories, is that is a mainstream "news" station in the United States that spreads misinformation and conspiracy theories, and that they have a huge influence on a large segment of the population (including on the current president).    One thing that the film was slightly incorrect on, is the way that people reacted in rioting, looted, and basically collapsed under the pressure of the virus.  The reality that we saw in 2020 is that though there are elements of that happening (anti-maskers assaulting shop workers), but for the most part we are only seeing small populations of conservatives throwing temper tantrums because they are asked to do simple preventative measures like wearing a face mask, maintaining social distance, only being allowed to have a certain number of people into a business at a time, or to stay home because they are experiencing flu like symptoms.   Americans want freedom, but they can't handle freedom, but really for the most part, I would say that the majority of people are closer to the Matt Damon's character and the character of his daughter in the film.

I don't want to get into how this film predicted what would happen in 2020, because the truth is it didn't, this film did nothing more than take a look at the scientific evidence that is out there, and created a fictional account of what a potential Novel virus pandemic could look like.  It isn't predicting the future, because these are the things that the scientists have been warning us about, and telling us how to avoid for a very long time.   The virus in this film could potentially have been stopped if the chef had just washed his hands before shaking the American business woman's hand, or if she had washed her hands before touching her face.   This film tells us the same thing that the doctors are telling us every day in 2020: Wash your hands, maintain social distancing, wear a mask, etc.  Maybe we all need Matt Damon to be our dad right now, because the way he tells his characters daughter in the film to behave, is exactly how we all should be behaving right now.  Outbreak showed us in detail how going out in public or to a movie theater, and not covering our cough can spread a virus (and in that it was very factual), Contagion shows us how viruses spread and become pandemics and steps that we can take to avoid them.

I guess on a final closing note, I am not a doctor, or a scientist, just a simple film critic and blogger, and I don't want this to be a political debate, but it is hard to talk about these two films right now without talking about current affairs.   I don't care if you agree with me, I just hope that you listen to the Center of Disease Control and the World Health Organization, and their recommendations, they are experts in the field of virus outbreaks and pandemics, you boss, co-worker, or politician are not experts...so do what you will I guess.  Just remember that vaccines work, face coverings work, social distancing works, staying home when you are sick works, washing your hands works, you were told that in 1995 in Outbreak, you were told that in 2011 in Contagion, you were told that by your doctor, you were told that by the CDC and by the WHO, every scientific expert in the field has told you that these things are effective, no matter what that Youtube video, or that conspiracy theory or "truther" blogger told you.