The movie considered an “inside joke” in the public health industry
It speaks volumes about the morbid and defeatist nature of humanity that during the throes of the pandemic’s first wave, Stephen Soderbergh‘s Contagion was a movie that almost instantly enjoyed a massive resurgence in popularity.
For whatever reason, audiences all over the world couldn’t get enough of a well-researched, solidly-acted, and authentic look at what could happen were the planet to find itself caught in the throes of a seemingly-irreversible viral outbreak. It was dark stuff, but at least the film was impressively accurate.
Unsurprisingly, then, another forgotten feature to gain a second wind was Wolfgang Petersen’s Outbreak, a quarter of a century after the star-studded disaster thriller notched almost $190million at the global box office. It was never intended to be an emulation of real life, but the scientific and medical communities nonetheless had a field day pulling it apart at the seams.
The story kicks off with a monkey being smuggled into the United States from Africa, which ignites the outbreak of a deadly airborne virus in a small California town. To try and prevent worldwide catastrophe, a range of scientific, medical, and military experts are drafted in to try and slow the spread, with a ticking clock set in motion once the army decides the quickest and easiest method is to blow them up.
Academy Award winners Dustin Hoffman, Kevin Spacey, Cuba Gooding Jr., and Morgan Freeman are joined by Rene Russo, Donald Sutherland, and Patrick Dempsey as part of an esteemed ensemble, but despite playing their parts with the utmost sincerity and seriousness, the pros were not impressed.
In fact, when CNBC investigated how closely pandemic-related movies reflected the real thing, Contagion was deemed to be leagues ahead of Outbreak in every regard. It wasn’t even close, either, with the experts weighing in to decree the latter “took some real liberties when it came to scientific accuracy.”
Dr Mark Smolinski – a specialist in disease prevention and control who founded the Ending Pandemics organisation to further underline his credentials – declared of Outbreak that “the science was awful” for the way the characters “basically created a vaccine overnight.” All in all, the film is viewed as an “inside joke in the public health community,” not that it prevented patrons from buying a ticket.
Petersen’s blockbuster had been taking flak for its inaccuracies since it first hit cinemas in March 1995, so it wasn’t exactly something the production hadn’t become accustomed to. The best way to view Outbreak is along similar lines to how NASA treats Armageddon. It’s a flight of fancy that doesn’t have an ounce of basis in truth but boasts a proven director at the helm and a litany of established names among its cast.
