Pompeii: Accidentally Philosophical?

Given the advertising campaign of the latest 3D spectacle, Pompeii, I cannot say that I have high expectations. From what the trailers depict, this sword-and-sandal epic promises to be another bombastic blockb ster, offering little s bstance in character or plot development. For the disaster movie, this seems to be the standard practice. !tories and characters are intentionally kept simple as a pretense to stage nfettered chaos. "ecall movies s ch as Titanic, Pearl Harbor, or Twister. In all of these instances, the disaster was made the primary foc s, and th s the conflicts had to be as r dimentary as possible. #nd yet, as easy as it is to s b$ect s ch movies to ostentatio s cynicism, the disaster movie itself as a genre has its roots in a startlingly rich and profo nd literary tradition. Indeed, the drama of petty h man lives at the will of s pernat ral and nforeseen forces is characteristic of #ncient Greek tragedy. %he conflict of a work s ch as Oedipus the King centers on the very birth of the tit lar character.