Top 10 Man Vs. Nature Survival Movies

Hello, dear reader!

The topic for today's blog was suggested by my Uncle Dan, a fellow film enthusiast. I'll be looking at the ten greatest Man Vs. Nature survival movies, ranging from stranded islands to snowy mountains, from incredible fiction to even more incredible true stories, from ultra-realistic to definitely-not-realistic. The genre is a hard one to define, so I decided that any film is eligible, but I'm ranking them based on how good they are as Man Vs. Nature survival movies, instead of how they are as overall movies that happen to fall into the category.

Here are my honorable mentions: Call of the Wild (2020), First Blood (1982), Gravity (2013), The Grey (2011).

10. The Gold Rush (1925)

"Three days from anywhere. A lone prospector."

This Charlie Chaplin classic is many things: the movie the legendary filmmaker most wanted to be remembered by, the oldest movie I've seen to date, and a comedic take on the Man Vs. Nature category to show how versatile the subgenre can be. While parts of the film take place in an Alaskan town, most of it follows Chaplin's iconic Tramp character out in the middle of nowhere (or, more accurately, 'three days from anywhere'), looking for gold in the Klondike area. Being a Charlie Chaplin comedy and all, The Gold Rush isn't half as intense in its survivalist storytelling as the other films on this list, but it does present an amusing take on the struggle against dangerous blizzards and steep cliff edges in the midst of the Gold Rush.

9. Jeremiah Johnson (1972)

"You're the same dumb pilgrim that I been hearin' for twenty days, and smellin' for three!"

One could argue that Jeremiah Johnson is more of a "Man in harmony with nature" movie than a "Man Vs. Nature" one; thus its fairly low placement on this list. Another point of view would be that the film is just like the others on this list, but title character Jeremiah Johnson (Robert Redford) is better at what he does than the other protagonists on this list, therefore getting into less dire and intense situations.

The film follows Johnson as he enters the Rocky Mountains with the goal of leaving society behind and becoming a mountain man (I distinctly remember watching this film with my Dad, as Mom chimed in to ask which cowboy movie we were watching, leading to a defensive "It's not a cowboy movie, it's a mountain man movie" from Dad). The film follows Johnson as he hunts, builds, learns and generally becomes at home in his surroundings, while also having intriguing run-ins with various other inhabitants of the Rockies. Definitely the most peaceful and least adrenaline-packed film from this list.

8. Life of Pi (2012)

"Above all: don't lose hope"

If these films were ranked based on how good they are as overall cinema instead of how good they are purely as survival movies, Life of Pi would definitely be quite a few notches further up. Having a strong message and being the deserved winner of four Academy Awards, this Ang Lee film has a lot going on for it - but while it could be argued to be much more than "just a survival movie", a survival movie it is at heart.

We follow Pi Patel (Irrfan Khan) as he recounts his unique tale of survival to a young writer (Rafe Spall). The bulk of the film is in these flashbacks, as we see a young Pi (Suraj Sharma) surviving a shipwreck, and spending an incredible length of time stranded in the middle of the Pacific Ocean with the company of an adult Bengal tiger. I won't go into the depths and meanings of all that happens in light of the film's ending, as I don't want to spoil this film for those who haven't seen it, so I'll just say that it's a fascinating tale of survival (among other things). The scene where Pi encounters a humpback whale, with the moment's magnificent visual effects and profound sense of nature's terrifying greatness, is honestly one of the most beautiful and magical movie scenes that I have ever witnessed.

7. The Shallows (2016)

"GET OUT OF THE WATER! SHARK!"

"It's okay, no sharks come here!"

I'm a tad ashamed to admit that an adolescent Veikko's motivations for watching this movie were less along the lines of "This sounds like an intense and well-made film about survival in open water" and more along the lines of "This film appears to feature Blake Lively in a tight wetsuit for much of its duration". But whatever my reasons for seeing the film in the first place, I remember being surprised by how good the film actually was. I tend to expect the absolute worst from any "shark film" that isn't the original Jaws (1975), but The Shallows is no ordinary shark-horror flick.

While I have learned afterwards that the film isn't all that realistic in its depiction of shark behavior (apparently I'm behind on my shark knowledge), it sure feels realistic when watching the film and not knowing much about sharks. Gone is the ridiculousness of typical shark cinema, as the threat in this film feels intense and real: a surfer is attacked by a shark, gets stranded on a rock barely above the water surface, and must figure out a way to survive (swimming back to the beach is hardly an option when the shark remains in the nearby water). The Shallows is a surprisingly awesome survival film, carried by its impressive visuals and a Lively lead performance.

6. All Is Lost (2013)

"All is lost here, except for soul and body, that is, what's left of them, and a half day's ration"

I guess Robert Redford has a knack for portraying people surviving in the midst of wilderness, as he stars in two of this list's movies. In All Is Lost, Redford is the only person to appear for the entire duration, and the one-man show is quite thrilling. He plays the role of a sailor who gets into trouble 1700 nautical miles from the Sumatra Straits, when his boat collides with a shipping container. Throughout the film, we follow him trying to repair his craft and get help with all sorts of resourceful methods, yet things start to look more and more dire as the forces of nature seem stacked against the poor man.

Redford's performance is made all the more impressive by the film's lack of dialogue; he speaks only a few lines of dialogue throughout the mostly speechless film. The general lack of spoken words makes it all the more powerful whenever something is said: Redford's character yelling "FUUUUCK!" in frustration has quite the impact when it's the first thing to come out of his mouth after an hour or so of silence. All in all, an intense and harrowing viewing experience.

5. Everest (2015)

"We don't need competition between people. There is competition between every person and this mountain. The last word always belongs to the mountain"

Based on a gripping true story, Everest follows two expedition groups stricken by disaster while ascending the world's highest mountain in 1996. Starring the likes of Jason Clarke, Jake Gyllenhaal and Michael Kelly in the roles of famous mountaineers Rob Hall, Scott Fischer and Jon Krakauer, Everest is a truly riveting watching experience. The film maintains a beautiful sense of adventure throughout its runtime, while also feeling extremely intense and horrifying as the situation on the mountain gets worse and worse.

The film's expert visual effects and Baltasar Kormakur's solid directing make for a thrilling atmosphere, with the sense of danger feeling very real. Everest does a fine job detailing the creative methods of survival that were used in order to save multiple lives in the disaster, while somberly remembering those who didn't make it.

4. The Revenant (2015)

"I ain't afraid to die anymore. I'd done it already"

The film that finally earned Leo DiCaprio his long-overdue Academy Award, The Revenant is the very first movie that came to mind when my uncle suggested this list. This might be because it is such a pure example of the Man Vs. Nature / Survival subgenre, checking all of the boxes. There's beautiful scenery, intense moments of danger, out-of-the-box solutions to stay alive in the face of death, and much more.

Like quite a few of this list's films, The Revenant is based on a true story - in this case, the story of 1820's frontiersman Hugh Glass, who got mauled by a bear and was left for dead. His methods of survival included resorting to sleeping inside animal carcasses and eating raw slabs of bison liver - feats that DiCaprio actually performed in the name of method acting, giving the scenes a startling sense of realism. If you're out camping and the outdoors seem tough to deal with, this is one of those movies you can think about in order to put things into perspective (I applied this method when having problems with my tent this summer).

3. The Martian (2015)

"I don't want to come off as arrogant here, but I'm the greatest botanist on this planet"

An out-of-the-box choice when compared with the other movies on this list, but still a very fitting entry. I went back and forth trying to decide whether I would include space survival films on this list, and ended up drawing the line based on the role of technology in the film's presence - Gravity (2013) wasn't quite enough, because it is "Man Vs. Science/Technology" as much as "Man Vs. Nature", but The Martian is just as 'Man Vs. Nature' as any one of these movies - it just happens to take place on Mars.

Based on a fantastic book by Andy Weir, The Martian follows an astronaut who gets stranded on Mars and learns to survive there. While the premise seems very sci-fi and out there, the crazy thing about the story is that it is, in its own way, incredibly realistic. The cinematic adaptation is loyal to its source material, in which Weir does an incredible amount of work building the plot so that everything is based on actual science. As crazy as it sounds, everything in this stranded-on-Mars story could actually happen once space travel to that distance becomes possible. Main character Mark Watney's (Matt Damon) methods of receiving oxygen, getting food and water, and eventually making contact with Earth, are all grounded in very real and carefully calculated science, making this survival film into quite a mind-blower.

2. Cast Away (2000)

"We live and we die by time, and we must not commit the sin of turning our back on time"

Undoubtedly the ultimate island survival movie, Cast Away really makes you feel the weight of time as main character Chuck Noland (Tom Hanks) spends four years stranded on an island in the Pacific Ocean. This in largely due to the fact that so much of the film features just this one man, and that the man is played by Hanks - a 'just put him alone on an island for two hours and he'll keep the viewer entertained' actor of the highest caliber.

While the film has many uplifting moments as we follow Noland overcoming various obstacles with creative solutions, it is also a very gripping viewing experience - the sense of isolation on the island and the deterioration of Noland's mental state come across in a grim manner. The scene where Noland stands on the shore of the island, sees a flickering light in the far distance, and desperately tries to shout and send a signal even though he knows the source of the light is too far away to notice him, is one of the more haunting and powerful moments in cinema.

1. 127 Hours (2010)

"This rock has been waiting for me my entire life"

The reason why I have 127 Hours in first place is the same reason why I wouldn't recommend this movie to the faint of heart: it's just so real. None of the films on this list feel quite as real as this one. As a combination of James Franco's believable performance, Danny Boyle's intense directing and the chaotic atmosphere of plentiful flashbacks and hallucinations as Aron Ralston's (Franco) situation deteriorates, the movie manages to do what every man vs. nature survival movie strives for: it makes the viewer feel as if they're in the situation themselves. The movie gets to you, as you get inside the main character's head and see the story unfold through his experience, which makes 127 Hours into a (hard-to-watch) masterpiece.

If you're not familiar with the story, it's about a mountain climber who gets trapped under a boulder and must figure out a way to survive. It's based on a true story, which I most certainly didn't know when watching the film - only when the end credits began with a follow-up on the real Aron Ralston, I realized that this had really happened. That realization made the film feel immensely more powerful, because - well, I won't spoil it for those who haven't seen the movie, but my God, what a tale of survival it is. I don't like it when cinema indulges needlessly in violence and gore, but this film has pretty much the best case for justifying graphic violence that I've ever come across: it really adds to the movie's feeling of emphasizing with the main character and seeing the journey through his eyes. And, when all is said and done, the movie is more inspiring than it is horrifying.

Thank you for reading! Tune in next week as I celebrate the 45-year anniversary of The Outlaw Josey Wales (1976) by ranking the top 5 traditional (and top 5 unconventional) westerns!