I think that this is a fairly accurate analysis. Disaster-horror movies as a result of a combination of fear for the global situation and a sublimated desire to rip the shit up and start over again--feelings then assuaged by the idea that it's possible.

Like any tales about the End of Days from throughout human history, it's about the other side, and the marvelous utopia that gets established after the Evil loses.

Well, that and I think there's always a little part of us that, regardless of culture, remains stuck in a Lord of the Flies mode, possibly even looking forward to it. We want the world where the only thing to rely upon is grit and luck, because so much of what makes up society is utter bull so much of the time.

I'd like to see how many people identify with the final note in this analysis. I for one agree that it's probably a large part of it. We're tired of how things are, we know they need to change, but short of total disaster we can't imagine a way out. So we tell ourselves stories about that disaster and how we reconstruct afterwards. I think I'd like to see a story about averting the disaster, about remaking the world ourselves before it gets that far. Of course, that wouldn't make it far in the minds of those who count dollars and weekends at #1. I guess that's why I spend much more of my time reading Yes! and Ode than going to movies.

it's simply infuriating that i am legend is even included in this article. now the ending pisses me off even more than when i paid for it. thank you hollywood for turning yet another awesome story into a stock 'and everything was back to normal in the end' piece of shit.

I think you miss a point by concentrating on movies. There was another burst in the 60's or so, with "On the Beach". In literature there was a lot more to choose from in the 50's, "Thunder and Roses" comes to mind, the story about 'Tizathy," (Magic City" by Nelson Bond) "Re-Birth" by john Wyndham, on and on.. A lot of Andre Norton's books assumed post apocalyptic worlds. The A-bomb was on a lot of people's minds.

Then there was all those Distopias, like "Space Merchants" that might have looked back to "1984" Not to mention all those John Wyndham/J.G. Ballard books that came from "War of the Worlds."

I think they ran out of ways to destroy England with Tiffids and such, just about the time the movies started to do the same.

I always thought that genre was a reaction to the Loss of the Empire, but so was the Rolling Stones.

These Zombie movies are a lot less inventive than the stuff in the old days, but movies cost so much they have to be imitative and safe.

You can always count on Zombies.

Second thought; Do you see cyberpunk as a more optomistic genre?

I like to think post-apocalypse mania is part of a social survival instinct. Everyone sees the threat of destruction and so our culture becomes a forum for learning to deal with What Might Happen.

I don't think enough people are fed up with current civilization to make self-destruction a primary reason for post-apocalypse popularity.

There is something to be said for the Phoenix aspect of the post-apocalypse genre films, with culture and society burned to the ground, and humanity rising again out of the ashes. The "world" ends, and the human race is being thrust back hundreds of years into its own past, forced to live in a much more primitive fashion, despite its knowledge of modern technologies.

I have always enjoyed the idea of people having to find their own roots by living in older, simpler ways, with fewer technological distractions and societal conventions...

@collinxvii: I agree with it wholeheartedly. Another example: the cathartic release at the end of Fight Club as Ed Norton finds peace within himself as the world we know it crumbles around him. In a way it parallels psychological development through puberty: The finding of your father's paradigms to be wanting, the painful destruction of your own ethos, then a period of redefinition and self-discovery. It's an oversimplification, but there are similarities.

You make an extremely good point, and I think that you're right; it's no accident that science fiction is generally branded as "escapist" by people who don't really bother to read or watch it. It gives the consumer an opportunity to tweak the world for a few hours, and not have to deal with the way it actually is.

I think there's one more thing in play here, though. Mobile Internet devices, stronger-than-natural prosthetic arms, pain-inducing energy beam weapons, genetic tinkering and countless other facets of modern life clearly indicate that we have now entered THE FUTURE.

And sadly, THE FUTURE isn't (as of now) one in which everyone on Earth has learned to get along and cooperate in a perfectly Socialist community (Star Trek), or even one in which everything looks perfect, despite a rotten core (Brave New World or Logan's Run). Instead, we're well on our way to Road Warrior.

Most Hollywood science fiction comes from people who aren't as attached to the genre as many of their fans, but who want to make a point.

And the point? It's almost too late to keep THE FUTURE from being someplace where we eat dog food in Hell.

another appealing aspect of the disaster/post-apocalyptic sub-genre is that once the shit hits the fan and everything turns to shit people have to rely only on themselves, their own ingenuity/smarts etc...a very american notion which you can see in westerns especially...it speaks to our general distrust in science and technology (how many heroes have saved the day in ultra low-tech ways)...all of this is a comforting, re-affirmation in the indomitable human spirit bla bla bla...

Firefly/Serenity tries to tie together all these aspects of post-apocolypse (or slow bleed in the case of F/S)world: simple folk, high technology, self-sufficiency, etc. while still retaining the dark overloard antagonist.

I think most of us have hit it on the head: When bad/scary things are happening in the real world, we follow the route of escapism and at the same time, follow our path to its logical conclusion. What if global warming continues (Waterworld [cringe], AI), what if we become a totalitarian state (V for vendetta), etc. So often the scarier things are in the real world, the more we react in our sci-fi. I wonder if you could correlate the number/type of sci-fi movies to geopoliitical events. That would be a great graphic.

you know, for the price the wash. sq townhouses do go for...they actually have the shutters included. It's the car-bombs that have to be thrown in extra, for when the NYU kids emerge from the trains/bars/bushes.

I think some of it has to do with the prevalence of low-cost HD cameras, which give a nouveau cinema-verite feel.

How much of Cloverfield aesthetic was ripped off from 28 Days Later?

What is a movie if not an illusion. Hollywood will always be cannibalizing the fringe and passing it off as new. Whether it's shooting a movie on handheld cameras or using ham-handed politics to pass off a spectacle as "topical" and "prescient", when Hollywood needs new, it just looks at what's hot and what's cool.

Which is why the son of a director who has grossed almost a billion dollars can pretend to be "indie" when making an "low-budget"-like movie with some crappy "hand-drawn" animated titles and a Belle & Sebastian soundtrack.*

*sorry, I really hated Juno and everything it stands for.

@mitchel_stevens: First of all, NYU owns most of the townhouses. Second, NYU students don't take the subway.

When you're paying $52,000 a year for the privilege of saying that you went to a school that's more expensive than the Ivy League, you don't ride mass transit.

/signed

An NYU alumnus who, like a lot of NYU alumni, hates NYU

@wishnevsky: Warren Ellis definitely doesn't. Cause who would want to live in Transmetropolitan? Well, I guess there is a sadistic attraction.

@OMG! Ponies!: The hipster soundtrack and the animation really pissed me off about the film too, but I just as soon blamed the director for those choices, as I loved Ellen Page and a majority of the dialogue.

@ARP: Children of Men was far more tied to modern day totalitarian state fears than other apocalyptic films. Sure, the one main stretch wasn't, but the world's reaction to it fell completely into our current fear of totalitarian states and economic collapse.

@mgoldfarb: Indeed. That is a good definition of a lot of those right wing alt histories, like Stirlings, and Pournell/Nivens where the engineers, blacksmiths, SCA geeks and historians rule.

"maybe there's another explanation: we actually want to tear down our world of maxi-corps, sprawl and environmental destruction. And we can't imagine any way that could happen other than through some kind of omni-fucking calamity."

And, mark my words, it's COMING.

@aspiringexpatriate: I didn't even like the dialogue. She wasn't written as a witty 16 year-old; she was written as a witty 26 year-old.

The entire movie was exceedingly shallow - from the failure to address any relationship beyond setting up a premise (poor girl - her best friend's a cheerleader; the guy who supposedly doesn't like her has a crush on her; her parents love each other and give her freedom, support, and guidance; and the adoptive couple amicably breaks up without any fighting) to the insulting treatment of music by the movie (look, Jason Bateman is edgy because he has a Soundgarden tee-shirt and a copy of "If I Was A Carpenter"; Juno has good taste in music because she listens to Iggy Pop and David Bowie).

The music and animation were Jason (son of Ivan - indie my ass) Reitman's fault. The lack of any character or plot development was the writer's fault - who should have spent more time either realistically dealing with a pregnant teen whose mother abandoned her and who now plans to abandon her own child or writing more and better jokes. Unfortunately, she spent most of her wit in coming up with the story of the stripper name.

If ever a movie needed a re-write, it was that one. Pick one secondary character, explore Juno's relationship with that character in depth, and then you have a good movie. Otherwise, you're just wasting perfectly good celluloid.

But I digress...

@aspiringexpatriate: Not me, man.

Except for the chance to eat cloned panda cub, the Transmet world has basically nothing to recommend it.

I went over this once with my father. I said:
"Just once, I want to see the last ditch effort to save humanity fail, and everybody dies. Just once."

Rhetorically I ask, who doesn't want to bring down this whole house of cards that we call modern civilization? From the subprime mortgage debacle to robber baron style globalization ... from MRSA infections to artificial DNA inspired "errorism" ... from a nanotech gray goo apocalypse to a super collider strangelet gobbling up the world ... this world is a scary place ... and how this article never referenced The Road Warrior (Mad Max II) I'll never know!!!

@OMG! Ponies!: Why do we just assume that no 16 year old is mature enough to handle her world collapsing with wit on her tongue, yet we buy an 8 year old kid can be a genius and do whatever it is Ender winds up doing?

It annoys me that people's main argument against Juno is that there's no way a 16 year old could handle that. Thousands, maybe millions of 16 year olds have kids around the world all the time, but none of us can conceive of one who doesn't break down until the last minute, for a speedy recovery in the third act.

Yes, it's a bit too clean, but not so clean that it pisses me off. And I've always had a pet peeve about the 'character development' thing as well. But maybe that's just because I hated Jackson's Aragorn.

Maybe it woulda been better on a rewrite, 99.9% of scripts could benefit from a rewrite, but to say this one needed it more than others? Well, that's a bit much.

Personally I don't mind the occasional clean breaks in film relationships, when the people are portrayed well enough. Yes, there was room for improvement, it's not the best film of the year by any means, but it was fun.

@gazoline: It referred to fictional apocalypses(apocalai?) within the past year. (2006-2007)

haha

I disagree to a degree, because how do you explain the 80s phenomenon otherwise?

A hell of a lot of Apocalyptic films came out then; Mad Max, Salute of the Jugger, Cherry 2000, Death Race 2000, Escape from New York, and so on...

Yes, there were similar things happening during the 80s. The USA didn't have to worry about terror, but the Brits had the IRA blowing things up all over the place. But Iranians were hijacking planes, Russia was the big nuclear threat, and petrol prices were excessive.

But moreover there were long term conservative governments in power, and with artists being liberals, it's a way to stick it to the man without being branded "left wing".

Furthermore, and I think this is more important than anything else, culture recycles itself roughly every 20 years.

As the kids growing up with these films move to an age where they are working in positions of power in the industry, they recall with fondness the nostalgic feelings these movies gave them, and seek to re-create them by greenlighting movies that have a similar theme.

It's also why "electro music" is so popular in dance clubs, it's why the ghetto blaster is making a comeback (albeit now with ipod docks) and Alvin and the Chipmunks is now playing in cinemas.

I am pretty sure Battlefield Earth just enlightened society to it's need to create better. It succeeded in ways a lame-o movie never intended to do... to bring us together and strive!!!

Am I the only one who finds it ironic when a sci-fi fan worries about environmental destruction?

I mean how do we bring about a Blade Runner or Syndicate style utopia without a wrecked environment?

@OMG! Ponies!: Aw shit, it has Belle and Sebastian music? I don't want to see it anymore.

@Huxleyhobbes: Lots of it. And Moldy Peaches. And tries to pass off a cursory knowledge of the Melvins as a deep abiding love of punk.

FUNKYJ- Good point on the political leanings of the government, but I think its symbiotic. Conservative government usually means more fucked up stuff is happening: culturually (totalitarian fears), environmentally (well, they just destroy it), geopolitically (they like wars), etc.

Why did you consider 'Kid Nation' short-lived? It lasted a full season of 13 episodes.

@tetracycloide: Word.