We fell in love with Doomsday's plague-quarantine horror, but sadly the rest of the world failed to fall with us. And maybe the failure of yet another movie about a deadly virus wrecking civilization means that people are finally sick of plagues? After I Am Legend, 28 Days/Weeks, and countless others, it's time for something else to take its turn crashing everything down. What do you think should be our new global disaster movie meme?
Now That Plagues Are Played Out, What Should Be Movies' Next Apocalypse?
1:52 PM on Tue Mar 25 2008
By Charlie Jane Anders
4,788 views
104 comments













Comments
Isnt there a 2012 movie coming out next year?
Broadway musicals.
Bring back Triffids! Or triffids vs. zombies during an encroaching Ice Age with big menacing glaciers. I just like watching people run from slow scary things.
Which choice involves hot blondes in bikinis? Cause that's my idea of an apocalypse.
@Grey_Area: Yes, we need more killer plant movies.
fallout after the first major accident involving faster than light travel.
@B: Solar flares of course.
2012 is going to be one hell of a year. First the zombie apocolypse, and then solar max.
Jesus Christ
I vote for solar flares.
Did you know that the sun makes us 99.8% of our solar system's mass? I learned that yesterday playing in-seat trivia on a Delta flight. Fucker in 27A kept beating me.
@tetracycloide: Gateway accident! half of earth gone kerpluee and bring back the bounty hunters!
@Tim Faulkner: It's true. I should have included Jesus Christ as an option.
@B: Yeah, I was wondering what apocalypse would involve the scantily clad women...
Alien apocalypse? Not talking about another boring parasite/body snatching/viral invasion. I mean full out Independence Day invasion where Will Smith does not save the world, and humanity has to rise up to overthrow our alien overlords.
Come to think of it, sounds like I just rehashed the plot to Resistance: Fall of Man. ( -_-')
nanotech - not exactly a plague.
or general ecological failure - too many species extinctions. Race to the doomsday vault!
I suggest either planet eating organisms or rogue black holes. Rampant consumption!!
meh... why can't the next apocalypse be in a Yoga class? or perhaps at a feedlot?
I think relativistic bombs are da bomb!
[en.wikipedia.org]
The Apocalypse must be blamable on man, so that he may be forced to realize the evil of his ways and repent - vowing never to be so vile again as a species.
All the options listed have already been done (and doesn't Day After Tomorrow count as an ice age disaster movie as well as a global warming disaster movie?).
Grey goo or the like still has yet to make an appearance on the big screen. Rampant, runaway technology is the perfect apocalypse film in that it condemns technology as such - and man's hubris for thinking he can control it or anything else. What more could any apocalypse lover want in a film?
@B: Run!!! The bikini-clad women are coming!!!
Go on without me, I just don't think I can make it. I'll take my chances with them.
Say, I notice a notable lack of Robots from this list. You io9ers are real fond of your AI, Robots, and Singularities, I would've thought one of them would make it on.
Fallen Angels by Jerry Pournelle, Larry Niven and Michael Flynn would make a good Ice Age movie.
There's nothing like rogue aldermen in the remains of Milwaukee to spark fear into the hearts of men.
Sentient puppies. You heard it here first.
Global warming that leads to lots of nasty mosquitoes and swamp gas that explodes and really intense molds and gators/snakes/feral animals and no real ability to grow traditional crops plus travel is essentially by canoe or bio-diesel/solar fan boats : like the abandonment of New Orleans meets Swamp Thing meets Mad Max...but everywhere.
I think the next apocalypse will be a transhuman slipstream dystopia.
@BloggyMcBlogBlog: Wouldn't sentient puppies just think of new ways to love us so?
The Internet. We know it's going to lead to the downfall of civilization, it's just a matter of when.
@BloggyMcBlogBlog: Do they have shifty eyes?
They should just remake Soylent Green. It's got:
- Global warming
- Diminished natural resources caused by global warming and extreme over population
- Society crumbling as people riot for food
- Corporate greed and government cover-ups as we run factories that turn the dead into food for the living.
Tweak it so that the global warming and diminished resources are the result of a giant solar flare or something that happens to the Earth's core. Make Haliburton in charge of distributing the soylent green to the masses and you've got a modern tale.
LOL
@Plague: Well now the world can end because we just reached the pinnacle of human advancement with your post.
Genetic engineering/runaway mutation. Monster animals, sloppy mutant cannibals, killer plants and allergens, and inedible food.
Or what Xenocidal Maniac said. Now would be a great time to redo Soylent Green. It could be Chuck's last movie too!
Maybe it's just a mundane kind of nuclear devastation kinda thing. Seems increasingly likely, ya know.
The Core! The Core!
@Plague: Oh wait I get it.
@Garrison Dean:
Actually, I really do think so. Makes me want to go up to the Pope and say "Top that, bitch!"
My favorite options:
* Wayward black holes. Tunguska to the max. Adapt David Brin's "Earth" already.
* An Extinction Level Event for the Internet. The only websites that survive are TMZ and the Gawker chain (natch).
* Global economic meltdown. A return to the barter system. Hilarity ensues when Will Smith's character tries to buy a really big gun with six goats and an Asian flu-ridden chicken.
Always the atomic war FTW.
My demented psyche was formed as a child on (amongst others) a near-pornographic novel concerning nuclear war. It was called "Shelter" by Dan Ljoka and it concerned a scientist trapped in a fallout shelter with 20 women. You can follow the rabbit down the hole with its plot; it was a mix between "On The Beach" and "Caged Heat". Anyhow, the book made for great brain-searing images such as a dream the scientist has about his wife and child getting caught in the blast and seeing their eyes melt from their sockets as they scream for help from him.
Like I said, reading that as a 12 year old makes for some great therapy sessions.
Soylent Green has it all, no doubt.
Needs a director (and a script) that plays it pretty deadpan rather than over the top, so Tim Burton, please stay home.
Hven't all of these been done by now?
Here's one for ya: Outer Space Aliens throw a black hole at us. However, it takes a while to absorb the Earth, so there is plenty of post-apocalyptic movie-time, including what happens when humans try to leave Earth ASAP!
I can't think of any others at the moment, but there are others that are way better than what is on that list.
@Plague:
Only if it has Mimi Rogers pulling threeways...
@Plague: I don't know man, messin with Palpatine is a dangerous game.
@Xenocidal Maniac:
I agree with you on all that, although I felt "Children of Men" took its place for our generation.
/I would still like to see a re-make 'tho
Monkeys?
@Garrison Dean:
True.
But someone's gotta do it.
@Plague: You're just upset that they said "Plagues are played out" aren't you.
Anti-biotic resistant staph infections.
Global warming.
Dick Cheney.
Yeah, Mimi Rogers was allll right.
OK. I'm in.
i agree with the few that mentioned technology.. i was surprised not to see it on the poll. surprised enough to sign up and post something. go technology, kill us all!
@92BuickLeSabre:
I was waitin' for that one.
@92BuickLeSabre: @Plague: I gotta go with LeSabre on this on this one.
Plague, I think CJA was being a saucy lady on this one and she was calling you out. You gonna let him talk to you like that?
In view of Cloverfield and Host, how about a gigantic Kaiju throw down for the next apocalypse?
To get back to the hot blondes in bikinis. The Old Gods and Goddesses are back and they are pissed.
@OldDog1: Which one of you mortals stole MY PARKA?! I will stand here on one leg raising my arms up and down until it is returned.
@shehanum: Are you thinking MFM or FMF 3-way for Mimi Rogers? Me thinks it's time to redo Barbarella. Something terrible happens to Earth and only Duran Duran can save us all...if only Barbarella can find him in time....
LOL
Since nobody voted for Michael Bay movies, I'll go with my old standby: cyborg ninja zombie hookers. That's my answer for everything.
Why no option for "Emergent AI enslaves Humanity"? More of that please!
Or how about evolutionary obselitism? Old humanity threatened by the stronger, better, harder faster genetic/cyber/nano-engineered replacements.
I'm voting for this one:
[www.universetoday.com]
Asteroids leave something alive. This bad boy, though, can do a serious number on our stellar neighborhood sometime in the next few thousand years or so.
I like the idea of the solar flare. I think another good one for that list would be a close-by gamma ray burst from a supernova pointed directly at us. No warning whatsoever, and suddenly half the planet is sterilized.
All about the alien invasion meme. Would love to see Footfall done with some decent GCI.
@MrLister: Colossus: The Forbin Project