I Fancied A Change From The Dour 'The Sky Is Falling' Title Trope
Although I'm still going to dig out corresponding material to make an illustration of the sky falling as we tackle the last 5 entries on 'Top Movies' - a misnomer if ever there was one - list of "20 Best Human Extinction Movies", where I shall hold sway in critical judgement o'er all because once again whose blog is it? Art!
That's just to remind you whose blog it is. Mine. Comsatangel2002 with my hideous taloned feet, as the AI Art Generator would have it. More 'prehensile' than 'taloned' but then I'm not a podiatrist.
ANYWAY let us get on with it. Is global disaster and the end of the human race imminent? Is the sky falling? In the following illos, to all intents and purposes, yes it is. Art!
What you see here is the aftermath of Hom.Sap. getting up to industrial mischief on the Moon, where the debris of said object has settled into a new orbit around Earth, seemingly stable enough now, after having caused world-wide devastation and YES! bringing humanity close to extinction. From the 2002 iteration of 'The Time Machine'. If you want a closer look at things as they were when this disaster occurred - Art!
See it as it transpires. The Moon is breaking up, although it's not clear if this is due to tidal forces because it is approaching Earth far too closely, or if it's being broken up thanks to injudicious mining or excavation or whatever. Conrad would put little faith in the supporting characters in this scene yelling an explanation to Hartigan, one does not suppose beat cops keep up to speed on astronomical or selenological theory. Art!
I don't know if this scene actually occurs in the film 'Moonfall' and am not not not going to watch it to find out. I've looked at the synopsis and stand back in awe that a film with so stupid a script ever got the green light. The only explanation is the same one I use for Disney, that they write off films as a tax loss. Just a sample: the Moon is hollow, an alien megastructure and run by an AI at the core; there's a swarm of evil drones/bots/space weasel vampiroids <delete where applicable> causing all the problems; the whole thing can be solved by two ex-astronauts and a swivel-eyed conspiranoid loonwaffle; they steal a shuttle from a space museum to mount their impossible mission; the Moon sheds it's rocky exterior - more sky falling, folks - to reveal the Dyson sphere underneath. Art!
An artist's rendering of the Moon's inner workings. Art!
Colour me confused - I think this is the Moon, after shedding it's mantle, scraping along the surface of Earth with neither suffering cataclysmic collapse. Well, the sky has well and truly fallen in this case, it's just not that big a deal.
"WALL-E": Were you to look only at the surface of Earth, a barren junkyard extending to the horizon in all directions, with only a single robot the sign of any intelligent activity, yes, you might well imagine this is an Extinction Level Event. Art!
Wall-E himself, whom Conrad found infinitely more winsome and charming that the ambulatory genitalia called 'ET', whatever that says about me. Wall-E has been cleaning up his deserted junkworld for 700 years and in that time has developed a personality, especially since there's nobody there to forbid this. Art!
HOWEVER - my favouristest word again! - humanity has pulled another 'Interstellar' and rather than becoming extinct, they are now fat and happy gourmands living aboard ships in outer space. Art!
"THE MATRIX": Kind of half and half. Yes, there is the city of Zion full of humans, who send out hoverships to scout the deserted landscapes of Earth, but elsewhere the machines hold sway and harvest Hom. Sap. for their battery life. Art!
Not so much extinct as being continuously drained. One wonders what happens to 'batteries' that dwindle in power output or fail completely? Hmmm perhaps that explains the reddish tinge to the unspeakable glop Neo was swimming in.
"DEEP IMPACT": To say that this is considerably more scientifically accurate than 'Armageddon' is not stating a lot, the bar was set very low to begin with. This time the antagonist is a 7-mile wide comet, which is entirely feasible, but the lead time is measured in two years from discovery of the impactor. Art!
The thing is, this is sufficient lead time to get a probe out there to intercept the comet and, using a gigaton-yield fusion warhead, to impact the surface and change trajectory slightly. If done up to a year pre-impact, the course alteration will cause the comet to miss.
But this isn't dramatic enough. So, we get the comet split into two, one part of which does indeed make a deep impact off the coastline of British America, wiping out much of the eastern shoreline of that nation and South Canada. PLUS, in an exhibition that the screenwriters knew at least the basics of tsunamis, South America, Africa and Europe. Art!
The immediate global death toll is over a billion people, with tens of millions subsequently dead through disease and famine. So, not quite an ELE, but acceptably close to one to be included in this list.
"28 DAYS LATER": You can give this one credit for jump-starting the 'fast zombie' trope again, where The Infected (totally not zombies at all wink wink) pursue the uninfected as if mainlining liquid nitromethane and amphetamines. The films don't clarify how The Infected can spot an uninfected, although the comics openly state it's about smell. Art!
Here's one of the opening scenes, with Jim totally ignorant of how much danger he's in by simply strolling around in broad daylight whilst bellowing 'HELLO!" into the silent city streets. Hands up who jumped when he touches a car and the alarm goes off? Classic jump scare. Art!
The extremely unsettling poster. Now, does it qualify as an Extinction Level Event? Partially. There is no doubt that This Sceptred Isle is completely finished, with a mere fraction of a fraction of a per cent of the uninfected population holed up and surviving. Time is on their side, mind, as The Uninfected are too propelled by rage to bother eating or drinking, and consistently vomit up pints of blood at a time, so they're going to be dead in a couple of weeks at the very most, and probably well before then.
"DR. STRANGELOVE": Possibly the darkest comedy film ever made, despite what Beetlejuice says about 'The Exorcist'. Don't let the fact that it was made in black and white dissuade you from watching it, as it's top-notch satire with endlessly quotable lines. "Gentlemen! You can't fight in here - this is the War Room!" being one of them. Art!
Production design by Ken Adams, the naturalised-Teuton emigré who flew Typhoons in the RAF during the Second Unpleasantness, Peter Sellers in three roles, Sterling Hayden as a paranoid airbase commander, George C. Scott as a gung-ho security advisor and worryingly accurate mock-ups of a B-52's interior. Plus, the battle for Burpelson Air Force Base is depicted in real cinema verité style and looks very authentic.
Principal photography began in January 1963, just three months after the Cuban Missile Crisis, although making a screenplay of the source novel, 'Red Alert', had begun in 1962. Definitely a child of it's times.
Since it ends with most of Hom. Sap. projected to be wiped out by mutually assured destruction, 100% an extinction entry.
The End
I feel they missed out a few honourable mentions in this category. What about Robert Altman's 'Quintet', set in a new ice age that has depopulated the world? Or any George Romero zombie films, where one character explicitly states that humans are outnumbered by zombies 400,000 to 1? Or the 1980 'Virus', which wipes the world out not once, but twice?
And with that, we are done on the subject of '20 Best Human Extinction Movies'.
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