Apocalypse Next

Forget vampires, the new movie craze is the end of the world.

There seems to be something in the Hollywood air, probably the CO² levels, that is causing filmmakers to churn out their apocalyptic visions of the future.

James Cameron's 3D movie Avatar, will be released this month and foretells mankind's ruthless invasion of alien planets for resources in the light of Earth running out. Next year sees The Book of Eli starring Denzel Washington as a man hunting for a lost book that will redeem mankind from its censurable ways and end the age of post-apocalyptic famine and death. Carriers is out soon and envisions a deadly virus spelling our doomed fate. The Armageddon has even entered the animated sector of the film industry with the release of 9 earlier this year. Calamitous nightmare is becoming a concurrent theme in films to end the decade with.

The current devastation blockbuster in theaters is 2012 and hopefully it will be the worst, because if they get poorer than that we are in for a rough 2010, let alone 2012. Roland Emmerich's film is based solely on the premise that the ominous Mayan prophecy is true, that the world is destined to end in the year 2012, simply because they didn't bother to place any more dates on the end of their calender. Shovel in some dialogue about apocryphal science and you have yourself an apocalypse.

The film would be somewhat less mundane if it was new territory for Emmerich, but tsunamis and earthquakes seem to be his passion and so we are left with simply a different cast of actors in front of a green screen of CGI catastrophe - for the best part of three hours! Yet, the concept has sold. People bought the tickets and propelled it to the number one spot at the box office in its opening week. Disaster definitely equals money.

A more honest film about the gloominess of the mankind's fate is The Road set for release in January next year. The film is based on the fantastic novel of the same name by Cormac McCarthy which tells the simple tale of a man and his child journeying south in order to survive the drab post-cataclysmic world. The novel never explains what happened for such circumstances to occur, however judging from the first trailer the film may take the global warming approach to things.

If director John Hillcoat has chosen to imply man's warming of the planet has lead to his demise I would imagine it is merely a device of marketing rather than plot. The film critic Mark Kermode has recounted a conversation with him saying that they had to put guns and action shots in the trailer because that's what the average moviegoer is looking for in a post-apocalyptic film. In reality, the novel (and film so I am told) have very little action, in fact I think nearly all of it is in the aforementioned trailer. Similarly, the executive producers may believe that the audience who have not read the book will desire an explanation, maybe even a moral message if it is going to be somewhat popular and profitable.

This is the crux - why is the end of the world so lucrative? The answer is the current political climate. We are being told constantly to reduce our carbon footprint, that the ice caps are melting and that we need to find new energy resources because fossil fuels are running out rapidly. This message and public awareness can be used as a host for the film industry to make money. It provides a dramatisation of what could happen if we continue as we are - a message that is tangible and vivid, one we do not get from newspaper headlines.

Remove this message and production studios start worrying that the public will not go and see it because it does not relate to the current mindset of the masses. If The Road were being released in the mid '80s I doubt global warming would be to blame. A shot of one faulty, Russian marked nuclear warhead may have crept its way in. But that is almost cliché now; nuclear holocaust is out, global warming genocide and energy depletion disaster are in.

2010 may therefore be 'twilight' in a more literal sense for moviegoers. However, for those who still cannot get enough blood letting action there is Daybreakers out next year which blends the two fads into one big craze ball - vampires, in a future post-apocalyptic world where mankind is on the brink of extinction. They certainly know how to milk the zeitgeist don't they?