It’s the end of the world and we know it where the vowels and syllables were sweetly spouted by melancholy REM crooner Brian Stipe. These words were the main topics on the lips of the modern ‘End of Civilization’ masses, consistently resonating with the fearful reverberations negatively vibrating through our presently low frequency cultural lexicon.
Were REM the soothsayers of chaos and destruction, which awaits us in our bleak futures with endless gray clouds of despair? The answer is yes – if they watched any James Carmon flick that nested on Blockbuster shelves.
Blockbusters? What’s that mom?
Films from the past about future destruction have always captivated us as a movie watching cluster of negative loving Nancie’s. The visions of robots, zombies and the fall of civilization have always compelled us to scrape up enough for two tickets and a popcorn, secretly hoping for the monkey’s win. Here are my top 5 movies about the apocalypse.
5) Book of Eli
Denzel is a bible-toting, western warrior on a trek to deliver something very important. If I tell you: you will not watch the movie. In the film shot by the Hughes brothers, he plays a character named Eli. Eli is on a mission to save mankind with his package. Not literally! Our hero must traverse a desolate wasteland, no not Riverside, it’s a little less bleak. I’m playing. Maybe. Anyway, Gary Oldman wants what Eli has, and will do anything to get it from him. Is Gary Oldman a bad guy? Never!
4) Mad Max: Road Warrior
George Miller’s second in his Mad Max movies series. This time they let Mel Gibson speak in his native tongue – Australian which is a lot like English with longer Ls. Mel plays Max Rockatansky again (Sounds more Polish than Aussie) and this time must help a group of settlers cross the Outback while they search for precious gasoline. The only problem – unemployed Australian Leather Punk bands are chasing after them. When this group of wasteland hooligans catch the settlers, they tie them to the front of their vehicles. Not a fun ride. Check out this film and you will not cry about gas prices anymore.
3) Planet of the Apes
Classic Alert! This is the time before CGI and Green Screen. They had to get real apes and teach them to do their lines in a British accent. I’m just playing. The accent was New Englander. Anyway, Man messed up again, blew up the Earth through nuclear war, and the apes ran things. Charlton Heston or better known to you as God or Moses or maybe both, plays an astronaut who crashed on what he believed to be a far off planet. But he discovered it is a post-apocalyptic Earth in the 3000’s AD. He also discovered the Earth is now controlled by very smart apes and he is their slave. After this movie you will never go to the zoo so confidently as before.
2) The Terminator
Classic Alert part Deux. What happens when the can opener and washing machine try to kill you? Terminator. Plot: Man messes up again, and machines run the world. Mankind is resisting complete elimination by their mechanical masters. The humans hide among the debris of post-apocalyptic cities like common vermin, but they are still fighting back. Must Be Philadelphians! The machines or better yet that bastard Skynet, decides to send a machine, disguised as an Austrian weightlifter to the past to eliminate the leader of the humans – who are tough as steel. Mike Biehn who plays Reese must protect Linda Hamilton the mother of the future rebel leader from assassination by the muscular robot with the German accent and calf implants, allegedly.
1) The Road
Viggo Mortensen, a good dad fighting an illness, must take his son across a very perilous terrain to the sea, where he hopes to find safety, and maybe a tan. Why I like the Road and make it my number one film of a post-apocalyptic world? It’s real. The movie can happen tomorrow if: Man messes up again, which we love to do. The Road exhibits the collapse of society in technicolor. The rules are every man and woman for themselves. Cannibalism, murder and the breaking of all Commandments take place in the near future. Monkeys, Robots, and Zombies will not destroy us. We will destroy us. The Road show takes us on a journey for about two hours, showing us the end of humanity, as we know it.
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