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Post-Apocalypse Movies

what is our fascination with the apocalyptic survival narrative, beyond the cars ?

Surviving an apocalypse has been part of the future of humanity in mythical form for millennia - we just like to think we'd be there at the end. Nobody wants to miss the end, after all.
 
or after the end, the big reset, or not ? struggling on in the dirt seems to be the commonest narrative
 
fortean teenaged sidekick who has been through her own dystopian YA fiction phase (a section of her dvd/bookcase is labelled Dystopia) has remarked in this regard as to the popularity of the format :

no laws
no money
you focus on what you need to do to survive without any distractions
you become really skilled at important jobs instead of mildly skilled at unimportant ones
 
after dessert she added :

and you are automatically a hero simply by surviving as opposed to having some superpower
 
Your Fortean sidekick is onto something there, the survivalist narrative flatters its fans into believing they would, well, survive whereas everyone else would not be so lucky/skilled. But that's getting back to the religious myth that the saved believers are blessed while the unsaved turn into flesh-eating mutants. Or something. Check Revelation.
 
Your Fortean sidekick is onto something there, the survivalist narrative flatters its fans into believing they would, well, survive whereas everyone else would not be so lucky/skilled. But that's getting back to the religious myth that the saved believers are blessed while the unsaved turn into flesh-eating mutants. Or something. Check Revelation.

That's why I liked The Survivalist, life isn't easy.Things are brutal, boorish ecven trading sex for meal. Unwanted visitors are caught in bear-traps and end up in compost heaps. If they're caught by cannibals they get roasted over a fire. Those who survive really have skills but there is nothing blessed about them. Not a single vehicle mechanically propelled or otherwise in the film. Ammunition is in very short supply.
 
surely would be easier to maintain a vehicle than a weapon
 
surely would be easier to maintain a vehicle than a weapon

A horse and cart or a skateboard, maybe, but petrol has a sell-by date they conveniently forget about in PA action movies.
 
That's why I liked The Survivalist, life isn't easy.Things are brutal, boorish ecven trading sex for meal. Unwanted visitors are caught in bear-traps and end up in compost heaps. If they're caught by cannibals they get roasted over a fire. Those who survive really have skills but there is nothing blessed about them. Not a single vehicle mechanically propelled or otherwise in the film. Ammunition is in very short supply.

From your description I've remembered I've seen that - man, it was miserable. Sort of an "awful warning" not to let civilisation slide.
 
From your description I've remembered I've seen that - man, it was miserable. Sort of an "awful warning" not to let civilisation slide.

Bleak and powerful rather than miserable imho, great acting from Fouré, Goth and Collins.
 
A horse and cart or a skateboard, maybe, but petrol has a sell-by date they conveniently forget about in PA action movies.
If you can make methanol, you can revive old petrol with it (I heard somewhere).
 
surely would be easier to maintain a vehicle than a weapon

No.

A modern car needs fuel, oil, lubricants, tyres, high pressure air. That’s not even considering computerised engine management systems.

A rifle or shotgun? Any waste oil. Ammunition lasts for decades, even a century or more.

maximus otter
 
Can be made by destructive distillation of wood. Yes, easy.

I don't know why I asked, I can't drive and there's no way I'd survive an apocalypse anyway.

Besides, even if you could drive, you'd be stopping every minute to remove something from the road. You think potholes are bad now...
 
I don't know why I asked, I can't drive and there's no way I'd survive an apocalypse anyway.

Besides, even if you could drive, you'd be stopping every minute to remove something from the road. You think potholes are bad now...
Best to find a Landrover or some other 4x4. Or a tank.
 
Hard to vote against Mad Max 2, which took the genre to the ultimately thrilling level.

I will always have a soft spot though for The Earth Dies Screaming, which really creeped me out when I was young:

 
The Earth Dies Screaming is also a great UB40 song.

And as the Channel 4 continuity announcer said when it was shown on TV late night in the 80s, how nice to see that even though most of the human race has been wiped out, there are still plenty of cars going along that motorway at the end.
 
The Earth Dies Screaming is also a great UB40 song.

And as the Channel 4 continuity announcer said when it was shown on TV late night in the 80s, how nice to see that even though most of the human race has been wiped out, there are still plenty of cars going along that motorway at the end.

Just watched the end again and, whilst there probably were too many cars visible, it's not beyond the realms of possibility that this, along with the aircraft taking off, was intended to show humanity recovering after the invasion was defeated. Either that or no-one noticed when it was being filmed.
In any case, it's a less egregious goof than say the telegraph pole and wires visible in Witchfinder General or the tractor tyre trails in the wheat fields of Gladiator.

The bit that freaked me out in TEDS was from around 45:10 to 46:50 in the YouTube video above. I can imagine a 1960s cinema audience finding that pretty intense, although it's rather tame by today's horror standards.
 
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The Domestics: Driving across Wisconsin, on your way to Milwaukee can't be fun at the best of times when you're a couple with marital problems (Kate Bosworth and Tyler Hoechlin) . But when it's a post-apocalypse scenario the laughs are even scarcer. A Mid-West torn apart by duelling gangs who fight for territory and slaves, who kill just for the heck of it. A Road Movie which turns into a trip of terror soaked in gore for Kate and Tyler. This an equal opportunities relationship when it comes to kicking road gang ass.

A shock-jock (Crazy Al) provides commentary on the gangs antics over the radio. There are a few sub-plots, one involving an Amazon warrior (Sonoya Mizuno) who frees enslaved women and turns out to be a nifty sniper, another involves Lance Reddick who helps Kate and Tyler and appears to live an ideal family life.

There may be a myriad of inspirations and influences here: Mad Max, The Warriors, A Clockwork Orange, The Purge, perhaps even The Deer Hunter. But writer and director Mike P. Nelson puts his own stamp on this superior B-Movie. 8/10. On Netflix.
 
The Domestics: ... A shock-jock (Crazy Al) provides commentary on the gangs antics over the radio. ...
There may be a myriad of inspirations and influences here ...

The radio DJ / personality involvement sounds like a nod to _Vanishing Point_.
 
Hard to vote against Mad Max 2...

OT triv point that l only discovered the other day: Virginia Hey - the Warrior Woman in Mad Max 2 - is the girl dancing in the test tube in the Buggles’ video for Video Killed the Radio Star:

vhmm2_00.jpg



Triv point 2: The smug-looking bloke in black playing keyboard towards the end? Hans Zimmer, award-winning film soundtrack composer for movies such as Gladiator!

maximus otter
 
the cliché tends to be survivors scanning the airwaves for transmissions
 
OT triv point that l only discovered the other day: Virginia Hey - the Warrior Woman in Mad Max 2 - is the girl dancing in the test tube in the Buggles’ video for Video Killed the Radio Star:

vhmm2_00.jpg



Triv point 2: The smug-looking bloke in black playing keyboard towards the end? Hans Zimmer, award-winning film soundtrack composer for movies such as Gladiator!

maximus otter

Wasn't she in Farscape, too? I haven't cheated by googling, but the blue priestess was played by an actress with a very similar name, IIRC.
 
Bird Box: A different sort of Apocalypse, mass suicides are taking place, it gradually emerges that this is due to some entities which cause people to envision their worst fears. Some are just driven crazy and attack others at random but others embrace the change and see it as the new reality, forcing others to take off blindfolds.

In the early stages, survivors including Sandra Bullock and John Malkovich take shelter in a house, only venturing out when supplies run short. They discover that viewing the entities even through CCTV footage results in suicide. The survivors are divided about admitting newcomers as they suspect that the change has resulted in new normative behaviours in humans who survived exposure to the entities. Birds give an early warning of the entities approach.Later Bullock s shown travelling down a river with two children as she seeks a supposed sanctuary.

A pretty savage aftermath to the fall of civilisation is portrayed in Bird Box, the suicides begin in Europe before they spread to America and presumably the rest of the world. There are three fears, seeing the entities and being changed, being attacked by the psychotic changees, being forced to change by those who now worship the entities.

Susanne Bier has turned Eric Heisserer’s script into an intriguing new addition to the Post-Apocalypse genre. 8/10. On Netflix.
 
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