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What is with all these 'end of the world' movies lately?

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Ok, I just finished watching a trailer for a movie called The Day The Earth Stood Still, which in essence appears to be about an alien invasion that attemps to destroy the world.

The movie looks like a visual extravaganza, but it got me thinking, what is up with this massive influx of human-genocide movies of late? Why has Hollywood become so obsessed with the end of the world?

The Happening, I Am Legend, Cloverfield, etc etc.

There are so many of them lately.

My guess is that Hollywood is appealing to a general negative view of the world at present and playing on these emotions.

Is anyone able to properly explain why this seems to be happening?

Edited by Grant
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I didn't know Cloverfield was " End of The World ". I thought it was just " End of New York City ".

At any rate, movies about the destruction of Earth and humanity is no new trend in Hollywood. Alien invasion movies and the like have been around since the 60s.

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The Day The Earth Stood Still (1951) was made before even I was born (omg did they do a remake?). I don't think it's "lately". The purpose of that movie was to instill irrational fear of nuclear weapons, and it was fairly successful (with help from multiple quarters, of course). For over a half century, TEOTWAWKI has been a very popular, indeed the predominant sci-fi genre. Most of the time, mankind survives and wins over the invaders / virus / meteor. The original 1951 movie was pretty clearly political propaganda which did, however, make the valid point that initiation of force is a stoopid way to live. As long as there is a happy ending, people will put up with thinking for a couple of hours that the world is about to end.

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Isn't a spoof called "Disaster Movie" due to come out soon? And you forgot Deep Impact, The Day After Tomorrow, Independence Day, War of the Worlds, whatever that stupid one was about the sun going out, Armageddon . . .

I think the genre enjoyed a brief resurgence a few years ago simply because it was a good excuse to show lots of explosions and buildings collapsing, etc. I think it's actually going *out* of style now. It certainly seems like every successive disaster movie is less popular than the one before.

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Ok, I just finished watching a trailer for a movie called The Day The Earth Stood Still, which in essence appears to be about an alien invasion that attemps to

Klaatu used enough force to convince the earth folks he was serious. His purpose in coming to earth was not to destroy it, but to warn earth folks against bringing their warlike ways to the races on The Other Planets. In fact Klaatu invited the earth folks to join his -in peace.

I loved that movie. It was Thomas Hobbes -Leviathan- in capsule form.

ruveyn

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Isn't a spoof called "Disaster Movie" due to come out soon? And you forgot Deep Impact, The Day After Tomorrow, Independence Day, War of the Worlds, whatever that stupid one was about the sun going out, Armageddon . . .
There were also a few NBC tv productions back in the late 90's, which all had one-word names. Asteroid and Invasion were two of them...it got to the point where Saturday Night Live did a parody sketch, dramatically advertising for a movie called Rain.

...Found it! Thank you, snltranscripts!

http://snltranscripts.jt.org/96/96nrain.phtml

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Using TEOTWAWKI (the end of the world as we know it) in a plot is a means to add an epic scale and importance to the theme. Atlas Shrugged uses a form of TEOTWAWKI.

In movies, TEOTWAWKI is usually the physical destruction of the world, so is an occasion for lots of visual stimulation though special effects. Since visual effects capabilities are outstripping the imaginations of the people who decide what movies get made, we get to see more of the same styles of movies, just done a bit more spectacularly each time.

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The Happening wasn't so much Nihilist as it was

environmentalist. The assumption we are supposed to come to is that we are terrible for Gaia and she'd kill us if she could.

Edited by FeatherFall
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