tMF | The Movie-Fanatic

There are many theories, ideas or should I say 'schools of thought' on how the world would end. At the height of the Cold War, nuclear annihilation ranks at the very top. While others argue it will not be man who will destroy the world (directly) but - an epidemic of global proportions (most probably from a potent strain of virus - think: I am Legend) or severe climactic change (another ice age perhaps? That would be Day After Tommorow right?) or mechanical uprising (The Terminator, anyone?) or even attack from the outside - conquering aliens (Mars Attacks!) or perhaps an asteroid. And let's not forget zombies!

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Inspired by the upcoming release of Roland Emmerich's latest disaster epic 2012, tMF listed down 10 of the most fascinating 'end of the world' movies.

Before looking at the list, you need to know that it's not based on critical acclaim or Box Office success or even cult following - but a combination of these three factors and how 'cool' it is, thus the term 'fascinating'. One more thing, you'll not see very old movies here - we listed only recent films!

Enough of talk already! Let's see which movies made the top 10!
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# 10 - The Day After Tomorrow (2004) - Well, this is perhaps our tribute to Mr. Emmerich, but then again, it stars our favorites - Jake Gyllenhaal and Emmy Rossum and also, it tackles climate change, something very much in the news right now.

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The Plot: When global warming causes world wide disasters and leads to an ice age, a climatologist named Jack Hall tries to rescue his son Sam who is trapped in New York. Jack must go from Washington D.C. to New York, but on the way some things happen. Can Jack rescue his son?

How the World would end: As the result of global warming.

The Buzz: Not entirely sure, but its Jake Gyllenhaal (this movie) versus Tobey Maguire's Spiderman 2. Tobey's Spidey grabbed $783,766,341 worldwide, while Jake's disaster movie got $544,272,402 - round one to Tobey!

Featured Review: Mick LaSalle (San Francisco Chronicles): "The Day After Tomorrow" isn't satisfying in every way, but in the ways that really matter, it's one superior disaster movie. It depicts the sudden onset of a new ice age with expertly constructed action sequences and special effects that are nothing less than awe-inspiring. The spectacle, which is colossal and at times staggering to behold, begins within two minutes of the fade-in and keeps coming until the finish. I thought I'd seen it all. I hadn't.

On the downside, some of the dialogue is corny, but you know what? No one goes to "The Day After Tomorrow" expecting a Noel Coward play. There are also some moments that are funny without anyone intending them to be, and that's a bit of a problem. But the movie offers many other moments that are astonishing. Here's one: Two men walk along the now-frozen body of water that divides Manhattan and Staten Island, and they pass the Statue of Liberty, now frozen over and buried waist deep in snow. Like everything else these days, that shot was done on computer. But for once it doesn't look like it.

Instead, writer-director Roland Emmerich ("Independence Day") takes an enormous, compelling situation, lays it out meticulously and lures viewers into his fantasy. Along the way, "The Day After Tomorrow" even proves itself ambitious, making a sincere, if somewhat ham-fisted, case that something needs to be done about global warming. It's rare to see a blockbuster take anything resembling a clear-cut political stand. [ read more ]

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# 9 - The Fifth Element (1997): Directed by French filmmaker Luc Besson, starring Bruce Willis, Gary Oldman, Ian Holm and Milla Jovovich.

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The Plot: Two hundred and fifty years in the future, life as we know it is threatened by the arrival of Evil. Only the fifth element can stop the Evil from extinguishing life, as it tries to do every five thousand years. She is helped by ex-soldier, current-cab-driver, Korben Dallas, who is, in turn, helped by Prince/Arsenio clone, Ruby Rhod. Unfortunately, Evil is being assisted by Mr. Zorg, who seeks to profit from the chaos that Evil will bring, and his alien mercenaries.

How the World would end: Destroyed by Evil.

The Buzz: Former supermodel Milla Jovovich owes a lot to this movie. You can say, it's luck but Jovovich went on to play Ultra Violet and of course, the lead star of the Resident Evil series. I don't think anyone will argue, she's the undisputed 'Apocalyptic' lead actress of modern cinema.

Featured Review: Mick LaSalle (San francisco Chronicles): Luc Besson's science-fiction blast ``The Fifth Element'' has to be the most creative visualization since Tim Burton's first ``Batman'' in 1989. On top of that, it's a whole lot of fun. Based on an idea director Besson had as a 16-year-old, the picture remains, at heart, the fantasy of a wild, teenage imagination. - - -
# 8 - 28 Weeks Later (2007)- This is the sequel to the highly-sucessful 28 Days Later directed by Danny Boyle and stars Cilliam Murphy. Directed by Spanish filmmaker Juan Carlos Fresnadillo, it gave the sequel a different look and feel compared to the original. Boyle actually hired the Spanish filmmaker due to his commitment to another movie, Sunshine.

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The Plot: Six months after the rage virus was inflicted on the population of Great Britain, the US Army helps to secure a small area of London for the survivors to repopulate and start again. But not everything goes to plan.

How the World would end: The population will die as the rage virus spreads and become a pandemic.

The Buzz: Some would say the sequel is actually better than the original Boyle film, while others disagree and proclaim that 28 Days Later is far superior. While both sides provide very valid points, it should be noted that both films were well-received by critics. The Box office take of the movie reached $64,238,440 worldwide, while Boyle's 28 Days Later earned $82,719,885 world-wide.

Featured Review: The Village Voice's Nathan Lee: Director Juan Carlos Fresnadillo, whose résumé is limited to the deft if wildly precocious thriller Intacto, bluntly raids the zeitgeist in his sequel to Danny Boyle's new-school zombie smash 28 Days Later. That's forgivable because (a) 28 Weeks Later kicks ass; (b) etiquette forbids Nancy Pelosi from discussing the occupation in terms of gore-drenched cannibalistic anarchy; and (c) topical dissent is as intrinsic to the zombie genre as topical skin problems. From the social breakdown of George Romero's Night of the Living Dead (1968) to the undead blowback of Joe Dante's Homecoming (2005), the standard zombie diet has consisted of two delicacies: human flesh-preferably brains and viscera-and subtext, traditionally seasoned with sociopolitical flavor. You are what you eat, and if you happen to eat people, there's bound to be some anthropological gristle to chew. [ read more ]

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# 7 - Mars Attacks! (1996) - If you can recall how Earthlings defeated the Martians, then I'm not going to waste my time convincing you why this Tim Burton film ought to be on the list. (Hint: The old lady's favorite vinyl)

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The Plot: When Martians begin to attack the Earth, several groups of people must try to survive. These groups include a reporter and his girlfriend, a top scientist, the president and his family (and aides), a Kansas boy and his grandma, and Tom Jones and people from a casino in Las Vegas.

How the World would end: From Martian invasion

The Buzz: An inter-gallactic stellar cast - Jack Nicholson, Glenn Close, Pierce Brosnan, Sarah Jessica Parker to name just a few of the big stars.

Featured Review: Variety's Todd McCarthy: Script by British playwright Jonathan Gems, who worked closely with Burton in developing the storyline, serves up any number of sweetly subversive scenes, such as presidential adviser Martin Short's use of the White House's Kennedy Room as the place for his fateful assignation with the voluptuous Martian Girl (Lisa Marie), and a love scene played between the disembodied heads of Brosnan and TV personality Sarah Jessica Parker, both of whom have been kidnapped and dismembered by the Martians.

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The Plot: Years after a plague kills most of humanity and transforms the rest into monsters, the sole survivor in New York City struggles valiantly to find a cure.

How the World would end: Due to a vicious man-made virus originally created to cure cancer.

The Buzz: Warner Bros. began developing I Am Legend in 1994, and various actors and directors were attached to the project, though production was delayed due to budgetary concerns related to the script. Production began in 2006 in New York City, filming mainly on location in the city, including a $5 million scene at the Brooklyn Bridge, the most expensive scene ever filmed in the city at the time. I Am Legend was released on December 14, 2007 in the United States. It opened to the largest ever box office (not counting for inflation) for a non-Christmas film released in the U.S. in December. The film was the seventh highest grossing film of 2007, earning $256 million domestically and $329 million internationally, for a total of $585 million. In 2008, the film was ranked as the forty-seventh highest grossing film of all time. I Am Legend also received positive reviews, with much praise to Will Smith's performance.

Featured Review from Peter Travers (Rolling Stone): It is totally cool to see Manhattan devoid of people as Will Smith and his dog roam the ruins after a virus wipes out the population. Or did it? Strange things come out at night. I'll say no more and won't need to if you've read Richard Matheson's classic 1954 novel or seen the two previous screen versions, 1964's The Last Man on Earth, with Vincent Price, and 1971's The Omega Man, with Charlton Heston. What you need to know is that Big Willie has no problem holding the screen. [ read more ]

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# 5 - Sunshine (2007): Eerie, even annoying to a certain degree and quite predictable but it was visually stunning. You either love it or hate it, but Danny Boyle delivered a sci-fi futuristic film which took inspiration from some of cinema's greats, incorporating these themes seamlessly.

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The Plot: 50 years into the future, the Sun begins to die, and Earth is dying as a result. A team of astronauts are sent to revive the Sun - but the mission fails. Seven years later, a new team are sent to finish the mission as they are Earth's last hope.

How the World would end: As a result of the death of our Sun.

The Buzz: Brought back the screen collaboration between Danny Boyle and Cillian Murphy, who both made waves in 28 Days Later, another Boyle film on this list.

Featured Review: Peter Bradshaw (The Guardian): Garland and Boyle's story reaches out, or reaches back, to the lost 1970s tradition of darkness, scepticism and subversion in science fiction, a period that combined the technological optimism of the Sputnik/Apollo era with the succeeding decade's political discontent. Sunshine alludes, empathically and even unsubtly, to Kubrick's 2001 and Carpenter's Dark Star with their weightlessly calm personnel procedures, vertiginous perspective planes of hyperdrive and enigmatically mutinous computers. We also feel the austere mysticism of Tarkovsky's Solaris - a movie that shows what space travel would be like if they'd managed it in the reign of Henry II - and the paranoid contaminations of Ridley Scott's Alien. The crew eat lunch and have important meetings around the same kind of tabletop, which is lit from below, like a photographer's lightbox, giving them all the same fierce pallor. But Sunshine also channels queasy modern anxieties from our modern age: a world of climate change, weapons of mass destruction and even suicide bombers. [ read more ]

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# 4 - 12 Monkeys (1995) - Two words: Terry Gilliam.

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The Plot: Terry Gilliam's nightmarish low-tech/high-tech future vision takes place in 1997, after a deadly virus has killed 99% of the human population--forcing the survivors to flee beneath our planet's surface. This leaves the (other) animals topside, to rule the Earth once again. The scientists select James Cole, an imprisoned sociopath, to return to the past and gather information useful in the defense against this contagion. Once back in time, he is to investigate the mysterious 'Army of the Twelve Monkeys' and report his findings. Scientific, social, and political themes like time travel (and its inherent paradoxes and nested loops), mental illness, the nature of reality, animal rights, and the Armageddon-potential of unchecked technological advances are artfully and cleverly explored

How the World would end: People will die due to virus.

The Buzz: This movie gave Brad Pitt his Golden Globes (Best Supporting Actor) and an Oscar nom for the same category.

Featured Review: Rolling Stone's Peter Travers: Even when Terry Gilliam's latest leap into the wild blue of futuristic fantasy is at its most confounding, you leap along with him. Such is the seductive power of his twisted imagination. Whether it's Monty Python, Brazil, Time Bandits or The Fisher King, Gilliam guarantees a thrilling ride. 12 Monkeys is no exception. Bruce Willis, in an eruptive performance of startling emotional intensity, stars as Cole, a prisoner tagged for an experiment that may get him killed. The year is 2035. Nearly 40 years earlier, a killer virus spared only 1 percent of the planet's population. In a lab located under the city of Philadelphia, scientists prepare to wrap the naked Cole in condomlike latex and zap him back to 1996 to find out how to reclaim the earth. Above ground the city is uninhabitable, except by the wild animals who roam deserted skyscrapers and department stores. Gilliam, along with the gifted cinematographer Roger Pratt and production designer Jeffrey Beecroft, fashions a disturbing and dazzling lost world. [ read more ]

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# 3 - Terminator (1984) - Endlessly imitated, The Terminator made the reputation of cowriter/director James Cameron -- who would go on to make 1997's titanic Titanic -- and solidified the stardom of Arnold Schwarzenegger.

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The Plot: The movie begins in a post-apocalyptic 2029, when Los Angeles has been largely reduced to rubble and is under the thumb of all-powerful ruling machines. Kyle Reese (Michael Biehn), a member of the human resistance movement, is teleported back to 1984. His purpose: to rescue Sarah Connor (Linda Hamilton), the mother of the man who will lead the 21st-century rebels against the tyrannical machines, from being assassinated before she can give birth. Likewise thrust back to 1984 is The Terminator (Schwarzenegger), a grim, well-armed, virtually indestructable cyborg who has been programmed to eliminate Sarah Connor. After killing two "Sarah Connors" who turn out to be the wrong women, he finally aims his gunsights at the genuine article. This is the film in which Schwarzenegger declared "I'll be baaaack" -- and back he was, in "kinder and gentler" form, in the even more successful Terminator 2: Judgment Day (1991).

How the World would end: Machines will annihilate human population and become the dominant specie.

The Buzz: From Arnold to Edward Furlong to some of  today's up and coming, including Anton Yelchin and Sam Worthington, the Terminator series remain one of cinema's best bet to launch the careers of the very talented.

Featured Review: Variety: The Terminator is a blazing, cinematic comic book, full of virtuoso moviemaking, terrific momentum, solid performances and a compelling story. The clever script, cowritten by director James Cameron and producer Gale Anne Hurd, opens in a post-holocaust nightmare, A.D.2029, where brainy machines have crushed most of the human populace. From that point, Arnold Schwarzenegger as the cyborg Terminator is sent back to the present to assassinate a young woman named Sarah Connor (Linda Hamilton) who is, in the context of a soon-to-be-born son and the nuclear war to come, the mother of mankind's salvation.

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# 2 - 28 Days Later (2002) This movie succeeds in many ways - a new, fresh look at zombies, the interplay of the society and the individual during chaotic and violent times. It also gave the audience a truly memorable and fulfilling cinematic experience.

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The Plot: It has been twenty-eight days since Jim, a young bicycle courier, was knocked off his bike and injured in a car accident. When he wakes up from his coma, the world has changed. London is deserted, litter-strewn and grim, and it seems the entire world has disappeared. The truth, however, is even more horrifying - a devastating psychological virus has been unleashed on the world, turning the population into blood-crazed psychopaths driven only to kill and destroy the uninfected. A bitter struggle to get out of the city with fellow survivors to a military encampment at Manchester follows - but there, their troubles are just beginning.

How the World would end: Virus will wipe out the population.

The Buzz: Boyle explains that, with the aim of preserving the suspension of disbelief, relatively unknown actors were cast in the film. Cillian Murphy had at the time starred primarily in small independent films, while Naomie Harris had acted on British television as a child. However, actors Christopher Eccleston and Brendan Gleeson were well-known character actors. Eccleston, who went on to greater notablity for his portrayal of the Ninth Doctor in the 2005 series of Doctor Who, had already appeared in films such as The Others, Gone in 60 Seconds, eXistenZ and Shallow Grave (another film directed by Boyle). Likewise, Gleeson had appeared in several films, including Braveheart, Lake Placid, The General and eventually, the Harry Potter series.

Featured Review by Mick Lasalle (San Francisco Chronicles) : "28 Days Later" is almost a great apocalyptic thriller. It has eerie images, a compelling situation and an unusual capacity to surprise. It incites an irresistible state of unease, the sense of disaster only seconds away, as well as a deep hunger to know what comes next. There's no real relief until its last moments.

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# 1 - Children of Men (2006) - Stunning, intriguing and ultimately disturbing, this Alfonso Cuaron movie provides one of the most fascinating look at the world in the near future.

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The Plot: In 2027, in a chaotic world in which humans can no longer procreate, a former activist agrees to help transport a miraculously pregnant woman to a sanctuary at sea, where her child's birth may help scientists save the future of humankind.

How the World would end: Man's inability to procreate.

The Buzz: Children of Men was not a financial success, but attracted positive reviews from critics and acclaim from filmgoers. The film was recognised for its achievements in screenwriting, cinematography, art direction, and innovative single-shot action sequences, receiving three Academy Award nominations and winning two BAFTA awards. It has gone on to take many accolades after its release, with many critics and associations recognizing it as a contemporary sci-fi classic.

Featured Review: Peter Bradshaw (The Guardian): What will the end of the world look like? As shabby and nasty as the way it looks here is my guess. This explosively violent future-nightmare thriller, directed by Alfonso Cuarón and adapted from the novel by PD James, has simply the most extraordinary look of any movie around: a stunningly convincing realisation of a Beirut-ised London in the year 2027, in which terrorist bombs have become as dreary and commonplace as cancer.

No one does dystopian satire like the English and this story is in a recognisably vernacular tradition, though owing as much to John Wyndham as George Orwell. It actually reminded me of bygone television chillers such as Barry Hines's Threads and the 1970s classic Survivors, with their distinctive and now unfashionably high-minded determination to confront the worst outcomes imaginable. It is, perhaps, odd that Cuarón sticks with the 1992 novel's reluctance to predict the internet, and media-watchers will be intrigued to see that in 2027 the London Evening Standard has evidently seen off web and freesheet competition to stay in its monopoly pole position on the capital's sandbagged streets. But despite the stylisations and grandiloquent drama, there is something just so grimly and grittily plausible about the awful world conjured up here, and the full-on urban warfare scenes really are electrifying. [ read more ]

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What's on your mind? Do you have other 'end of the world' movies which should have made this list? What do you think of the list of 10 movies above - any movie in particular you dislike? Let us know what you think!
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