The Last of Us and his universe has made the end of the world fashionable again. the famous Doomsday Clock mark that we are ninety seconds from final destruction. That according to Bulletin of Atomic Scientists and their calculations, which include world conflicts and their consequences, to the fateful count. The news, which might seem like a curiosity, actually sums up an old collective obsession. What will the end of everything we know be like?
the cinema has tried to imagine the event from all kinds of scenarios. Meteors, the most unpredictable extremes of climate change, mysterious diseases. Currently, the series The Last of Us from HBO, shows him in an unexpected event: a fungal infection that no one could have predicted.
What happens before or after a great hecatomb is also the favorite subject of several of the most famous science fiction movies. What happened in the days before the global tragedy? Who inhabits the destroyed cities? How do those who managed to avoid dying in the midst of extreme situations survive? The plots that recount the journeys of the few men and women who fight on a devastated planet are always disturbing.
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What are the best movie stories about the years before or after the destruction of no return? We leave you a list of 5 films that cover everything from journeys through countries in rubble to what survives of the spirit of man in the midst of horrors. A collection of perspectives on humanity’s oldest, twisted, and perhaps current fear. The disappearance of each thing that is part of its history.
‘The road (The Road)’
Based on the eponymous book by Cormac McCarthy, recounts the journey that a father and his son take through the ashes of devastation. There is no explanation as to what happened. Neither, and in the same way as in the book from which they come, the characters have names. They are only two figures that walk without rest through a road, in search of a safe place. A paradigm similar to The Last of Usbut less hopeful.
There is no indication of the country they are in or what they are trying to find, at the end of the hundreds of kilometers of walking. The director, John Hillcoat, shows the desolation of the apocalypse from the discreet, a resource that he takes from the original text. The vast desert-like landscapes seem endless. The mountains with the burned vegetation, a timely description of a brutal event. The filmmaker’s camera adds, with its blurry shots in the middle of collapsed buildings, the latent sensation that the threat is still close and dangerous. The entire film delves into thinking about the ultimate downfall of a devastated world. So that The man (Viggo Mortensen) and Child (Kodi Smit-McPhee) continue their journey with no real hope of safety.
With one of the most ambiguous and heartbreaking closures in similar scripts, the film reflects on death through the rawness of wounded bodies and silence. There is hardly any dialogue, nor any action beyond some quick, furtive confrontations. For his last scenes, The road, made something clear. The end of all things is irreversible and whatever lies ahead is as fateful as the mysterious event that ended life on the planet. His message is scarier than his The Last of Us.
‘The Collectors (Repo Men)’
The production directed by Miguel Sapochnik — responsible for several of the best episodes of Game of Thrones— is a terrifying dystopia in its implications. Maybe, it doesn’t dig straight into the end times like it does The Last of Usbut yes, in that of the civilization that we know. With the body converted into a form of mercantile payment, each stratum of society is transformed. It is a premise that takes the loss of human dignity to a completely bleak place.
The film is much more than a warning about a future in which man is a product, ready to be dismembered and sold. From possibility, dozens of variables are born. One of them, the existence of the so-called collectors in charge of recovering the organs sold and not cancelled. Remy (Jude Law) is one of them and must put up with a culture where killing or being killed is no longer important. What is, is the quantifiable value of the physical. Little by little, the story covers a world that is dying under the weight of a type of society built to the measure of greed.
based on the book Repossession Mamboby Eric García, the plot speculates on a vital point that the original ponders in detail. When does the debacle of each element that sustains society begin? Perhaps it is not a cataclysm, but yes, the fall of what makes us rational beings. A dimension of the apocalypse as terrifying as that of a major violent event.
The book of Eli
On this occasion, the end of time arrived in all its splendor. A nuclear explosion depleted the ozone layer. The cities are destroyed and the survivors, reduced to brutal creatures as in The Last of Us. Eli (Denzel Washington) wanders the highways with a mysterious book in his hands and a mission.
Which? The script avoids giving too many hints about what drives the character to follow. However, something is evident. It is a superior inspiration, close to the divine, which gives you enough firmness not to waver in your efforts. The enigmatic hero knows that he must cross the toxic desert that separates cities and towns.
But it will not be an easy journey. The horror of the apocalypse is much more than the visible. With a philosophical air uncommon in stories of the same tone, The book of Eli questions about what makes us part of a society. What sustains our aspirations for the good and maintains the link with what civilization was before the final collapse. Although directors Albert and Allen Hughes fail to explore such an intriguing point of view, it skillfully moves. Especially during the painful moment when Elimakes its mission clear. Preserve the memory of humanity.
Pandorum
Our planet ran out of resources and ended up collapsing, so the ship Elysium, left Earth orbit in search of a habitable place. On board, she carries the valuable cargo of millions of seeds and animal embryos. Also, a multitude of men and women who have the responsibility on her shoulders, to rebuild the earth at any other point in deep space. The journey will span 123 years, so everyone will sleep a long cryogenic sleep.
It is certainly not the most original premise and director Christian Alvart provides little visual identity to his argument. But despite that, it manages to show a great twist, unprecedented in similar stories. What could happen if such a large-scale experiment succumbed to a disaster beyond calculation, such as the mutation of the creatures in custody. Even more twisted: that the supposed hope to save the species ended up being a hateful act of violence. Very far from what it proposes The Last of Usbut very interesting.
The tape gets more and more complicated, when part of the crew wakes up with no memory. They know that the apocalypse happened, that they are on a journey of no return because of it. But they have no idea what caused it or how this amnesia is related to the tragic events that occur on board. Gradually, you will reach a critical limit to remember something chilling: there is no way to escape the collapse of a civilization.
DarkCity
The total catastrophe has not happened, but in this plot of the curious genre dieselpunk, everything announces the end. From the rarefied and unbreathable atmosphere, to the dehumanization, brutality and fear in the streets. One of the virtues of the feature film by Alex Proyas, it is to endow the most twisted of human behavior with a purpose. Evil not only exists, it also has a reason and even a utility.
In this story in which a murderer works in the shadows, the idea of the apocalypse is rhetorical. Everything that was appetizing and desirable suffered a slow extinction and what remains is a type of tension that leads to committing the worst crimes. In the middle of this terrible landscape, john murdoch (Rufus Sewell) wakes up in a hotel with no memory, surrounded by gas fumes and the city lurking. Everything becomes more incomprehensible, when he discovers that, in addition, he has psychic powers and that he is persecuted for crimes that he does not believe he has committed. He is not The Last of Us But it’s good science fiction.
Alex Proyas imagined civilization on the brink of death, with gigantic buildings, built with frameworks of burning metal. Labyrinthine streets and the feeling that every element on the planet is about to succumb to disaster. It is the imminent collapse of everything created by man, which makes DarkCitya rare gem of dystopian sci-fi cinema. Also, a version about a deeply discouraging future.
