Apocalypse Now?

There's definitely something pessimistic in the atmosphere in Hollywood. Though big-budget, large-scale disaster movies have never really disappeared (instead returning as forms of aliens attacking, be they serious or non-serious), recently the focus seems to be more and more on the end of the world as we know it. 2012, The Road, The Book Of Eli (out this Friday and one of my Top Ten Of 2010) - and more are on their way.

What gives? Why all of a sudden are we so obsessed with Armageddon? 2012 makes a little bit of sense - it's timely, with now just two years to go until the Mayan predicted catastrophe. The Road makes sense too in a way; filmmakers jumping on the Cormac McCarthy bandwagon after the massive awards success of No Country For Old Men.

But The Book Of Eli and co...now there's a bandwagon jumper, right? It just seems that, having done every and any kind of disaster imaginable, both fictional and non-fictional (one could easily argue that the gripping United 93 is a disaster movie), we've run out of them and now have to look to the Big Daddy of them all. The end of everything. Well, that's jolly, isn't it.

Still within these kinds of films, there is at least one certainty. People wouldn't dare make them without at least some kind of hope, some survival. And at the end of the day, in theory, that's what Armageddon will ultimately bring - survivors, a heck of a lot of them too, mark my words. Some we'll know why they survived, others we'll have no bloody clue - just like any good disaster movie.

Sit back and enjoy the ride. But ask yourself this: will I be a survivor? And if not, how can I become one? I'm going to say that you can take these questions anyway you want - I don't expect a lot of people to take them religiously, but that's fine, that's your interpretation. That's what makes us all unique and brilliant. And, in the end, that's what will ultimately mark us out as survivors.

Laters.