Recently the people of Russia were shocked when a lump of
rock from space travelling at over 30000 miles an hour shattered into pieces as
it entered the earth’s atmosphere some 20 to 30 miles above us but did not
fragment sufficiently so that one piece of size exploded close enough for there
to be have been a giant flash like an atomic bomb exploding and then a reported three minutes there was a
shock wave which caused glass to implode
and over one thousand people to be injured, including 250 school children.
It is over 100 years since there was a similar incident also
in Russia which is said to have flattened some 80000 trees and a previous
strike on a much larger scale is thought to have been responsible for the end
of dinosaurs over 60 million years ago when the impact created a huge dust
cloud ending surface life for several decades until it settled changing the
earth’s climate over the planet similar to that of today.
The whole earth planet under threat has been a feature of
several films recently experienced with the latest Battleship viewed over the
weekend and previously the Darkest Hour and Avengers together with John Carter
a film about intergalactic conflict.
Apocalyptic films have been a feature of the cinema since I became a young person in the 1950’s dividing
between extra Terrestrial attacks and
man made disasters with the earliest remembered, The Day the Earth Stood Still,
Invasion of the Body Snatchers, Neville Shute’s credible post nuclear war film,
On the Beach, War on the World’s and when World’s collide. As a young man the most influential was Dr
Strangelove and War Games. The Day the earth caught fire sounds familiar and of
course the Planet of Apes, first and original production feature a planet
destroyed by nuclear weapons where the Apes managed to survive and mutate into
human like beings, whereas in the latest production, the rise of the Planet of
the Apes a very different scenario is advanced. There were three more Planet of
Apes films in the 1970’s.
Also in the 1970s were the Andromeda Strain, Alien, Logans
Run, and the first of the Mad Max films, the Omega Man, Silent Running and
Solyent Green. Others before the end of the millennium include Aliens a new War
of the Worlds and the Day of he Triffids left out of a list of some 170 I
consulted.
More recently as CGI came to the fore Armageddon, I am a
Legend, The Book of Eli, Battle Los Angeles, Deep Impact, End of Days, Cyborg,
Dogma, Independence Day, The Matrix films, Waterworld, 2012, 28 days later (and
28 weeks later) remakes of the Day the Earth Stood Still and On the Beach,
Doomsday, Impact, Meteor, Children of Men, Escape from LA films which I
remember clearly and also Contagion and 12 Monkeys. I am sure I have left out
many others I have seen and could compete for the best 25 or so.
Of the four recently experienced I liked the Darkest House best because of its
unsentimental reality as an alien race descended in hundreds of thousands over
the entire earth surface in individual shields which left visible a frame of
light which when in proximity to a human being could cause us to explode into
dust having first shut down everything electrical. It will be appreciated that
the recent electricity blackout on the hill in which I live had a greater
impact on me that would have otherwise have been the case. The shut down every
airplane in flight and left vessels at sea, transport on the ground motionless.
The creatures had the power to penetrate most surfaces that preventing most
humans from escaping such as in the underground network and tunnels. Others
such as those working in coal mines would have been trapped underground without
prospect of rescue.
The film aimed at the weekend young audience features to
American trying to promote to him Russians their idea of a Mobile Phone
Application which list all the best night spots for the young traveller. They
arrive to find that their Swedish business partner has stolen a march and their
idea and arranged a contract presentation. They attempt to alcohol drown their
sorrows at their best listed party club where they find their former business
partner and his girl friend and two attractive USA girls who have commented on
their app with a photo. They go outside to witness what appears to be an aurora
which quickly becomes the start of the blitz and they all survive together with
the former partner who sacrifices his girlfriend to save himself in the inner
cellar of the club.
After waiting several days using stored food and drink they
venture out to find a silent world and try and make their way to the USA embassy finding much destruction and only one
woman in a ground floor flat warning of
the danger still around. They quickly discover what she means but
manage to make their way to the Embassy where on the upper floor they discover
a log book of information on the elimination of human and other life world wide
a radio broadcasting a message in Russian suggesting survivors but a message
they cannot understand.
At night they notice a light coming from a residential block
across the city. They manage to get to the place after various close calls. The
former business partner is disintegrated. They find a young woman who has been
saved by an electrical engineer who has, amazingly I must add, managed to
create a counter protective force field as well as a potential weapon, a
microwave based device, which has the effect of destroying the force field
around the individual aliens. The
Russians are able to translate the message which is from a nuclear submarine
which is calling at the city in the river to take any survivors and to join
other nuclear submarines that have survived. The film does not to explore the
extent to which other nuclear power facilities and their workers have survived
or if others have survived in bunkers or other protected installations with
air, food and water available. These films tend to overlook the basics
including sanitation and ill health. One of the two girls dies as they attempt
to make their way out of the building to find their way submarine. The inventor
stays behind to fend of the attackers and dies.
It is on this journey that they encounter a small group of
armed Russian Police men who have also managed to find a way to protect
themselves at a local library. They are determined to stay and fight rather
than leave via the submarine but they offer to help to get the party to the
location. There is now considerable
activity going on throughout the city and presumably elsewhere as the purpose
of the invasion is revealed to clear the population before mining for conductive
metals. It will not have escaped some viewers that this is what mankind has
done throughout the ages, going on exploration, eliminating or subjugating the
indigenous population in order to exploit the mineral and other wealth
available.
The remaining four, two girls and the two young men find a
vessel at the quayside which they use as the tide will take it down river
towards where the submarine is waiting. They part from the police who elect to
stay and fight, especially as they have access to one of the devices which
stuns the alien, removing the force field sufficiently for ordinary weaponry to
be able to destroy. However the boat is tracked and attacked and while the two
men and a girl are able to swim and reach the submarine one of the original
girls has swam to the opposite back and is hiding in a bus depot. The two young
men elect to go and find her and in the dramatic conclusion to the film she is
rescued but one of the best friends dies. However they have their experience of
using the weapons and what is learned about the alien to pass to other
survivors and they learn that those in Paris
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