Last week I went fairly positive in asking for things you have enjoyed so much you are willing to ignore reality for them. So this week it is time to go opposite and deep dive into the dreary, dark, dank, decrepit, desolate, despotic despair of the Apocalypse, more accurately the things that happen post apocalypse. Just as a disclaimer that when I say post apocalyptic I am not talking about movies that have been released after X-Men: Apocalypse in 2016 but rather the sub-genre of sci-fi movies that take place in a post apocalyptic future.

Post Apocalyptic (PA, I am already tired of typing that out) movies are given a free rein to do pretty much anything they want as the world as we know it has more or less ended and society is often in a state of rebuild or in some cases has even been rebuilt anew. Despite this freedom the future in a PA world is often very bleak from the outlook with people struggling to survive as they brutally turn on each other and for some reason also turn on the vegetation as well as most PA movies take place in some kind of desert, even if it takes place in a conventionally non-desert region of the world as we now know it. The main exception to this rule is of course Kevin Costner’s Waterworld which apparently has absorbed ALL of the water from the other PA movies into one super ocean.

But there is so much more that can be applied in a PA world. Sci-Fi can run the gamut from humanity moving underground having rendered the surface world uninhabitable to taking to the stars in search of new worlds often reflecting our humanity back at us in the process. Comedy can poke fun at the apocalypse while using humour as a means to reflect our humanity back at us. Often in Horror movies there are creatures trying to kill the PA survivors and also there are often mirrors in horror movies where horror things happen, and can also reflect not just images and horrors, but reflect our humanity back at us. Or sometimes it is a simple drama that dramatically reflects our humanity back at us.

All of this being said (and so much more being left unsaid which is in real life not like me at all to leave anything unsaid) this week’s prompt: What is your favourite Post Apocalyptic movie/depiction/scenes? This is a tough one for me but I think I would return to my beloved 80s action for the answer here and highlight Escape From New York (believe me this was one of the few prompts I went back and forth on answering a lot, usually I am much more decisive). Snake Plissken is such a great movie character. The adventure of the story is so much fun to watch and all the colourful characters he meets along the way just keep things interesting and it has a great ending. It helps that I rewatched this very recently and full on loved it, but these are the metrics that I now judge for all PA movies.