“When the World Is Running Down, You Make the Best of What’s Still Around”
-The Police (Zenyatta Mondatta, 1980)
I spend a lot of time thinking about why it is that I love this genre.
Why do I like end of the world tales.
Why am I fascinated with the Apocalypse and Disasters?
I think part of it was when I grew up.
Being a child in the 1970’s a strange time. You were a kid, but you felt the tension in the world around you.
Let me start with a little bit about myself, I have always been a watcher, and I have always been a person who stresses and worries. So as a child of the 1970’s I would pick up from the news and people in my life bits and pieces of how the economy was in a bad place.
Watergate had caused the downfall of our President.
There was an energy crisis and gas was in short supply.
We were just starting to understand what we were doing to our planet with pollution and what it could mean to us.
And all of that is just the tip of the iceburg. Civil unrest, Racism, Weak Economy… So much more was wrong…
In short, it was not a very optimistic time.
Our entertainment at the time reflected that.
One of the most popular franchises at the time was The Planet of the Apes. A series where mankind has wiped itself almost totally out of the world. We were obsessed with Disaster films and the coming Apocalypse, so much so that Irwin Allen becomes known as the “Master of Disaster” making projects during this era.
And it did not just limit itself to our movies either. The end of the world carried over to the TV Shows…
Our comic books…
and even the Saturday morning entertainment for us kids…
The Last Hometown 