End time film

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Typical picture in end-time films: government troops in NBC protective suits

The end-time film (also apocalypse film or post-apocalyptic film ) is a subgenre of science fiction film in which the world order by a global catastrophe is radically changed. The genre emerged in the 1950s after the experiences of World War II and the atomic bombing of Hiroshima and Nagasaki made a worldwide catastrophe appear possible.

characterization

In contrast to dystopia , which describes the deterioration of social conditions, the end-time film creates drastic, apocalyptic or grotesque doomsday scenarios as extreme cases of dystopia. Genre overlaps are particularly characteristic with the horror film and disaster film . In addition to the global catastrophe ( nuclear catastrophe , natural disaster , pandemic ), civilization problems as a result of world wars or social developments are also a recurring motif. Here, the striking cut of a catastrophe is missing, instead the conditions are the result of constant development. It is characterized by an “organized” chaos , for example in The Last Man on Earth  (1964), Mad Max  (1979), MARK 13 - Hardware  (1990), Waterworld  (1995) or Children of Men  (2006). End-time disaster films are characterized by a “before” and a “after”. Either established, new forms of organization exist or the adapted forms of society are only just emerging, see A Boy and His Dog  (1975), Malevil  (1981), Quiet Earth  (1985), 28 Days Later  (2002) or The Day After Tomorrow  (2004). The Russian end-of-  life film Letters of a Dead (1986) focuses on the everyday life of the few survivors after a nuclear war.

See also

literature

Individual evidence

  1. ^ Nils Borstnar, Eckhard Pabst, Hans Jürgen Wulff: Introduction to Film and Television Studies , Uni-Taschenbücher GmbH Stuttgart, p. 76.
  2. ^ Philipp Brunner: End times vision . In: Lexikon der Filmbegriffe, edited by Hans. J. Wulff and Theo Bender
  3. ^ Philipp Brunner, Ludger Kaczmarek: Dystopia in the history of film . In: Lexikon der Filmbegriffe, edited by Hans. J. Wulff and Theo Bender
  4. Hans Krah: Apocalypse Films . In: Lexikon der Filmbegriffe, edited by Hans. J. Wulff and Theo Bender