Apocalypse Now: A24's Civil War & HBO
Good morning: In today's edition of The Industry, we look at:
The American Apocalypse, Russo Brothers +1, Cannes Critics Week gems, The con artists maestro and Bohemian Rhapsody.
Let’s go!
THE AMERICAN APOCALYPSE
In America, the apocalypse has never felt closer.
Glimpses of America befalling disaster have been littered throughout TV and cinema from The Twilight Zone’s Time Enough at Last (1959) to the small budget gritty, mini-masterpieces of the ’80s:
These films were largely meditations on the fragility of society with nuclear weapons. They showed in painful detail the effects that would befall America if disarmament or AI were to go sideways.
The next generation of these films were extrapolations into climate change:
The Day After Tomorrow (2004)
2012 (2009)
San Andreas (2015)
HBO’s The Last of Us (2023, trailer) ignited a new generation of American end-times films. In this series, a fungal infection overtakes modern America and destabilizes it to the degree of producing tiny factions fighting for survival.
When Patient Zero is brought to a leading epidemiologist, she only has one idea to contain the spread:
“Bomb”
Alex Garland (Ex-Machina, Annihilation, Devs) takes a new perspective on the apocalypse film. No doubt spurred by recent political events we see an implosion of America to divisiveness. But his movie flows beyond the twittershpere and the protests, disintegrating the country into full-blown Civil War.
In this landscape of cinematic cataclysms, America's portrayal as teetering on the brink of destruction reveals a deep-seated cultural psyche grappling with its vulnerabilities. From the chilling Cold War era contemplations to the unnerving depictions of technological and ecological disasters, these narratives transcend mere entertainment.
These films, each a piece of America's cinematic anthology, serve not only as cautionary tales but also as catalysts for introspection, urging us to envision and strive for a world where such apocalyptic landscapes remain firmly within the realm of fiction.
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