The apocalypse is easy. The zombie plague, the uncontrollable pandemic, the meteorite hitting earth – these are the easy catastrophes. They are dramatic, tragic, and most importantly, no-one is responsible. The catastrophic event is merely a plot point, an a priori, which drives the action of the fiction.
In the arbitrary apocalypse none is to blame; therefore, we are all righteous.
(click on the PDF icon, above right, if you prefer a black lettering on a white background).
Paradoxically, apocalyptic fiction allows us to dream of a better world. A world where our civilisation is cleansed of the toxic culture and society it has built around itself, and something simpler and cleaner is created in its place. Apocalyptic cinema and TV holds the promise of a new beginning.
The real apocalypse is more complicated. The real apocalypse is not an apocalypse, as such, but a decline. The situation is dire, but civilisation goes on.
The decline, in my view, will be twofold: the steady economic decline of the West (the US, in particular) and a climate change scenario involving at least a 2 degree increase in global average temperatures.
The decline is ugly and slow moving. The problem with the slow-moving catastrophe is this: it is avoidable. Which means everyone is responsible. For those that remain, the moral and philosophical malaise lingers. They are unable to wash themselves clean of the old world, because they still live in it, albeit a desiccated and poorer version.
Fiction can rage, and we the audience can rage, against the arbitrary injustice of the meteor strike. How can we rage against a world that we created with our greed and neglect? There are no righteous in the post-decline world. Guilt, like the rain, falls on us all.
Science fiction cinema hasn’t taken much time to look at this scenario yet*, and it is about time it did. Fortunately, two recent independent films have explored this unsexy, yet more likely, possible future.
At 38% on Rotten Tomatoes, I figured Young Ones would be terrible. It isn’t. In fact, it’s not bad, and I couldn’t see 
what these critic wankers were complaining about. It’s not a great or substantial film by any means, but it is a serviceable near-future science fiction film that has an interesting post-decline setting backgrounded to a family character study.
Young Ones depicts a future United States (or former United States – it seems to have broken up) where climate change has happened and survivors are dealing with the consequences. Water is scarce, and communities are segregated based on access to natural resources, in particular to water.
Ernest Holm (Michael Shannon) is trying to eke out a living on a bone-dry farm. The soil is fertile, but he can’t get water for it. There’s no rain, and the corrupt water construction workers won’t re-direct any to his farm. He’s also a recovering alcoholic trying to take care of two children, his son Jerome (Kodi Smit-McPhee) and his wayward daughter Mary (Elle Fanning).
He is challenged by a resentful young man, Flem Lever (Nicholas Hoult), who believes Ernest’s land should be his, and who is engaged in an affair with Ernest’s daughter Mary. That’s it – it’s a simple tale, fairly well told. The acting overall is very good, in particular from Michael Shannon, and there aren’t any weak performances from the cast (although Elle Fanning’s character is rather one-dimensional).
Interestingly, the science fictional aspects are credibly sparse. For example, his wife is a quadriplegic. She is able to walk for a few minutes a day through a shared resource at her care facility – a harness that seems to stimulate her spinal cord. It’s an unexpected glimpse of a future technology, and the film has many of these tantalising glimpses. A robot used to carry loads, a fancy phone used by a girl from a different zone, and others.
The technological aspects are credible because they recognise the inequitable distribution of such gadgets in this imagined world. The rich can only afford the newest toys, while the poor and the marginalised get by with whatever they can. In this way, the film touches on another aspect of the post-decline world – the growing chasm of inequality that helped to precipitate the decline.
The movie had choices to make about the ending, and decided on the most obvious solution to the crisis the protagonists find themselves in. Still, it was a reasonably satisfying finale to a mostly interesting film. Worth a look.
The Rover is also a post-decline film, and overall a superior one to Young Ones. The film is set in Australia, on the 
cracked roads of the outback in a bleak desert landscape. No, it’s not Mad Max – there aren’t any Mohawked gangs racing around in dune buggies or an Australian hero wearing American football shoulder-pads.
While the world of The Rover is a violent one, the focus of the film is the decay of both civilisation and the people that remain. Not the conflagration of nuclear war for these survivors, but economic decline where order in regional Australia is only is loosely maintained by an underfunded military.
The actual event that caused the decline isn’t specifically discussed – it is simply called ‘the collapse’ – but the hints are there: the presence of Americans in Australia, looking for work in mining. American currency is preferred (a situation in many developing countries, where greenbacks are often preferred over unstable local currencies); many of the townspeople listen to radio broadcasts in Mandarin, and some speak it; weapons are available for the right price, and government services have long since disappeared from the regions.
The film revolves around Eric (Guy Pearce) trying to get a stolen car back. That’s it. Another simple story, and well told. Pearce gives possibly the best performance of his career as a taciturn, quietly desperate, and broken man. He is something of the neo-noir anti-hero in this, and as he showed with his performance in Memento, it is a role he inhabits.
The pathetic emo vampire from Twilight (Robert Pattinson) is also in the movie, but in a pleasant surprise does a
reasonably good job of playing an intellectually challenged American from the Deep South.
Unlike Young Ones, there aren’t even the hints of new technology in The Rover. If anything, technological progress has reversed.
The Rover is taut, well-acted and mostly well-written. Guy Pearce, in particular, is sublime. His character Eric carries the burden of an unspeakable guilt, as does the lead character in Young Ones, Ernest Holm. The guilt they each carry reflects the guilt that pervades the post-decline world that they live in. 
In the end, we find out what was so important about Eric’s car. When it was revealed, my initial response was: you’re kidding, right? But a day after watching the film I realised it was perfect: a grim, pitiful ending to a world that has disappeared not with a bang, but a whimper.
*Nolan’s new movie, Interstellar, apparently is set in a post-decline world, though I have not had a chance to see it yet.
Young Ones: Score: 2.5 stars (out of 5) // Bechdel test: Fail
The Rover: Score: 3.5 stars // Bechdel test: Fail