The apocalyptic comedy This Is The End hits theaters today, and to celebrate its release and surprisingly incredible reviews, we thought we’d take a look at five movies that dealt with the end of the world in disastrous fashion.
This Is The End is quite unique, in the way that it follows six of Hollywood’s funniest actors playing themselves, and is the brainchild of actor (now director) Seth Rogen and his writing partner Evan Goldberg (Pineapple Express, Superbad).
The project reportedly started as a short film for a friend’s college film project, and the short originally also starred Seth Rogen and Jay Baruchel as they lived out Earth’s final days together locked up in a house. The final film is somewhat similar, except they’ve added a few more of their friends, who just so happen to be some of the funniest guys in Hollywood.
An end of the world plot is anything but original, laughably unoriginally actually, but This Is The End is certainly the first time actors will be playing themselves while the world crumbles around them. To celebrate the film hitting theaters, we thought we’d take a look at five movies that tried to kill off Earth in the past and failed miserably to impress fans.
1. ‘The Happening’
Starring Mark Wahlberg and Zooey Deschanel, this disaster film was exactly that – a disaster. We start with M. Night Shyamalan’s disaster movie because not only did it flop massively in every possible way, his latest film starring Will Smith, After Earth, just flopped so badly that Will Smith has given up starring in blockbusters altogether.
If you never saw The Happening (and we don’t blame you), it was a nice nod to global warming and warned moviegoers that if we didn’t stop destroying the Earth and the trees/plants that give us our beloved oxygen, that they may start releasing toxins that would cause us to commit suicide.
Yes, plants were causing massive amounts of Earth’s population to kill themselves in a way that somehow turned suicide into a laughing matter (certainly not an easy task).
Not only was the plot awful, but Mark Wahlberg and Zooey Deschanel were either held at gunpoint or threatened with the death of their family pets so that they would say possibly the worst lines ever to be written.
It’s the only way we can imagine they were willing to say such terrible lines such as Wahlberg at one point telling a fake tree that he’s “not here to harm it.”
We thought we’d seen the last of M. Night Shyamalan after this debacle, but alas he was back a few weekends ago to give us Will Smith’s latest ego project. It might be time to hang up the end of the world plotlines Shyamalan, why not give us an Unbreakable sequel?
2. ‘Knowing’
Starring Nicolas Cage, Knowing was another attempt to tell us that the Earth may be heating up in its future. Cage plays MIT professor John Koestler and links a mysterious list of numbers from a time capsule that his son receives to past and future disasters.
Throughout the film, we see humanoid aliens whispering to children (awkward enough), and we get a good three or four hilarious outbursts from Cage that had us chuckling as a solar flare burned Earth to a crisp.
This film had potential, as it was more sci-fi/fantasy than it was simply end of the world, but Nicholas Cage’s acting continued its downward spiral, which resulted in fairly laughable end to Earth.
As his son heads off with the aliens to populate another Earth-like planet with his fellow whisper-child (insert pedo bear here), he leaves his son with what should have been a heartfelt moment as he uses his hands to gesture that they will be together forever.
He falls to his knees as his son is whisked away with the rest of the children, and then drives to his father’s house for a group hug before the solar flare hits Earth.
The ending shows Cage’s son and his girlfriend running hand in hand to what appears to be a tree of life, finally ending the laughing stock and torture.
3. ‘War of the Worlds’
Starring Tom Cruise, the film, which was directed by Steven Spielberg, had hints of revolutionizing the end of the world genre. A remake of the 1953 film, fans could finally see what it would look like to be taken over by aliens due to CGI finally catching up to the source material.
With Morgan Freeman narrating, one would think that this film would have been a smash with audiences, but the plot was so ridiculous it was difficult to take it seriously in any way.
Cruise plays a deadbeat dad who essentially has terrible relationships with his two kids, a young Dakota Fanning plays the wide eyed daughter, and Cruise’s son has such a laughable scene as he must join the military to fight against the aliens that it’s literally a laugh out loud experience.
When we meet up with the weirdest character actor Tim Robbins has ever played, Cruise ends up having to murder him because he’s so insane that he tries to lure the aliens into his home, threatening the life of Cruise and his daughter. The film ends as the aliens become infected by none other than: germs!
The common cold essentially wipes out an alien civilization which has survived for possibly millions of years, and we essentially did nothing to defeat the alien invasion.
Not even the movie-god that is Steven Spielberg could save this end of the world movie from total disaster. Although it did almost make $600 million at the box office.
4. ‘The Day After Tomorrow’
Starring a young Jake Gyllenhaal, this film came during a time that scientists were really turning up the volume on the global warming alarms.
Jake’s dad, played by Dennis Quaid, is a scientist who realizes that the worst case scenario for global warming is about to occur, and he begs the President’s administration to take action quickly, but of course it’s too late.
The director even threw in a scene where thousands of Americans are attempting to cross the Mexican border, and irony ensues as Americans are denied access as people literally climb our own security gates to get farther south as the world freezes over. Quaid decides to trudge to New York, through below freezing weather, after his son gets stuck in a library as he has convinced quite a few New Yorkers that it’s much safer to stay inside the library than to make their way south.
He turns out to be right, but the cold weather ends up turning into an evil villain of some sort, and tries to “get” them as they hide in a room and must keep burning books (but not the Bible) to keep from freezing.
This film had potential, with a young Emmy Rossum playing Gyllenhaal’s love interest, but the science behind the quickest global warming event ever was so far fetched that the message was lost due to all the laughter from the crowds.
5. ‘2012’
Starring an aging John Cusack, 2012 was sold as a massive blockbuster tent pole, and the studio actually exceeded expectations and pulled in $769 million worldwide on a budget of $200 million.
This end of the world film could have been a massive box office bust, but for some reason it struck a chord with the international market where it pulled in $603 million of its total box office. Cusack is like the cockroach that just won’t die; he continues to show up in random films and 2012 was his biggest hit ever.
While the film focused on the dreaded destruction of the sun’s solar flares, it ended up showcasing a massive volcanic explosion which took out a hilarious Woody Harrelson who “predicted” that the world was ending soon.
The film’s plot began to suffer as tickets were being sold to the super-rich for $1 billion euros for a spot on arks that were being built by the U.S. government to save around 400,000 people from the floods that would cover the Earth.
As Cusack and friends commandeer plane after plane, heading to China on a hunch that they can hitch a ride on the billionaire’s ark, the story crumbles as limo driver/sci-fi novelist John Cusack is able to save the ship after his wife’s new husband gets crushed by the ships rotating gears, lodging a large wire and preventing the boats door from sealing.
He saves the day of course, and his family gets back together just in time for the flood waters to recede from the tsunamis, and they head for the Cape of Good Hope in South Africa, where the African continent has risen in elevation.
If only Earth had truly been destroyed in 2012, we wouldn’t have to catch this film on FX every other weekend. The only positive to this was the studio got to enjoy a solid return on their investment.
Watch ‘This Is The End’ latest trailer
This Is The End stars James Franco, Seth Rogen, Jonah Hill, Jay Baruchel, Danny McBride and Craig Robinson as they attempt to survive an apocalypse that takes place during a party at Franco’s house. Michael Cera and Emma Watson guest star with smaller plot lines of their own. You can see a great scene involving Watson in our previous story.
The film “follows six friends trapped in a house after a series of strange and catastrophic events devastate Los Angeles,” reads the official synopsis. “As the world unravels outside, dwindling supplies and cabin fever threaten to tear apart the friendships inside. Eventually, they are forced to leave the house, facing their fate and the true meaning of friendship and redemption.”
This Is The End was directed by Seth Rogen and Evan Goldberg (Pineapple Express, Superbad) and opens today. Check out Hypable’s review of This Is The End, and let us know if you plan on seeing the movie this week.