Agree w your point @Alessan. Random stuff is dumb in lierature terms and lazy in authorial terms.
Agree w @AlsoNamedBort that the increasing confusion is a key plot point of any good disaster movie. The ones where the protagonists tumble to complete understanding quickly then act decisively are the lazy contemptuous ones.
Particularly if modern mass media / communications are falling apart, each player is suddenly reduced from being able to access the collective knowledge and opinion of everybody to the same for only whoever is standing beside them.
My point was contra@Just_Asking_Questions who seemed to me to be saying that explication of what’s going haywire is the real point of any good disaster movie. A contention I reject, although YMM certainly V.
But no one is making movies about that. Who would want to watch it?
I said it was the second point. Of course the first is how the characters deal with it. But if “god did it” is the excuse for the movie, that’s weak. Then there are no rules. Anything can happen. “A wizard did it” isn’t good storytelling.
I don’t need to know what the reason is, I just need to know that the writer knows what the reason is, you know? If the story doesn’t reveal something, I need to believe that it was because the writer made a decision not to reveal it to us, and not because they couldn’t be bothered to think of something.
I have not seen it yet, but I have seen my first post on Facebook, claiming the symbolism in the movie is to turn us to Satan. They actually thought the symbolism was supposed to be hidden.
I saw it two nights ago and enjoyed it. Julia Roberts was her usual A-lister self in terms of an excellent performance. I thought there were a number of inconsistencies as far as the disaster scenario was concerned and a number of things left unexplained.
Nevertheless, the disaster scenario itself was not the thrust of the movie. The human reactions and interactions were. How do people deal with the realization that an apocalyptic event has actually happened? How do they react and, subsequently, interact with others? I enjoyed it.
Likewise, I enjoyed it. A little disjointed at times perhaps. Perhaps that was the editing.
Anyway, the black girl has a tattoo on her left shoulder. About a half inch high. All it is is the number 96. It gets shown pretty prominently. Is ‘96’ meaningful in some way?
Does The Road belong on this list? I thought there was an unsubtle hint that it was a post-nuclear scenario. They just chose not to lean into that aspect, they more or less entirely disregarded it.
I found that refreshing because that’s how many people would experience a full surprise nuclear exchange. They’d just wake up one morning with the air hazy and a fine coat of ash over everything. Many people wouldn’t witness the actual event or really see its effects unless they sought out a city.
Yes, ‘The Road’ does not deserve to be on a list of ‘Magic based apocalypse movies (bad premise)’. As you say, the cause of the apocalypse is not at all the point of the novel; it’s the struggle to survive in the horrible aftermath while still clinging to some shred of humanity.
RE: the cause though, I did for a long time also assume that it was a nuclear event based on the brief description from the novel below. But I later read a theory that was pretty convincing: it may have been an asteroid strike that kicked up enough debris into the sky to kill all vegetation and most life on Earth.
The clocks stopped at 1:17. A long shear of light and then a series of low concussions. He got up and went to the window. What is it? she said. He didnt answer. He went into the bathroom and threw the lightswitch but the power was already gone. A dull rose glow in the windowglass. He dropped to one knee and raised the lever to stop the tub and the turned on both taps as far as they would go. She was standing in the doorway in her nightwear, clutching the jamb, cradling her belly in one hand. What is it? she said. What is happening?
I dont know.
Why are you taking a bath?
I’m not.
I love that passage-- especially the last two lines. So much said with a few words.
I am a little late but I only just watched this. I don’t think it’s vague at all about what caused it. They make it clear right at the end it was right wingers trying to take over. If the movie had made a bigger splash, the Fox News pearl clutcher brigade would have turned this into a month’s worth of crying and complaining.
I think the stuff with the animals is that whatever is disrupting the electronics is also disrupting the animals’ navigation abilities. But it’s all hand-waving as to how that could happen.
Yeah, I had to Google it and it means so many things that you just have to be an insider. I finally figured it out the same way I finally figure out Wordle solutions.