Humanity’s End

Year of Release: 2009
Genre: Sci-Fi / Fantasy
IMDB Rating: 3.8 / 10
Level of Awful: High
Breast-O-Meter: 0 / 5

WHAT IT’S ABOUT:

There are many ways for the world to end, as End of the World Month has testified to. I’m not the kind of person to be content with half measures so, since this is the final movie in this little experiment, I wanted to take it one step further than just having Earth annihilated. I want to see just how cheesy the demise of mankind can be if we were to take it interstellar and wipe ourselves out across the universe. The result? Humanity’s End, a horrible, cheesy and incredibly confusing tale of mankind’s final stand against a variety of alien species that, while apparently infinitely superior to us, look exactly like us. The scary thing is that this movie had a budget. Someone actually believed in this movie enough to throw money behind it. My sincerest condolences to that person.

I whip my hair back and forth.

The story of our ultimate demise begins with a short montage of babies followed by an overly Darth Vadered voice recounting the ages of man and finished off with an overly long credit sequence. The babies and credit sequence are unnecessary but the voice’s story sets the background for the movie. The voice isn’t the easiest thing to make out so you need to derive most of your information from the pictures you’re being shown. In essence mankind started out as inferior neanderthals but quickly moved up the ranks and overtook their masters. Over the ages we wanted to perfect ourselves and, to that end, engineered new species of ourselves and sent them out into the universe. These experiments resulted in, amongst others, the Konstrukts, a technologically advanced race, and the Nephilim, seemingly psychic beings with a Hitler complex.

Joan Rivers just took it one step too far.

In a typical example of humans not really thinking their ridiculous experiments through the Nephilim have now decided that we’re an unneeded and unnecessary waste of interstellar space. With the help of the Konstrukts they plan on wiping us out and taking over the universe. In the process they will absorb the DNA of any other species they come into contact with in order to further perfect their race. Before all that happens, though, they need to wipe out the humans’ home planets. Earth, at some point in the storyline, went from being a forgotten myth to being completely blown up and Mars is a radiated wasteland so we humans have moved a little further out with the help of little space tubes that move us hundreds of light years in a matter of minutes. The Nephilim mount their attack and wipe out all the human colonies across the universe through a combination of advanced tactical warfare, heavy-duty explosives and big ass robots with big fuck off guns.

The latest in interstellar alien torture fashion.

With the destruction of every human home world the final remnants of humanity are Derasi Vorde, an arrogant and exceedingly horny space captain, Contessa, a butch spaceship maintenance woman with a crush on Derasi, and Alicia, a young human breeding female saved from one of the colonies. They are joined by Sorgon 387, a clone of something or other, and Blue, the spaceship’s bolshy and aggressive AI. The Nephilim and Konstrukts know that this lot are out there and the only things standing between themselves and universal domination. Derasi knows he wants to get into Alicia’s pants and Contessa knows that she’s jealous. Sorgon knows something secret and Blue knows she likes to shout at people. Somehow this final outpost of humanity will have to take on the Nephilim Empire, destroy it and then attempt to bring humanity back from the brink of extinction.

LIFE’S LESSONS LEARNED:

• Religion is just a way for aliens to keep us occupied while they go about conquering the universe.
• Humans created the atomic bomb in biblical times.
• Classy star ships have a leopard print interior.
• We all make mistakes and occasionally we blow up a planet.
• Star ship AI’s become jealous if they think there’s a more powerful AI out there.
• There is no greater betrayal than when a man erases his AI’s history.
• Computers need to feel special and loved by their owners.
• Women should perform in the bedroom in the same way they would during war.
• Teddy bears make excellent human sperm and egg carriers.

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Alien Armageddon

Year of Release: 2011
Genre: Sci-Fi / Horror
IMDB Rating: 1.9 / 10
Level of Awful: High
Breast-O-Meter: 0 / 5

WHAT IT’S ABOUT:

Nephilim: a great buzz word for many end of the world movies. Despite the presence of such an awesome buzz word, however, this movie turned out to be a load of pants. It would have been a highly amusing load of pants had it not quickly descended into confusing chaos overloaded with more scenes of people vomiting and having bouts of diarrhoea than would ever be necessary. In amongst all of that is the usual supply of poor acting and laughable special effects. Of course were Alien Armageddon not a complete pile of rubbish it wouldn’t form part of my 2012 End of the World Month survival guide, so you pick your battles 🙂

I imagine creating this movie was a fairly similar experience.

As often happens on days when people are out going about their daily lives an alien army invades Earth and promptly begins blowing all our major cities to hell and back. Given that they’ve come over in relatively sizeable spaceships how nobody saw them coming is anyone’s guess. After a day or so of general carnage and mayhem the (white) US president surrenders the whole of Earth to the invading Nephilim. They were nice enough to explain to him that the reason they blew everything up is because they want to rebuild society from scratch and give us all a much better life devoid of the problems humanity tends to inflict on itself. Again, how one man can surrender the entire planet to an alien force I don’t know but I guess it’s all a part of the movie’s greater plan. Having secured Earth’s surrender the Nephilim begin constructing permanent bases of operation for themselves in the major city centres to begin processing the humans living there.

Some aliens were naturally wide-eyed when they discovered Earth porn.

At some point just after the occupation the Nephilim constructed an enormous wall right the way around Los Angeles (where most of the movie takes place). This wall serves to keep the people of Los Angeles from escaping and to stop anyone from the human resistance army from breaking in and getting up to any mischief. The resistance movement is a fragmented and ill prepared group of predominantly red-headed females but, for us, the most important is Jodie, a fierce red-head trying to reclaim Earth for humanity and find her missing daughter. The whole Nephilim ‘peace and love’ story soon falls apart for Jodie after she is captured and imprisoned in one of their laboratories. So far as prisons go this one isn’t really the worst; Jodie and her cell mates are fed and watered at regular intervals but the food seems to be making anyone who eats it incredibly ill. Outside their little cell there are also a few scientists doing a lot of DNA research for the Nephilim. Could there be a connection?

Come at me bitch!

Of course there’s a perfectly sane and rational reason for all these things that are going on. In a move that may shock you to the core of your belief system the Nephilim did not, in fact, come in peace. They came because they were hungry. The Nephilim are actually native to Mars (again, how did we not see them?) and are running out of food (they’re cannibals). To that end they’ve come to Earth in search of a new food supply: us. The problem is that the Nephilim can only eat their own species so the scientists have been slipping drugs into the prisoners’ food that restructures their DNA to be like the Nephilim’s, thus making humans edible. See? Makes perfect sense. Jodie must now fight her way through force fields, never-ending gun fights and surprised looking aliens to try and rescue her daughter and avoid becoming lunch. Will she make it? After 20 minutes of this movie, you won’t really care.

LIFE’S LESSONS LEARNED:

• The word ‘princess’ is an insult to Jewish people.
• Hand guns can fire as rapidly as a machine gun.
• At the slightest sign of an invasion the American president will just surrender the planet.
• Aliens can be easily distracted with the words ‘hey sexy’.
• Alien food makes humans throw up shaving cream.
• Some of the strongest friendships are those forged between women who are part of an alien breeding programme.
• Humans are an excellent alien delicacy, provided you reconfigure their DNA just right.
• Jesus was known to personally visit aliens on Mars.

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Quantum Apocalypse

Year of Release: 2010
Genre: Sci-Fi
IMDB Rating: 3.0 / 10
Level of Awful: Medium
Breast-O-Meter: 0 / 5

WHAT IT’S ABOUT:

As IMDB will testify, there are many kinds of apocalypses out there but let’s be honest, there’s nothing quite like a quantum apocalypse. It just sounds like the world will end a lot more stylishly and hardcore than with other kinds of apocalypses. To this movie’s credit there are only a few points where you actually wish the world would end rather than have the movie carry on which, in this sub-genre, is quite something. It’s full of strange characters saving the world that, if this were to actually happen, would leave me rather concerned about humanity’s future but, since that’s not the case, we can all just sick back, relax and watch the world be vacuumed slightly to the left.

Let's see them keep a stiff upper lip now...

The end of the world all began one evening in a dark and geeky control room. The good people of the USSA (what I understand to be the movie’s rough equivalent of NASA) are monitoring a comet making its way through our stellar neighbourhood and about to make a flyby of Mars. Everything’s going fine until one moment when the scientists turn their backs and this mischievous comet decides it wants to take a sharp right in space. This puts it on a direct collision path with Mars where it proceeds to blow about a third of the planet into space. Everyone’s obviously concerned because now there’s an awful lot of Mars floating around and they need to make sure that none of it’s heading our way. One scientist has a brief flash of genius when he suggests that, while monitoring the pieces of Mars, it might also be interesting to find out what caused the comet to veer off course so suddenly and catastrophically.

So, we're going to leave the fate of humanity in the hands of these two?

To this end the apparently wanting-in-the-genius-department people of the USSA bring in Trish Zane and Tom Lively. These two are the rock stars of the scientific community and the only ones able to figure out what the strange purple half-octopus flying around Earth is. Deciding that very few people would know what a strangelet is the movie decides to go with that. In this instance it’s basically a much better coordinated and far more purple black hole with limited suction. This thing is slowly making its way towards Earth and its effects will gradually become worse. First it’ll be the usual things like tsunamis, earthquakes, hurricanes and tornadoes with certain areas experiencing localised anti-gravity and, when it eventually reaches Earth, the entire planet will be sucked in and its matter deconstructed and rearranged. I, personally, was hoping it would be rearranged into a beautiful floral tapestry but since I had no control over how the movie progressed I powered on.

Tidal wave: 1, Lady Liberty: 0

It’s agreed on by the rock star scientists, regular scientists and the movie’s decidedly white American president that, should the purple strangelet reach us, we’re all pretty fucked. There’s 31 hours until it strikes (a time which doesn’t change for the greater part of the movie) and someone needs to devise a plan on how to stop the thing. This is where the other half of the movie’s characters will come in. Ben, his wife Lynne, !!!AUTISTIC!!! brother Terry and kids Leo and Samantha are just a normal American family trying to hold it all together as the world comes to an end. Terry, however, knows a lot about astronomy and might just know how to halt the purple octopus’ advance on Earth. Now he just needs to convince his family and the American government that he has a vague idea of what he’s talking about.

LIFE’S LESSONS LEARNED:

• The Oval Office is just for show. The president’s real office is only marginally bigger than a broom cupboard.
• Mayors answer to no one.
• Cars owned by high school students automatically smell like mildew.
• Al-Qaeda and the Chinese are always suspects when dark matter black holes appear in space.
• Anti-smoking rules do not change just because the world’s coming to an end.
• 3 nuclear missiles are enough to cause a polar shift.
• There will come a day when we all look back on Earth’s near destruction and laugh.

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