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.

HUMANITY’S END TRAILER

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2012: Supernova

Year of Release: 2009
Genre: Sci-Fi / Action
IMDB Rating: 2.4 / 10
Level of Awful: High
Breast-O-Meter: 0 / 5

WHAT IT’S ABOUT:

Oh, The Asylum. There’s not an awful lot of good things that can be said about them but credit must be given to them for almost single-handedly keeping End of the World Month going. 2012: Supernova forms part of their 2012 (loose) trilogy of disaster movies. I’ve already reviewed 2012: Ice Age and, like it’s sibling, this movie is inspired by events in another movie. I’m going to hazard a guess that this one got its idea from Knowing. The whole thing is one giant technical inaccuracy and I spent most of my time looking at the TV absolutely gobsmacked that they thought this kind of storyline was going to hold itself together. But then I reminded myself that it was a movie by The Asylum and suddenly it all made a lot more sense.

Oops!

200 years ago in a far off constellation a star went supernova, destroying its solar system and sending deathly rays out in every direction. This supernova was so destructive, in fact, that its horrendous gamma ray beams are still every bit as destructive 200 years later, and they’re heading right for us. NASA is trying to prepare a crack team of the most ridiculously stereotypical people you can possibly imagine: Kelvin, the no-nonsense all American guy, Dzerzhinsky, the mummified-in-Vodka Russian with a terrible fake Russian accent, and Dr. Kwang Ye, a Chinese female who knows nothing in this world other than how to save the Earth and how to glorify The People’s Republic of China. I’m actually fairly certain that we could get the Asylum arrested for this type of stereotyping; I’m sure the UN would have something to say about it.

You just never know when a giant mole is going to strike.

Before we can save the Earth, however, we need to actually get Kelvin to the damn NASA base where this whole project is being coordinated. Suddenly, from out of nowhere, even more stereotypes appear, this time in the guise of Middle Eastern men with thick accents waving semi-automatic weapons in the air. They don’t seem to have any clue what it is they’re doing because first of all they try to shoot Kelvin and his family and then, when they have them cornered in a warehouse, ask them a number of questions, mainly about why the Americans have been taking nuclear weapons up to the International Space Station. Thankfully other government agents rock up and shoot the bad, bad non-Americans. Kelvin then heads off to the base while his wife and daughter head home to get some things and plan to join up with him later.

This movie is a testament mainly to the fact that women are awful drivers.

So the supernova is on its way, it’s already blown up a remarkably solid Pluto and is now busy jetting its way past and through the moons of Jupiter. What’s the plan? Well, the scientists agree that the Earth’s magnetosphere is not going to be enough to protect us from a direct hit from the supernova (duh, it just blew up Pluto), so what they’re going to do is blow up a few hundred nuclear warheads above the magnetosphere to give the Earth some extra coating and seal all our juices in nice and tight. We’ll deal with the horrifying effects of nuclear fallout across the planet later. Problems arise when the approach of the supernova begins to affect the planet’s weather, triggers earthquakes and randomly makes Mount Vesuvius erupt again. Couple this with the fact that someone’s trying to sabotage the launch to the ISS to detonate the warheads and we’re in for a tepid, adrenaline-lacking race to save mankind from total annihilation.

LIFE’S LESSONS LEARNED:

• Nobody really wants to know the identity of the people aiming a machine gun through their car’s window.
• The art of kidnapping someone and taking them alive relies on shooting wildly in random directions.
• Some people view saving mankind from utter annihilation is just another part of the day.
• Wishing for nuclear warheads isn’t going to make them appear.
• An entire NASA launch pad only requires 3 minutes to undergo a complete safety check.
• It’s preferable to destroy the planet slowly than allow it to be destroyed in one cataclysmic blast. 
• You don’t need clouds to have thunder and lightning.
• Timing when something is about to destroy Earth is really just a matter of guesswork until it actually hits us.
• The kindness of strangers will usually end with you taking a lead pipe to the back of their heads.
• Computers just make space shuttle technicians lazy cowards.

2012: SUPERNOVA TRAILER

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Meteor Apocalypse

Year of Release: 2010
Genre: Sci-Fi / Action
IMDB Rating: 3.3 / 10
Level of Awful: High
Breast-O-Meter: 0 / 5

WHAT IT’S ABOUT:

Great balls of fire, what a load of crap! Not one to do things by half measures I felt that End of the World Month had to be kicked off with a bang, so I present to you Meteor Apocalypse. This is, quite honestly, one of the most painful movies I have seen to date; the acting is sub par, the effects are barely passable, there are plot holes bigger than the meteorites and, to top it all off, it’s boring as hell. I actually had to watch this movie over two evenings because it got to the point where I was so bored watching it I wanted to rip my eyes out. Watch at your own peril.

Is it really necessary to traipse dirt right through the solar system?

We’re thrown right in at the deep end with this one. Following a brief credit sequence we find ourselves looking at Earth with a giant comet heading right towards us. In order to redirect it every country in the world that has nuclear weapons opens fire at the comet. The people at NSA (the National Space Administration) are fairly certain that the nukes will break up the comet and redirect any debris away from the planet. The nukes take about 30 seconds to travel pass the moon and hit the comet, resulting in a spectacular display as the destructive intruder is blown to kingdom come. Sadly this is the only part of the prediction NSA got right and now the comet is still heading towards us, just in much smaller fragments.

The birds from Birdemic strike back!

So now we have hundreds of thousands of meteorites descending to Earth at a rather rapid pace and one crashes into the aptly named Lake of Fire. This is just the first meteorite to crash into a body of water and very quickly the water supply becomes contaminated and people start to fall violently ill. Now let’s all stop for a moment and think back a bit: the comet was hit by dozens of nuclear warheads so logic would dictate that the subsequent meteorites are irradiating the water supply, right? Wrong. The meteorites are putting some kind of pathogen in the water and that’s what’s making people so ill. Now, if the meteorites are putting a pathogen in the water it would seem to imply that some form of microbial life was living on the comet. Thankfully, to save the movie from being embarrassed, it never seems to realise this and just plods along like there’s nothing wrong.

Yep, she tests positive for death.

Of course an end of the world movie is nothing if there isn’t a family being torn apart by all the chaos and destruction going on around them. Here’s where David, Kate and Alison come in. Alison was one of the first people to fall ill from the contaminated water supply and, in the initial panic, the CDC (Centres for Disease Containment) decided to quarantine anyone suffering from the sickness and Kate, her mother, was dragged along for the ride. Now David, a humble worker for the water supply company, must travel through the country trying desperately to find his wife and daughter. He’s joined by Lynn, a lovely woman he saved from dying as a result of drinking a contaminated Pepsi. This won’t be a simple journey: the government’s not saying where the sick people are, meteorites are falling in huge clumps at regular intervals, gangs of people are roaming around hunting down anyone they suspect of having clean water and, at some point, another huge comet rocked up out of nowhere and is going to collide with Los Angeles in the next 3 days.

It sounds like it should be an adrenaline-fueled ride against all the odds, but it really isn’t.

LIFE’S LESSONS LEARNED:

• After the age of 12 the legal weight of a pinky promise drastically decreases.
• In times of crisis excessive ass whipping will keep the population under control.
• The symptoms of meteorite-borne pathogens largely mirror the onset of an epileptic fit.
• The after effects of meteorite-borne pathogens feels similar to motion sickness you get on Disney Land rides.
• When a woman starts throwing up constantly chances are she’s not fine.
• Vaccines will either cure you or make you die an even more horrific death.
• Meteors and comets cause auroras wherever they appear.

METEOR APOCALYPSE TRAILER

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