For decades, moviegoers have been transfixed by natural calamity on a global scale. But apocalypse is nothing without a villain, and there is no greater nemesis of all creation than man. Be it global warming, nuclear proliferation or meddling with the mantle, in the eternal battle between humans and nature we’re the Globetrotters and the earth is the lowly Washington Generals.
The Simpsons Movie (2007)
The Toll: Thousand-eyed squirrels combine with the untimely demise of Green Day to foreshadow the environmental quarantine of geographically-ambiguous Springfield.
Blame It On... Homer Simpson. His reckless disposal of a silo full of pig waste into already polluted Lake Springfield touches off a series of disasters that nearly destroys the town.
An Inconvenient Truth (2006) The Toll: Al Gore travels America in an SUV aiding people with sleep disorders by using facts about the expeditious rate at which the earth is becoming Cleveland.
Blame It On... You, us, everyone. By simply reading this you've already melted a polar bear.
Firestorm (1998) The Toll: Approximately a Tuesday in August worth of hinterland destruction in Southern California.
Blame It On... A group of convicts who start a forest blaze, then pose as firefighters to make their escape. Fortunately, Howie Long's dramatics extinguish everything in a 500-mile radius.
The Abyss (1989) The Toll: An underwater alien race is annoyed out of hiding, then nearly blown up.
Blame It On... The troops. An overly aggressive Navy SEALs team is dispatched to rescue a sunken submarine and comes dangerously close to war with PETA.
Evan Almighty (2007) The Toll: A bedroom community serving the nation's capital gets submerged under a surge of lake water, rendering the decorative towels at Bed Bath & Beyond even more useless.
Blame It On... Government corruption. Corner-cutting in the construction of a DC-area dam validates the quirks of a congressman chosen by God to build an ark, when the dam bursts.
Fire Down Below (1997) The Toll: Untold amounts of fish and human life are the cost of toxic dumping in rural Kentucky... followed by untold amounts of aikido-powered ass-kicking by an EPA agent with a ponytail.
Blame It On... Corporate polluters. Dumping is so lucrative that everyone profits, from the local coal-mine owner to citizens paid to keep quiet. Plus free, universal birth defects for all!
Class of Nuke 'Em High (1986) The Toll: Students in a New Jersey high school begin spontaneously mutating, reproducing orally and melting into slime at a rate far greater than most students in New Jersey high schools.
Blame It On... Radioactive runoff from an adjacent nuclear power plant. Sure. That's the reason.
C.H.U.D. (1984) The Toll: In New York, disappearances are up and the homeless populace is mysteriously down.
Blame It On... Regulatory oversight. Toxic waste, prohibited from transport through the city, is instead stored underneath it, where exposed vagrants mutate into cannibalistic fiends. In real life, they've all since moved to the Port Authority Bus Terminal.
City on Fire (1979) The Toll: An unidentified Midwestern city is engulfed in petrol flame, not to mention the tons of noxious sputum released into the atmosphere. (Seriously, the movie doesn't even mention that.)
Blame It On... A disgruntled civil servant, who sets a rapidly-spreading fire at his landlocked oil refinery, which is improbably situated smack in the center of a densely-populated metropolis.
The Core (2003) The Toll: A super storm crumbles the Coliseum, unfiltered sunlight evaporates the Golden Gate Bridge and every stated law of physics is roundly ignored in order to get earth spinning again.
Blame It On... Electromagnetic chaos caused by the suspension of earth's rotation... caused by a secret project that uses earthquakes as weapons... caused by Dick Cheney, probably.
Wall-E (2008) The Toll: Earth, barren and uninhabitable, is abandoned by its massive, amorphous human populace, which now roams space in the hope of one day returning to a more hospitable planet.
Blame It On... Centuries of over-development and neglect. Hey, one man's last remaining acre of unspoiled land is another man's last remaining future Best Buy.
The Day After Tomorrow (2004) The Toll: In what could have served as a prequel to Waterworld, Los Angeles gets flattened by tornadoes, Manhattan is transformed into Atlantis, and Dennis Quaid walks 94 snow-covered miles in an hour and a half.
Blame It On... Global climate change coupled with Al Gore's aggressive self-marketing campaign.
The Postman (1997) The Toll: The intermittence of rainfall and sunlight have a devastating effect on earth and civilization in this remarkably predictive vision of Kevin Coster's future.
Blame It On... Nuclear war, which spreads plumes of ash that blanket the sky, turning most of the planet into wasteland. OK, we're finally convinced. No more nuclear wars!
Mad Max (1980) The Toll: Global gas shortages beget anarchy as marauding bands of outlaw biker gangs threaten to subvert the social order.
Blame It On... A lack of alternative energy sources. If they can just one day find a way to convert crazy into energy, Mel Gibson should get one last starring role!
Medicine Man (1992) The Toll: Hundreds of miles of rainforest are scorched and a cure for cancer is lost. Which, if it means enduring Lorraine Bracco's incessant shrieking, may not be worth re-discovering anyway.
Blame It On... Third-World over-development. A logging company, in its zeal to turn the Amazon into end tables, unwittingly razes the village and research facility containing the cure.
The Day the Earth Caught Fire (1961) The Toll: Earth, thrown out of its orbit around the sun, is now inching toward it. The Sahara floods, oceans evaporate, and hysteria rises in direct proportion to temperatures worldwide.
Blame It On... Nuclear stupidity. Simultaneous nuke testing at the North and South Poles by the US and Soviet Union jars the planet off its axis and into scientifically dubious chaos.
Idiocracy (2005) The Toll: Five hundred years in the future, water is strictly reserved for toilets and the planet is infertile and barren, save for trash mountains that extend thousands of feet into the sky.
Blame It On... Evolutionary decline. With only the least of the species doing its reproducing, man becomes too dumb to care for earth. A chilling vision only 496 years off in its calculations.
Crack in the World (1965) The Toll: Unseasonable storms, previously unrecorded seismic activity, oh, and an entire slice of planet earth sent hurtling into space.
Blame It On... Scientists. Their plan to tap magma energy below the earth's crust using atomic charges starts a crack that splits the planet in two. Do these guys even read their own books?
Logan's Run (1976) The Toll: Earth's inhospitality forces man to live inside domes, where the sustainability of resources is ensured by the mandatory termination of all human life at age 30.
Blame It On... War, overpopulation and pollution. For a sneak peak at this horrifying fate, visit a Toys “R” Us after work this December 24th.
The World, The Flesh and the Devil (1959) The Toll: All life on earth is wiped clean, save for three survivors left to repopulate the planet.
Blame It On... Unexplained nuclear holocaust. At least racism isn't evidently a casualty of Armageddon.
Waterworld (1995) The Toll: True to title, the entire planet becomes submerged under water, leaving only a rumored stretch of land no one has ever actually seen. Just like the movie Waterworld!
Blame It On... The thawing of polar ice caps resultant from global warming. Would it kill you to turn off the light when you leave a room?
The Hitchhiker's Guide to the Galaxy (2005) The Toll: The wholesale vaporization of the planet in less time than it takes to type thi—oh.
Blame It On... Progress. Earth is ironically destroyed to make way for an intergalactic freeway, which you should in no way interpret as a metaphor, unless you build freeways.
Children of Men (2006) Man inexplicably loses the ability to breed, ridding earth of his cancerous impact on the planet.
The Ruins (2008) Carnivorous plants methodically lure and feast on a group of dippy coed travelers.
The Day the Earth Stood Still (2008) A visitor from space warns humans they will be destroyed if they don't undo the damage done to earth.
On Deadly Ground (1994) An environmental engineer foils a nefarious oil company willing to go to murderous lengths to see its rig go on line, on time.
Little Shop of Horrors (1986) An ever-growing carnivorous plant threatens to consume humanity one whiny stage singer at a time.
Outbreak (1995) Pestilence spreads from a remote African jungle to a California town, punishing man for eco-tourism.
The Happening (2008) Widespread suicidal tendencies are sparked by an airborne neurotoxin defensively emitted by plants and grasses. *cough*
Free Willy (1993) A juvenile delinquent befriends an amusement park whale, setting him free before the park's owner can kill the creature to cash in his insurance policy.
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