December 15, 2013 – CINEMA – For people recovering from the hangover of a 2012 Mayan apocalypse, the coming year provides no panacea from the pandemic of fear sweeping the world about doomsday. Perhaps, it also goes with saying that Hollywood is doing very little to ease human phobias about the destruction of the lone blue, habitable planet, at the edge of the galaxy, called Earth. 2013 brings a slew of dystopian and apocalyptic films that sees Earth laid to waste; not once, but over and over again. It appears someone forgot to tell Hollywood the apocalypse was officially canceled by NASA. From an epidemic of shootings and stabbings from Connecticut to China, to a sinkhole of global debt threatening to swallow nations, to the Japanese and U.S. fiscal cliffs threatening the global economy, to a smoldering fiery Arab Spring still burning through nations in the Middle East, Syria on the brink of collapse, increasing seismic quakes strikes along the Ring of Fire, a record number of dormant volcanoes awakening, record unemployed in the EU, and growing tensions in the China Sea; it’s easy to understand why there appears to be so much global psychological fear and anxiety arising from the thickening cloud of apocalyptic gloom settling over the civilized world. Internet sites didn’t create the climate of doom; despite the notions and misgivings of some, and the criticism leveled by others. In 2013, the global mood may grow even darker. Replete with the planet’s mounting problems, is a compendium of planned Hollywood blockbuster films that all suggest Earth’s days are numbered. There is the zombie apocalypse in the movie World War Z, where civilization crumbles and the world is overrun by flesh-eating zombies. If that wasn’t bad enough, the world is eaten by giant monsters from the sea in the film, Pacific Rim. Then there is the film Oblivion, which was adapted from Radical Comics graphic novel Oblivion by Joseph Kosinski. In M. Night Shyamalan (6th Sense) latest film, After Earth, in the distant future, a legendary general (Will Smith) and his 13-year-old son (Jaden Smith) crash-land on a long-abandoned and now dangerous Earth. People say the Mayan calendar, about the world ending on December 21, 2012, is a widely misunderstood interpretation of the facts, regarding the times in which we live…but then again, nobody bothered to cross-reference the Mayan calendar with Hollywood’s. –The Extinction Protocol
