【Watch Midhunter】

LOS ANGELES -- The Watch Midhunterend of the Apocalypse is near.

The perennially favorite End of the World storytelling device has exploded spectacularly over the past few years: Mad Max: Fury Road, The Hunger Games, Age of Ultron, World War Z, The Maze Runner, The Walking Dead, Last Man on Earth, The 100 ... too many movies and TV shows of mass destruction to name.

But these stories were created when dystopia felt less like a looming reality -- and more like sweet, sweet permission to discard the digital devices that weight our pockets with the woes of the world.

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Think about it: Through the vast diversity of modern post-apocalyptic narratives, the obliteration of mobile communications technology was a common thread. After the outbreak, or the war, or alien invasion, our heroes are forced to become present, survival-driven, with millennia-old instincts reawakened and put to the uses for which they evolved. 

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A few fraught days ago, the Apocalypse wasn't necessarily a nightmare. It was a dream.

Testing ones mettle against the elements -- and nothing but the elements -- sounded kind of refreshing, didn't it? Just a few fraught days ago, the Apocalypse wasn't necessarily a nightmare. 

Somewhere, deep within all of us, it was a dream.

"We lack the power to live our lives withoutany of the advantages that our global/digital wiredness provides," Patricia Rozema, writer/director of Into the Forest, told Mashableover coffee at Toronto Film Festival, where her thoughtful postapocalyptic drama premiered. "I do think that [leaving it behind] is a fantasy."

But that was the 2015Toronto Film Festival -- two festivals ago now -- when Donald Trump was but one of 11 candidates vying for the Republican nomination.

A few weeks later, with The Hunger Games: Mockingjay Part 2 about to conclude a wildly popular film franchise based on a terrifying vision of a future North America, director Frances Lawrence echoed the notion that a world as freakishly fearsome as Panem could delight our collective imagination.

"The dystopic world is an opportunity to tell certain kind of stories. It's about the author and the filmmaker who has this template that you can really set interesting systems and stories and characters and worlds," Lawrence told Mashableduring a promotional junket. "But I will say that there's a 'fantasy' element."

That element, Lawrence said, has a lot to do with how relatively easy our lives have become in the past century.

"The average person doesn't know how to collect healthy water. How to grow food. This stuff becomes science fiction"

"I've always seen the dystopian world as this sort of 'reset' nature. It's interesting because we take so much of our lives for granted now, right? We actually don't really know -- the average person doesn't know how to collect healthy water. How to grow food. Like, just this kind of basic stuff becomes science fiction and ... interesting."

Now, perhaps less interesting. It's too immediate for that. Too real.

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As demonstrations flare up around the U.S. to protest a President-Elect who has repeatedly vowed to dismantle the Obama Administration's climate change policies and strike a far more adversarial stance in the global theater, Armageddon in our movie theaters don't look quite so diabolically delightful.

When there is hope, we crave darkness. When there is darkness, we crave hope.

Time to cancel the Apocalypse.

Original image has been replaced. Credit: Mashable

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The Mass Extinction Event of 2015

In 2015, which set an all-time record for domestic box office grosses at $11.1 billion, 10 of the top 40 earning films featured some earthly global cataclysm, its aftermath, or at very least, its imminent threat. That's one quarter of the top 40 films.

It was the most common genre of 2015's popular films, outpacing family animated movies (nine), adult comedies (seven), spy/heist thrillers (five), sci-fi/fantasy, non-apocalyptic (four), drama (three), superheroes (two) and horror (zero). This year's top 40 features 6 or 8 end-of-the-world stories, with a couple more threatening to crack that list before 2016 mercifully gives out.

But hey, if you want to save the world, first you must threaten it. 

"I think humans want to be reminded that they don't live forever, so you have to constantly [give them] these stories," said Werner Herzog, speaking to Mashableabout his technology documentary Lo And Behold,earlier this year. "It's an interesting thing. When you look at the first writings, most of the time they're 'flood' stories. They're in a way, post-apocalyptic stories. Then one hero rises and overcomes it. That's because I think people are aware that they're mortal. That's why we're drawn to these stories. I like these kind of stories, because an every man can be a hero."

There's no question that our mobile, socially connected technology is effecting our happiness

In a post-digital world, the ominous flood is information. There is no question that our mobile, socially connected technology is having some effect on our behavior and cognition -- and, as a result, our happiness.

Multiple studies have strongly suggested that technology has altered human physiology, for better and worse. One such study, published in 2014 by the journal Environment and Behavior, concluded that the mere presence of our smartphones altered social interactions and focus, even when we're not looking at them.

In short, our tech imposes stress that compounds as it becomes more sophisticated. By 2020, according to the Pew Research Center, our brains will simply be wired differently. The more we study this, the more it becomes apparent that the only way we'll ever re-engage the tactile world is for some outside force to bring down the grid. 

Which may have been a fun fantasy for a while. 

But now, with the raw emotions of a shocking turn of global events flashing a real dystopian future before our eyes, it's not as much fun to think about. It's terrifying.

"We invent things and become delighted with the convenience they've created, then become terrified of losing them"

"My dad spoke early once about the cruise-control thing," Rozema told Mashable. "He had driven all his life without cruise control, but once cars had cruise control, you could never buy a car without cruise control! So we have this tendency as a species to invent things and become completely delighted with the convenience they've created, and then terrifiedof losing them."

In Rozema's film, the two protagonists -- played by Ellen Page and Evan Rachel Wood -- are living with their father in a remote Pacific Northwest homestead in the not-too-distant future. When the grid goes down, it isn't clear why, but they are left to fend for themselves as confusion quickly turns to hysteria. 

At one point, they even use their tiny ration of gas for the generator just to hear a bit of music.

"I put them in a really advantageous situation," Rozema said. "They're not in a city fighting for cans of Spam -- they've got water, they've got wood and they've got a bit of a reserve of food, and then they realize, if slowly, that there's food all around them. The battle is internal: It's the boredom, it's the -- I hope this doesn't sound grandiose -- but it touches on the role of art in our lives. Is music worth the gas? We're always running into that: People are starving, but we want art and music, too!"

In that way, Into the Forestis a much more cerebral, relatable version of the Apocalypse. No totalitarian regimes or mass wasteland to be seen here.

In most versions, with destruction and death is all around, there's more to be done than just reconfigure your survival routines. There is fighting to be done.

"I think the post-apocalyptic genre represents a starting over, hitting the reset button," Dito Montiel, director Man Down, of the Dec. 2 post-apocalyptic drama starring Shia LaBeouf, told Mashable. "I would disagree with the premise that people are sick of being globally connected. I'm sick of being globally controlled ... we are as connected as they allow us to be. It's a false connection. I'm old fashioned. Connection for me happens face to face, person to person. So we hit the reset button. We explore escape through revolution. A revolution expressed through fiction, through fantasy."

But will that play in Peoria ... during the Trump Administration?

No matter your political leanings, there's no denying this fact: People, a lotof people, are suddenly genuinely afraid of losing their livelihoods, their liberties, and the lovely graces of their planet. Their appetite for escaping to bleakness will not be the same.

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Can the creative tide be turned in time to give us the hope we desperately need right now?

Can the creative tide be turned in time to give us hope?

Hollywood film production tends to run in a two- to three-year cycle, from the time a script is greenlit into pre-production until its premiere on the bigscreen (and somewhat shorter for TV). If studios suddenly go cold on cataclysm stories, chances are we won't see them really wind down until the end of Trump's first (gulp) term.

A more likely short-term impact will be opportunities for uplifting movies -- dreamy Oscar front-runner La La Land can only benefit from a world gone mad -- and television shows with characters struggling against oppression and discrimination.

Of course, we'll get our share of crass capitalization, as countless dozens of Trump-inspired industrial-magnate villains are guaranteed to be right around the corner.

Insert "If we make it that far" joke here.

Topics Donald Trump