Why Movies Struggle to Portray the Apocalypse Realistically

For a film about the end of the world as we know it, Digger has trouble truly imagining what that might look like.

The film's conclusion, by Alejandro G. Iñárritu, shows New York City streets submerged, survivors clinging to life rafts, with military, robots, and drones patrolling. A "level four" condition is announced, mirroring alarm systems now familiar to us. Audiences leave wearing gas masks, resigned to the likelihood of unbreathable air.

Twenty-five years have passed since the apocalyptic events, yet the world has barely changed. The post-apocalypse is stuck in a stereotypical stasis, full of decay and disuse. We all know things are bad. What's the point of showing a future identical to the present, just without waste management?

Perhaps we can no longer imagine an apocalypse beyond what we're already experiencing.

To provide context for those who haven't seen Digger:

Initially, Tom Cruise plays greedy oil magnate Digger Rockwell. His cruelty and greed caused a Greenland ice shelf to melt, threatening Europe and then the U.S., according to scientist Ganesh (Riz Ahmed). America's most powerful men do nothing, leading to catastrophe.

However, about thirty minutes in, we learn this is a play. It's produced by the real Digger's adult nephew, a billionaire himself. The play, Fossil Fools, is based on the true story of the original Digger, whose greed allegedly caused an ecological disaster. This play is being revived 25 years after its debut. The film's "present" is a dystopian future, while our "present" is when Digger was poised to further damage the planet.

The film warns of potential consequences if we're not careful. Yet, it also suggests we might reframe these events as art rather than act decisively. Nothing is resolved, and the same wealthy individuals remain in power, celebrated at a spectacle of the end times while Digger's suicide is enjoyed. Ordinary people suffer.

Love it or hate it, the ending is deliberately grim, but also disappointing for a film so full of cinematic style and invention. Since Digger's actions occurred at least 25 years prior, this apocalypse feels simplistic and unconvincing. We see flooded streets, overturned cars, and general neglect. This looks more like a year after a disaster, not over 25 years. Couldn't some cars have been cleared, trash removed, and streets made navigable?

Cleaning Ground Zero after 9/11 took one to two years, with significant restoration within a decade. New Orleans, though changed by Katrina, has recovered and remains a thriving community. Why doesn't Digger's future show similar recovery? Especially when new technology exists—the fingertip phone transfer is surely just the tip of the iceberg, and infrastructure must exist to support a technically advanced theatre production. Perhaps this is intentional, implying that in this dystopia, the wealthy prioritize theatre and technology over basic urban rebuilding. But this interpretation isn't entirely convincing.

This feels more like a worrying sign that we've lost the ability to imagine a realistic, terrifying cinematic apocalypse, unlike in the past. Think of Threads (1984), Grave of the Fireflies (1988), or even the gentler but still devastating When the Wind Blows (1986). These films focused on the consequences of the apocalypse, which Digger does not. For a film about storytelling, its failure to present a compelling and ideally terrifying vision of our new hell is a surprising letdown.

Is it surprising, though? Extreme weather and environmental disasters are common. International schools prepare for El Niño. Poverty and hunger are so widespread we no longer see them as apocalyptic. They happen. We rebuild. (Unlike Channel 4's reality show Apocalypse, which depicts squabbling idiots rummaging for spam and urinating in buckets.)

In Don't Look Up (2021), the world simply dissolves. Leave the World Behind (2023) depicts a pre-apocalypse but not the post-apocalypse. Other options are scorched-earth scenarios like Mad Max. One could argue that Digger's point is that our self-inflicted hell is what we already have. But portraying a future 25 years later that looks almost identical to today, with a bit of new tech, shows a lack of imagination. As David Crow noted in our explainer, "Fossil Fools is loud, unpleasant, and irritating, but it allows the audience to mock the past while feeling safe in the knowledge that they are now more enlightened." Is Digger suggesting that 25 years after another global disaster, the world will be much the same? Or that the main difference will be that we won't bother cleaning up?

In 1667, John Milton's epic poem Paradise Lost aimed to "justify the ways of God to men." Yet, hell, Satan, and the fallen angels are far more interesting than Milton's Eden (two naked people in a garden, which honestly sounds quite nice now). Hell has lakes of fire, adamantine chains, chimeras, demons, and a vast palace named Pandemonium. Satan's mission to ruin humanity leads him to confront Sin, Death, Chaos, and Time—all gloriously personified. It's magnificent.

We struggle to imagine hell—or rather, our imagination isn't constrained by preconceived notions. Milton thus crafted one of the most vibrant, unrestrained visions of the worst imaginable. With Digger, it seems we can only envision a slightly worse version of what we already have. We are so weary of our own apocalypse that it's essentially the current situation, just without infrastructure. This might be accurate, but it's neither exciting nor a warning.

This might be a crude commentary on a film that is essentially a thought experiment. But personally, I'd like to see a truly bold vision of the hell we might be heading towards—something terrifying that could jolt us into action, or at least provide the kind of cinematic spectacle that films are made for, before we walk out into our own slow destruction.