10 Great Movies Where the World Literally Ends
9. Dr. Strangelove or: How I Learned to Stop Worrying and Love the Bomb (1964)
From the Stanley Kubrick project that never was to the one that made his name, Dr Strangelove captured the inherent absurdity of the Cold War between the United States and the Soviet Union, and poked fun at not just the shaky elements that constituted the conflict, but the worst of its potential outcomes.
In the sixties, fear of the bomb was a big deal, with the threat of global nuclear extermination looming over daily life thanks to a post-war nuclear arms race that instigated a decades-long dick-measuring contest between two global superpowers. Kubrick uses this as the foundation of his satire, portraying the warmongering generals in charge as equally incompetent and bloodthirsty, and the bureaucracy propping them up as a big part of the problem.
Attempts to avert the crisis fail, Slim Pickens rides the bomb into the USSR, and the Soviet 'doomsday machine' ensures mutual destruction and disaster for all of mankind, rendering the Earth's surface uninhabitable and destroying all of life and whatever nice things we might have had.
And, of course, Kubrick uses Vera Lynn's "We'll Meet Again" to herald the end in typically ironic fashion.