10 Utterly Bleak Post Apocalyptic Movie Worlds
7. The Terminator
Sometimes the post-apocalyptic world is so bleak that the whole movie is less about surviving it than preventing it ever coming to pass. Time travel has been used to fight the apocalyptic future in everything from Twelve Monkeys to X-Men: Days Of Future Past. But the most iconic future hellscape only time travel can prevent has to be the robopocalypse future from the Terminator franchise.
In Terminator's 2029, worldwide nuclear destruction was just the beginning. As the first film's intro text tells us "the machines rose from the ashes of the nuclear fire", leaving a world not only in ruins but also one at constant war with an unstoppable robot army.
The classic James Cameron instalments only gave us the briefest glimpses of this bleak future, but it was enough to show us piles of skulls crushes beneath the tracks of robotic tanks in the tumbling ruins of civilisation.
Fans were always keen to see more of this nightmare future. But, in a franchise that always had an element of a cautionary tale, the drab Terminator: Salvation was definitely a case of be careful what you wish for.