12 Best Movies About The End Of The World

The idea of the world ending has provided an endless stream of brilliant art. What's wonderful about it is that it's open to interpretation. What does it really mean? The world itself being blown up, thus ending?

In some cases but rarely is it meant so literally. What it usually refers to is the breakdown of society, not the physical world but the world as we know it. In film, the breakdown of society can come from a number of instigators. This list aims to include the many different ways that the world ending has been committed to film. Prepare for a wide variety.

Some of you may click on this list and expect to see dystopias. While they are in many ways tales about the breakdown of society, they also involve a new (worse) society being built. So they're excluded from this. Dystopias are often set in worlds where it seems possible, at least in theory, to reverse the damage and recover what once was. The films on this list set characters up to face problems that can't be solved through political manoeuvring.

The causes of the apocalyptic situations these movies pit against our heroes are often reflections of the world we live in and we aim to include most on this list, to highlight the fears that plague us. Be they climate change, nuclear war, racism or, gulp, disease. If your favourite didn't make it, remember, it's not the - Well, you know the rest.

Christopher Nolan does not make bad movies yet his work is so ambitious in scope that it often divides viewers. The initial awe that Inception inspired quickly gave way to parodies about the apparent smugness of the complexity of the ideas at hand, South Park leading the way with their brilliant 'Insheeption' episode. Interstellar is a film open to the same criticisms. A 2014 sci-fi release, it was broadly marketed as a film made with scientific accuracy.

Theoretical physicist Kip Thorne was the film's consultant as Nolan ran big ideas past him - and this film is full of big ideas. Set in the near future, the earth is ravaged by blight and dust storms that are endangering humanity's survival. Matthew McConaughey's Cooper leads a team of astronauts on a space mission through a wormhole near Saturn in the search for a habitable planet. In doing so, he leaves behind his two children, who will be raised by their grandfather as their mother has already passed away. The film focuses heavily on the father-daughter relationship between Cooper and Murph, the adult version of whom is played by Jessica Chastain.

It is a film full of challenging concepts and most of them are wrestling for attention and understanding. The science behind wormholes and spacetime are explored but the biggest theme of the movie is love. Hathaway makes a cheesy speech about love transcending dimensions of space and time that was widely mocked. Yet this film took place at the heart of the McConnaissance and it's hard not to be drawn into the brilliant performance of the leading man, particularly the scenes in which he expresses his emotional turmoil. If the world ever ends, love may be the only weapon we have to get us out of that jam. Our love for Interstellar transcends cynicism.