Life After People (TV Series): The Complete Season One (DVD)
APPROX. 470 MINS. - PROD. YEAR: 2009 - MPA RATING: NR
" The series feeds into entertainment media’s obsession with end of world scenarios
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The documentary "Life After People" (2008) was a surprise hit for History and justifiably so. It posited a world in which humans simply disappeared one day leaving behind all of their greatest works from the Eiffel Tower to "Charles in Charge." The documentary tracked what would happen in the ensuing hours, days, months and years without people to maintain technology and civilization. It was filled with speculation and CGI destruction that made it the documentary equivalent of a popcorn flick, and a very entertaining one at that.
The success of the documentary predictably spawned a series of the same name. Each episode follows the same format as the original documentary (One Hour After People, One Day After People, etc.) but this time focused on a few particular themes or locations rather than trying to encompass the whole world´s post-people fate. "The Capital Threat," for example, focuses on what would happen to Washington D.C. When will the Washington Monument finally collapse? What will happen to the original copy of the U.S. Constitution? "Heavy Metal" predicts when our various great steel structures will finally bite the dust. As always, they love to use CGI to show things going boom or falling down.
The series feeds into entertainment media´s obsession with end of world scenarios which seem to be increasingly growing in popularity. In the wake of the 9/11 attacks, pundits thought the disaster movie would cease to be popular as nobody would want to look at images of cities being destroyed anymore but boy were they wrong. This weekend "2012" is the newest film set to CG the world into a big pile of rubble and shovel in a huge pile of dough in the process. I have no idea if the popularity of these films reflects a groundswell of belief that the apocalypse is nigh, or if it´s simply one of the sub-genres that best provides an excuse to use a whole lot of CG to make a whole lot of stuff blow up real good.
