The end is nigh ... and coming to a theater near you

The Dream Factory, as Hollywood was dubbed in its golden infancy, has also produced more than its fair share of nightmares. Tinseltown has always enjoyed mayhem.

Though catastrophe films have been a part of movies from the very beginning, they reached their zenith in the 1970s, a decade in which earthquakes, capsized cruise ships, skyscraper infernos and imperiled airplanes packed people into theaters. But they were nothing compared with what would come later, disaster films on a global scale.

What producer Irwin Allen, dubbed the “Master of Disaster,” was to the ’70s, Roland Emmerich was to the mid-’90s. Capitalizing on computer-generated graphics that made spectacular mass destruction as easy as clicking a mouse, Emmerich toppled just about every monument possible in such films as “Independence Day” and “The Day After Tomorrow.” (Producer Jerry Bruckheimer and director Michael Bay, two filmmakers never given to subtlety, also got in on the action with “Armageddon.”)

Unlike the ’70s disaster films, which were content to threaten a few dozen people at a time, the new ones put the entire world at risk.

Emmerich has leaped to the front of this global-destruction craze again with “2012,” which opened Friday. It’s a film purported (erroneously) to be based on the ancient Mayan calendar’s prediction for the end of the world. In it, Emmerich does what he does best: drops St. Peter’s dome on Vatican worshipers, cuts Rio’s Jesus down to size and slices California into the sea just as his earlier films swept away New York City with a tsunami and blew up the White House with hovering flying saucers.

Ancient Mayan manuscripts certainly aren’t the first religious texts to be plumbed for ripe apocalyptic material. Christian films such as “A Thief in the Night,” “Left Behind” and “The Omega Code” draw from the biblical Book of Revelation to depict a doomsday scenario involving global thermonuclear war, planet-wide earthquakes, plagues of locusts and demon-possessed world leaders.

Not all films depict humanity’s dystopian endgame so aggressively, however. Some, like 2006’s “Children of Men” reveal that humankind ends with a whimper rather than a bang. Similarly, this winter’s “The Road,” an early Oscar contender, deals with Viggo Mortensen guiding his young son through an apocalyptic badland of ravenous cannibals. And in January, Denzel Washington joins the somber apocalyptic soirée with “The Book of Eli,” about a sacred book that contains the key to humanity’s future.

Regardless of how dramatically these films depict the final days, there’s no doubt that something new has happened since Hollywood’s days of crashing airliners. It’s like the volume control in the movie theaters, which have been creeping toward eardrum-exploding levels in recent years (as dictated by studios).

Raising the stakes, like the volume, though, eventually runs into diminishing returns. If the fate of the world is in the balance every week, we can’t help but grow numb to it. “Oh, look, New York City is underwater again.” In other words, it’s the end of the world as we know it, and we feel fine.

What’s driving this trend? Studios wouldn’t serve it if we didn’t eat it up.

Why do we enjoy watching our cultural icons being smashed to bits? Why do we react so gleefully to images of our own destruction? Is it some sort of corporate cinematic masochism or is it something deeper? Or, do we do love it simply because we’re addicted to big special effects?

These films, whether they depict the end of the world or what comes after it (admittedly, we’re not making a distinction between the two genres here), act as an enigma machine, decoding the fears of the age in which they were made. For instance, “On the Beach” and “Dr. Strangelove” confronted the very real threat of nuclear annihilation; “War of the Worlds” and 1951’s “When Worlds Collide” revealed a terror of extraterrestrial life as our country began taking its first baby steps into outer space; “Waterworld” and “The Day After Tomorrow” addressed implausible worst-case global-warming scenarios; and “28 Days Later” hypothesized what the world would look like after the outbreak of a devastating biological virus. Other films reflected our fears of science run amok or the red menace of communism. Today’s films prey on our current fears: 9/11, a shaky economy, climate change, terrorism, etc.

Just within the past calendar year, we’ve seen the Earth destroyed by solar flares (“Knowing”), nearly disintegrated by eco-warrior aliens (“The Day the Earth Stood Still”) and over-run with zombies who outnumber human survivors 10 to one (“Zombieland”).

Some people take these films, for all their implausible pyrotechnics, very literally. Confusing fiction with fact, they read historical portents into invented premises, spawning conspiracy theories about government cover-ups and veiled scientific plots. The Web is currently abuzz with people fretfully discussing the end of the world in 2012, a conversation Sony, the studio behind the film, is more than happy to encourage behind the scenes.

Perhaps these films are more than just a barometer of our naked fears. Perhaps they are also cautionary fables, the sort of cinematic clarion calls that act as warning signs. Maybe they indicate that people are finally coming around to the idea that we have it within ourselves to bring about our own extinction. “Stop! Don’t you see where we’re headed?” these films seem to say. “Reverse course now before it is too late!”

Of course, we could all be reading too much into this. After all, blowing things up is fun. And let’s face it, drama requires conflict. A future in which humanity lives happily ever after is hardly the paradigm of exciting drama. (While “Star Trek” posits a future of harmony and peace, the individual episodes work only because not everyone in the galaxy has caught on yet.)

Granted, none of us would want to live in any of these apocalyptic futures, but it certainly makes our own problems seem a whole lot less grave, if only for a few hours.

Whatever the reason for these films’ popularity, at least someone is profiting from our untimely demise: Hollywood. After all, “2012” is predicted to be a colossal blockbuster.

But those involved with the film had better eat, drink and be merry while they can — the world might go up in smoke the day after tomorrow.

A selective look at the end of the world … through the years:

“ON THE BEACH” (1959) The last vestiges of humanity gather in Australia to await the end of a nuclear holocaust. (Remade into a hauntingly effective made-for-Showtime movie in 2000.)

“THE BIRDS” (1963) Forget nuclear war, pestilence, aliens and commies; in Hitch’s classic, the world is going to the birds.

“DR. STRANGELOVE OR: HOW I LEARNED TO STOP
WORRYING AND LOVE THE BOMB” (1964) Never has nuclear folly been so funny as the image of Slim Pickens riding a nuke to glory.

“THE OMEGA MAN” (1971) Charlton Heston seems to be the only uninfected survivor of a plague that has turned the world population into vampire mutants. Can he find a cure before they find him?

“SOYLENT GREEN” (1973) In a reversal of the usual apocalyptic film, Earth has more people than it knows what to do with, leading to some “creative” dietary choices.

“A BOY AND HIS DOG” (1975) A boy and the dog with which he can telepathically communicate forage for food and sex in a blighted future.

“LOGAN’S RUN” (1976) Life in the future is wonderful — except for that having to offer yourself up to be murdered at age 30 bit.

“THE QUIET EARTH” (1985) A scientist involved in a government experiment run amok wakes up to find that he may be the last person left in the post-apocalyptic world.

“MAD MAX” (1979) Mel Gibson plays a cop trying to enforce the law in a post-apocalyptic world overrun by vandals and hoodlums. Followed by several sequels (including “Road Warrior,” which is better than the original).

“DAY OF THE DEAD” (1985) Zombies rule the Earth with only a few small pockets of humanity — if you can call it humanity — surviving.

“AKIRA” (1988) This anime classic, about a gang of Tokyo youths caught in the middle of a secret government project to evolve humanity’s meager powers, was far ahead of its time.

“12 MONKEYS” (1995) A supervirus has wiped out most of the world’s population and a tyrannical police state “volunteers” Bruce Willis to go back in time to help understand the virus.

“WATERWORLD” (1995) The polar ice caps have melted and those who have survived the global flood search for the most valuable commodity on the planet: dry land.

“INDEPENDENCE DAY” (1996) Extra-terrestrials return to Earth, and they are not happy!

“THE POSTMAN” (1997) An unspecified war has laid waste to civilization and a Shakespeare-quoting conman leads a rebellion to save what few people are left from a band of criminals.

“ARMAGEDDON” (1998) Sticks and stones may break my bones but really big stones from outer space will really hurt me.

“MATRIX” TRILOGY (1999-2003) Machines have taken over the planet and use human beings as batteries to power their existence.

“THE DAY AFTER TOMORROW” (2004) You think global warming is tough? Try global cooling.

“CHILDREN OF MEN” (2006) No grand catastrophes here. Just a devastating examination of what the world would look like if suddenly all the women in it could no longer bear children.

“I AM LEGEND” (2007) A remake of 1971’s “The Omega Man” (and 1964 film “The Last Man on Earth”) with Will Smith as the last man on Earth.

“THE DAY THE EARTH STOOD STILL” (2008) Aliens prepare to destroy humankind because it didn’t go green. (A remake of the 1951 Cold War classic.)

“KNOWING” (2009) The bad news: the world is about to end. The good news: You’ll get a great tan!

“2012” (2009) Repent for the end (coming in the form of an earthquake, tidal wave, meteor shower, or aircraft carrier squishing).

“THE ROAD” (2009) After a disaster that ruins the planet, a father and son struggle to stay alive.