It's bittersweet, but the man becomes a martyr so his adorable children will live on killer-bot-free. Remember those lovable scamps?

Tri-Star Pictures
"Complete, loving families are the best!"

Sure you do. Thank god they don't have to grow up in a nuclear universe and instead will live in one where their father goes insane and blows up his place of work. Because, you'll recall, no one will know why Dyson destroyed Cyberdyne. No one except his wife, who will either keep that to herself or be committed for screaming about cyborg Austrians. And so there is no circumstance where Miles Dyson doesn't leave a trail of psychiatry bills and confused memories. Just like how one day a man named Pinocchio will be constantly second-guessing the vague memory that he was once a bewitched puppet.

Disney
"He's having puppet and donkey flashbacks? OK, we're doubling his treatment sessions."

How much do you remember when you were Pinocchio's age? I'm guessing only what your parents told you. Now imagine that your parent is a 90-year-old woodworker insisting he assembled you from oak and a celestial pact with a sexy phantom. And these two cases are probably the best scenarios compared to what a kid like Tim Murphy will go through. He was the 9-year-old dinosaur fanatic whose hobby was twisted into a grotesque blackness forever inside him thanks to a weekend at Jurassic Park.

Universal Pictures
"Grandpa Hammond, can you please stop giving me that stuff for my birthdays?"
"Look, I've got millions in Jurassic Park merchandise sitting in a warehouse; it's gotta go somewhere."

The amount of emotional scarring that must have haunted this character is so over-the-top that someone made a spoof Twitter account for it. Not to mention the brief period of time between the first film and Lost World where Tim has no one to consult for his trauma, as InGen's cover-up means there are zero psychologists or peers that would think of him as anything but a compulsive liar or some kind of dinosaur-seeing schizophrenic. But hey, at least he eventually gets to tell his story, unlike Elliott in E.T. or that kid from Flight Of The Navigator -- both of which no doubt had to emotionally bury their touching alien encounters like some kind of cursed treasure.

Such heroism in the face of festive terror. Only nobody seems to pay mind to the fact that Batman just released a bunch of toxic clouds into god knows where. Eventually, some poor town outside of Metropolis will be overrun with death-gas while the Caped Crusader gets a misplaced pat on the back. Cut to 20-plus years later and the Bat is still pulling this shit.

Warner Bros.
"You either die the hero or live long enough to possibly create Godzilla."

Don't get me wrong: I'm not blaming Batman for saving Gotham at the end of Dark Knight Rises, but it's pretty weird that the coastal detonation of a fusion reactor is somehow treated like an all-clear moment -- as under- and overwater nuclear tests have been known to affect and contaminate from hundreds of miles away. One would think that the statue money they use at the end would be better suited for making what's left of their once-evaporated drinking water mutagen-free. In fact ... how is Gotham still a functional city after all of the harrowing terrorism they've endured? Sure they were saved by a nuclear bomb, but that was after all their sewer pipes, bridges, rail systems, and stadium exploded.

Warner Bros.

Warner Bros.

Warner Bros.
"Do- Do we still win? I mean, I did score."

It totally makes sense that films like Civil War and Batman V Superman are finally exploring this dynamic, but what always bothered me was how no one seemed to worry about this in the immediate moments following these cascades of 9/11-level violence.

Marvel Studios
"Hey, are anyone else's ears ringing with the screams of the innocent?"

At the end of X2, literally every single person in the world suffers from agony seizures at the same time -- no doubt causing an unfathomable amount of car, construction, and plane accidents. Not to mention all the infants, elderly, and sick people that flat-out died. Oh, and since mutants and humans are attacked in two separate events ... guess how many people were just outed for having special powers? Hint: It's fucking all of them.

20th Century Fox
Somewhere, Gambit just exploded a perfectly good card game.

It's hard to pretend like you've saved humanity when a huge percentage of it just fell into irreversible darkness. And that's what I'm getting at: Saving the world at the last second isn't saving the world at all. You can't explode Galactus after he's already been eating the world for five minutes and pretend like the entire ecosystem, orbit, plant life, and stability of the Earth hasn't been permanently compromised to the point of mass extinction. Did you ever think that's why we never got another Fantastic Four sequel? Because the world fucking ended?

20th Century Fox
OK, maybe THAT isn't why ...

What a fucking movie. For those who haven't seen it (you goddamn disgraces), the heroes blow up the villains' gigantic robot space maid before she's able to steal the air -- effectively leaving an entire other society of men, women, and children to slowly suffocate to death on planet Spaceball.

MGM
"Only life can pay for death."

This is the exact same situation in Avatar -- the heroes defiantly send the humans back to an Earth plagued by dwindling resources. Again, the dying planet is being represented by total dicks, but the idea that two groups of people can't peacefully solve the death of trillions shouldn't be seen through some victorious lens. No one wins at the end of that film.

20th Century Fox
Especially the audience.

But we haven't even gotten to the more literal dystopias run by machines or some kind of tyrannical regime or social disease. Films like The Matrix end when the hero manages to unhook everyone from the clutches of some false world around them, totally forgetting that maybe it's OK when compared to the bleak alternative.

Warner Bros
"Thank Neo, my eyes are now open to the chilling void of reality."

Not unlike everyone who dies from being unplugged in The Matrix, the movie Surrogates is about a world where most people live through remote-controlled robot versions of themselves ... only to be simultaneously unplugged in the film's "happy" resolution:

Touchstone Pictures

Touchstone Pictures
You fools! This is why you never update iOS right away!

While no one dies from being unplugged, it's yet another X2 moment where planes are howling out of the sky in fiery blasts, the entire economy takes a big wet fart, and humans are suddenly forced to repair the damage without the emotional and physical protection of their surrogate machines. Chances are they'll spend most of their rebuild efforts simply trying to fix their safety clones and nothing will actually change.

Because while it totally sucks that we might someday live in some cold, deserted world where power is unbalanced and man is a slave -- the alternative of sticking a wrench in the system just wipes us the fuck out like at the end of Snowpiercer. Hey, grunge Chris Evans ... did you ever think that maybe derailing the last scrap of humanity isn't such a great idea? But sure, let's go ahead and pretend the man-eating polar bear is some kind of beacon of hope and not ... you know, a man-eating polar bear. Way to go, you derailing asshole.

CJ Entertainment

CJ Entertainment
"Oh look, humans! I haven't had one of those in a while!"

Every time Jack Sparrow fucks off to another adventure, we're seeing the start of countless deaths and a perpetual state of unrest for that character. When Ethan Hunt spends an entire mission nearly dying and being betrayed by his agency, it's a fucking tragedy when the film ends with him accepting yet another assignment. Every exciting sequel hook means that characters like The Avengers and James Bond and Batman are living in a world where they either can't have a normal life or are willingly unable to settle down. Characters like John McClane can be at the wrong place at the wrong time only so many times before the clear antagonist has to be God's vengeful will.

20th Century Fox
"I think the Bible is very clear about my feelings on the word 'motherfucker,' John."

The ending of Interstellar is Matthew McConaughey sneaking off the space station to find Anne Hathaway on the other side of the black hole he just burned 60 years exploring. Could the man who saved humanity not simply ask an expedition to go do that for him? Wouldn't we need to send a team anyway, since she's found a habitable planet? Why are we happy that a man who has to be suffering from insane trauma just runs away to space? That's almost as sad as the elderly Indiana Jones' unending pain-trek through countless magical adventures until he dies in some ancient ditch.

EW
Or gets stabbed on a bridge by Shia LaBeouf.

But despite this seemingly obvious truth, disaster movies seem to pathologically double as a bringer of false hope for any joint-custody kid ... because every single one of them ends with an estranged couple getting back together.

Warner Bros.

Columbia Pictures

Warner Bros.

20th Century Fox
I'm not a relationship expert, but if it takes a literal apocalypse to overcome your differences,
maybe you should see other people.

Let's go ahead and start with the fact that most of the time, this reconciliation comes at the cost of ditching some current lover through a breakup or, in the case of 2012 and San Andreas, horrible death. Someone gets shafted by this romantic miracle, which statistically speaking is not going to end well anyway. After all, it's not like an earthquake or volcano can cure emotional distance or workaholism, so the apocalyptic dust will settle to the sound of repeat screaming matches and slamming doors. It's turd sandwiches for the whole picnic, you guys. Disgusting turd sandwiches.

So why does this trope keep surviving? Slate actually has a pretty smart answer, theorizing that since these films are all about the collapse of society, the imagery of a nuclear family being repaired is an easy symbol for normality in the face of drastic change. Sure, the president of the United States was crushed by a goddamn aircraft carrier, but at least mommies and daddies will love each other again.

It Follows is a fantastically terrifying film about a sexually transmitted demon who perpetually stalks its victims until fucking them to literal shambles. And while that predicament can easily be solved by flying to Japan and having an orgy, our characters are moneyless teenagers forced to come up with more creative solutions ... like just shooting the stupid thing in its demon face.

Dimension Films
"How are we the first people to try this???"

This is from a scene where the group lures the invisible monster to a public pool and starts hucking lead, which results in one of them landing in the hospital with a gunshot wound to the leg.

Dimension Films
"Oh, don't worry, movie bullets always miss your femoral artery."

It's actually the second time one of these kids goes to the ER, the first being when the main character drives a car off the road in a fit of panic. Later on, another friend is murdered by the demon in his own home ... that our hero is loudly breaking into at the same time.

Dimension Films
You know what else follows? The evidence trail to a felony conviction.

So that's one gunshot wound, two hospital visits, and one grizzly killing all in the same circle of friends. Hey, uh ... what do you suppose the police think about that? I can't imagine that "invisible fuck devil" is a very good alibi. That's almost as silly as trying to frame a voodoo-possessed rage doll.

MGM
Oh.

Right. As seen in the beginning of Child's Play 2, Chucky leaves a trail of dead bodies and incredulous police. And that would realistically be the result for every supernatural-horror film where the ghost kills actual people. The premise of the House On Haunted Hill remake is that anyone who stays the night in the spooky institution gets a million dollars, and the abandoned rewards are divided up among the rest. And so, when the film ends with just two survivors of an onslaught of ghost murder ... who do you think the cops are going to blame? The phantom house or the recent millionaires?

Warner Bros
"No, we're telling you the truth! Just look at these bloodstained contracts!"

Every time the last survivor escapes from the scary French catacomb or flaming Antarctic research base, they become the prime suspect for whatever horror they just endured. So if you ever find yourself escaping some unimaginable forest monster that just ate your camping buddies, maybe just cut your losses and don't tell anyone. Because you really don't want your name sharing the same police report as the word "werewolf."

David makes sentences professionally. You can find him on the Twitter.

Which Sci-Fi Trope Would You Bring To The Real World, And Why? Every summer we're treated to the same buffet of three or four science fiction movies with the same basic conceits. There's man vs. aliens, man vs. robots, man vs. army of clones and man vs. complicated time travel rules. With virtual reality and self-driving cars fast approaching, it's time to consider what type of sci-fi movie we want to be living in for the rest of our lives. Co-hosts Jack O'Brien and Adam Tod Brown are joined by Cracked's Tom Reimann and Josh Sargent along with comedians David Huntsberger, Caitlin Gill, and Lizzy Cooperman to figure out which sci-fi trope would be the best to make a reality. Get your tickets to this live podcast here!

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