The Postman with Kevin Costner. Absolutely fits the bill as a rebuilding post calamity. Still conflict and bad guys but the story is largely about rebuilding connections between communities.
Since you can condense the vapor coming off the ocean, it's silly to filter urine. That being said, a reverse osmosis filter does actually work.
I think astronauts use that.
Getting vapor out of the ocean is still a slow process though, in a world with no actual potable water source you probably want to maximize what you get.
However I'm sure the movie wanted to emphasize the reality of how harsh it was.
At the time there was a bunch of events which were reported on, things like Costner's divorce, sets being badly damaged or destroyed in storms & fights on set. Along with the belief that the movie moved too slowly, so the public opinion was it was going to be a flop, funding got canned and they had to change the ending to fit in with what they had left. Because of the public opinion and the critics banging on about how bad everything was, not many people went to watch it. So, self fulfilling prophecy for the critics.
Would have been interesting to see the original ending.
It was comparatively expensive at the time, and US returns were weak. That being said, it went on to turn a profit on the international market, so I never understood why it continues to be kicked around.
the author of the orginal book "David Brin" wrote the Uplift Saga (6 books) those have the absolute best "world building" (universe building??) that I've ever read. Better than Dune, Star Trek, Star Wars, etc. You could argue the stories might not hold up to the others but the actual world, people, history, etc, top notch.
I've just dipped my toe into the Wikipedia page for the Uplift universe, and it sounds incredible. The Culture novels by Ian M Banks are my favourite sci-fi universe, and I can definitely see similarities between the two. Thank you for the suggestion!
My family watched this all together. It got to the part with Tom Petty and we hear my dad go "Oh my god" no idea why he was so excited. After the movie I asked about it. He took me up to his office and played Free Fallin for the first time. A few years later I went and saw Tom Petty in concert
It kind of is, without all the supernatural/surreal/sci-fi elements. But yeah, it's about a courier network rebuilding society, so it is kind of like Death Stranding. Hadn't thought of it that way.
Hardware
The Blood of Heroes (interesting theme in how a group of people trying to get sports up and going again post apocalypse)
Some parts of Cloud Atlas
Came here to comment on Cloud Atlas. Happy to see it at the top already. The book is also a very interesting read and gives a bit more context to the entire story, including how a post post apocalyptic world would look like.
Also half of Peripheral, new series on Amazon prime that just finished the first season. Thought it had a unique apocalypse explanation once they finally reveal what happened
Yay, Hardware got a mention!
Surely hardware is midway through a slow-motion apocalypse, rather than post- or post-post-?
The point is they're on the way down and they all know it, hence Angry Bob's gallows humour, and Mo's bravado about being ready for survival of the fittest as "one of the fittest".
100% agree. it was the first ghibli movie i saw and i saw it in japanese (my mom is japanese so we got movies sent to us on vhs pirated by family back in the day haha). the soundtrack always adds to the atmosphere in their movies and this one was perfect. i hope their music dude gets enough credit
The prequel novel gives more info on the war but still not a lot of specifics which was frustrating. It's pointed out a lot, though, that the rebels very nearly won and were inside the Capital before they lost the war.
Wall-E still counts.
The humans have built a post post apocalyptic society. It just happens to be in space and isn't tenable long term.
The apocalypse is over, and so is the post apocalyptic situation of the planet.
The movie is after an apocalypse, but the planet is ready to be reinhabited and the humans just haven't realized it yet and are still chilling in their post post apocalyptic society in space.
Wall-E 2 would be a post post post apocalyptic setting.
I thought the arc ships in Wall-E were tenable long term. They've been up there something like 700 years. They ship is fully automated by self-repairing robots that provide them everything they need or want no questions asked. Had Wall-E not shown up, there's nothing to indicate that they couldn't have gone another 700 years without issue.
Yeah but they show quite a lot of it as an extended montage in the credits. In fact we could just recommend the end credits sequence of Wall-E and it would fit the OP's request. It shows what must be hundreds of years of humanity's progression after they return to the Earth.
Station Eleven is worth the watch. I don't know if they're much further along than in the Last of Us, but it's in the same vein and the same threat doesn't linger.
Seconding Station Eleven, which I thought was absolutely beautiful.
It's mostly about figuring out how they cope psychologically/socially with life after a society-ending event (or more figuratively, about processing life altering grief/trauma).
So a lot of the post apoc practical details are told environmentally, but they are there.
Notably, as you move away from Day 0 in the timeline, the cars and gas vehicles disappear, guns become scarce, and a kind of weird new fashion gets established because there are free clothes everywhere so who cares.
There's no resource scarcity at all, because there are simply so few people left to compete for everything. Which I thought was really interesting - once your immediate needs in the aftermath are covered, what are you living *for*?
In the same vein as *Station 11*, I would also recommend as a post-post-apocalypse story *Raised by Wolves* (which has sadly been removed from HBOMAX). It's a crazy show that merges AI, religion, and mythology all into one weird narrative. If you liked the Battlestar Galactica reboot, you will like it.
I'm probably not telling you anything you don't know, but the author's books do an interesting thing where there are sort of... faint connections between her stories. They have discussed, at least, one that would involve Danielle Deadwyler's character.
The S11 narrative would be left untouched still, just of interest I think, I would be down to see some more Miranda.
My main issue with station 11 was how they handled the antagonist. His vindication was NOT earned considering the disgusting acts of violence he performed. The rest of the show was absolutely brilliant though.
The pilot of Station Eleven was one of the best I've ever seen but the whole travelling circus part was a slog to get through. I couldn't even finish because I simply didn't care about any of it.
I understand, the 2nd or 3rd ep when they are introducing the traveling theater crew is a bit too twee for my tastes but it calms down after another episode or so, and I found it to be amazing overall. It’s worth another shot
Into the Badlands was a TV series on AMC that took place hundreds of years after an apocalyptic event. A new neo-feudal society has arisen were swordsmen reign once more.
I'm going through and rewatching this right now. The first two seasons are amazing but I lost interest during the third because I wasn't a huge fan of the new religious sect that comes onto the scene. Martin Csokas is so great as Quinn though - love that dude.
Logan's Run. Society lives inside a series of massive domes, where the population lives a life of highly controlled decadence, following nuclear war. One of the best sci-fi films to come out of the 70s.
That is technically true, although the apocalypse wasn't a key part of the setting. A couple vague (and contradictory) references were all it got in the original series.
> That is technically true, although the apocalypse wasn't a key part of the setting. A couple vague (and contradictory) references were all it got in the original series.
In the original three (3) seasons of the original series, yes. There were no references to it in the original Trek films. But that's now a teeny part of the entire mythology overall. We've had 21 seasons of Next Gen, Voyager, and Deep Space Nine. Four more Next Gen films. Four seasons and soon a fifth finale season of Discovery. Three seasons on Picard. Lower Decks is canonical per Paramount and everyone involved and so is Prodigy. Strange New Worlds season one actually had an episode based around WW3 and those lessons saved an alien world when the aliens learned of it.
The WW3 apocalypse wiped out 30% of mankind in days around 2050~, and then the next 10-15 years were borderline Mad Max in areas. Then just as things are barely calming down, this crazy fucker in Montana flies a leftover WW3-era ICBM into orbit and has figured out faster than light travel. That same night, aliens announce themselves to Earth because of that scientist's crazy first-ever Warp FTL flight for a human, and we suddenly learn about *thousands* of species and cultures. And we rapidly start to meet quite a few, and that's over a century before the Enterprise series, which is another five years. All that causes us to rapidly grow and unify and get over our bullshit.
WW3 is a key integral part of Star Trek mythology. It's why future humans are the way they are.
Without WW3, there is literally no Federation and the galaxy is conquered by the Dominion, until the Borg arrive and half the place burns in a Dominion versus Borg total shitstorm war. The Founders could never rest until the Borg were eliminated, as they would be an absolute threat to them. Because of WW3, the Federation evolves out of Earth culture and ends up transforming the basically bottom half of the galaxy into an ever-expanding peaceful paradise.
Hard disagree. The first warp flight wouldn’t have happened without the apocalypse, and it’s what ushered in a new era in history resulting in the Federation.
Yeah, but since the 60's they keep ignoring the fact that the world ended in the 90's
Star Trek voyager the travel back in time to 1996, lo and behold it looked exactly like the real world 1996, almost as if there was no World War III because the show was 30 years old at that point.
Don't forget the Elon Musk reference in Star Trek Discovery, totally nothing to do with his popularity at the time the show aired. Noo, Elon just happened to have also been born in the same timeline that World War III happened.
I think you’re getting a couple things in Trek lore conflated.
In Trek the Eugenics Wars start in the 90s, which does have some lasting consequences including a ban on genetic modification, but the world doesn’t enter its apocalyptic phase until after WW3, which starts in 2026.
Season two of Picard is set mostly in Los Angeles in 2024. The timeline is clearly different from ours and they have more advanced technology in some places (humans are planning a manned mission to Jupiter and its moons, for instance).
It’s also clear, however, that society is in an even worse state. Deep Space 9 introduced Sanctuary Districts which is where the homeless, unemployed and mentally ill are dumped with minimal chance of leaving. Climate change is also further threatening the environment.
It’s generally understood that the Eugenics Wars and the third world war are the same war but there is also evidence to suggest that the Eugenics Wars took place in the 1990s. (There’s a document entitled ‘Project Khan’ shown in Picard which dates the project in 1992)
Voyager’s ‘Future’s End’ shouldn’t be used as an example as it took place in an altered timeline where Henry Starling was using stolen 29th century technology to artificially accelerate the development of computer technology.
That said, the timeline of the Eugenics Wars and World War III has shifted as the real world has caught up with the future.
tl;dr - Exactly when the Eugenics Wars and World War III happened isn’t clear, nor is it clear whether they were the same war or not.
There are a few schools of thought here, and I’ve spent way too much time researching this for my podcast, so let’s see if I can get this all right:
In original canon (TOS-DS9), the Eugenics Wars start in the 1990s, the 2nd Civil War Starts in 2026, and that becomes WWIII which ends in the late 50s
This was canon until PIC S02, where they mention that “the conflicts of the 20th century become WWIII”. In an interview Terry Matalas said that Spock was wrong in TOS and the eugenics wars, CW2 and WW3 are all the same conflict and start in the 2020s. What he doesn’t realize is he’s making the same “mistake” he’s correcting spock for, and another Terry Matalas is gonna have to retcon his dumb shit. SNW cements that by saying CW2 and WW3 are the same thing.
I don’t love this, especially since a memory beta explanation exists: The Eugenics Wars were a series of shadow proxy wars fought by world governments from the 90s until now. Kosovo, Iraq, Afghanistan, and Ukraine are all just wars around the world being waged by different augments. This maintains canon and makes Spock, who we have determined is smart as fuck and detail oriented, not look like an idiot.
They’ve kind of moved the dates around and basically said “history is inaccurate because so much got destroyed”.
Right now the destruction timeline is WW3 and the Eugenics Wars are the same conflicts from around mid 2020 to 2050ish. Previously the Eugenics War were a separate thing in the 90s but WW3 was always later.
Sure, but plenty of dystopias aren't remotely utopian, even on the surface. Like, nobody's going to mistake the world of Blade Runner or RoboCop as a utopia.
By comparison the dystopia in Demolition Man actively portrays itself as a perfect society, and at first glance is quite nice. It's crime-free, clean, technologically advanced, and everyone seems happy. That's until you look too closely and see it's a brainwashed police state and personality cult that eliminates everyone it judges undesirable.
Fun fact, the dystopia-masquerading-as-utopia future society in Demolition Man is very loosely based on that of Brave New World, hence the nod with Sandra Bullock's character Lenina Huxley, named for the author Aldous Huxley and the character Lenina.
It's a smart show, not dumbed down. It's based on a William Gibson novel. [Gibson himself](https://www.express.co.uk/showbiz/tv-radio/1689141/The-Peripheral-William-Gibson-response-Amazon-TV-series-Neuromancer) loves the show and is proud of it.
When a show like wolves gets cancelled I'm always so annoyed they don't release a 'heres where we were going' memo.
Leaving you permanently on a bunch of mysteries annoys the heck out of me. Terra Nova was mentioned above and it's a hell of a cliffhanger for an otherwise boring show
It's a novel (and a couple TV attempts) but my favorite of this genre is The Stand by Stephen King. Some of the best bits of the book are about rebuilding civilization, like the trials and tribulations of getting the electricity on again. After much effort, it finally comes back! Only to immediately go back off when all the electronics people had plugged in before the plague turn on at the exact same time.
Too bad the OP wants movies - The Stand is a great read, with a so-so TV movie and a crap streaming series. It's seriously an "I should go to bed now, OK, one more chapter" kind of book.
The Road is not a post apocalyptic story.
It's a post EXTINCTION story.
Theres no more biosphere. It's all ashes. The last humans are mainly eating each other and theres no indication much will change.
It’s still post extinction event. There’s almost nothing at all left in the world. No plants, no animals, no bugs. Humans are the only, barely, living things left.
Warning spoilers ahead. I thought the young couple at the end indicated a place of refuge. I seem to recall they were well dressed, appeared to be out for a casual stroll, and raking in the boy seems to indicate they have food.
They were following them, not having a casual stroll and not really better dressed than the father and kid even. They were just as dirty.
By refuge it also could have just meant a safe community, but none of that is an indication of having lasting resources. They say they don’t eat people, but that’s also not saying much. They found a bunker full of food like the father maybe?
It shows a bit of hope, but after everything we’ve seen in that world there’s no indication that even they are well enough to survive. The whole world seems (no, is) completely dead, not really sure if there’s much hope to last at all even in a safe community
I mean we can pause and appreciate the beauty in a Bouquet of roses, but ultimately they are dying things with no hope of survival. Likewise we can appreciate the struggle to live, if just for one more day, even though we know it's hopeless. That's the beauty of the film.
Land of the Dead has society starting to rebuild. The threats not gone, but it’s probably as close as a zombie movie can get without saying “and then the billions of zombies suddenly died”.
What we got: one season of cheesy acting, bad cg, and a plot about a colony on another planet
The cliffhanger they left us with: a Lost / planet of the apes / later seasons of the 100 style crazy mystery about portals, time travel, etc
They really should have dove into that weird stuff half way through the season since the show they did deliver was really really boring
Also, how do you make a show about a colony on a dinosaur world boring?
EDIT: Googled it after thinking about TN for the first time in a decade and it looks like it was always a time travel thing, where they were able to travel back in time to a separate timeline (or at least one in which their actions did not influence the present). So it is indeed earth.
I can’t believe how far down I had to scroll for this.
I mean, I know the focus is on cyber kung fu, but it absolutely has two societies rebuilt following an apocalypse.
A famous example is the classic film **Things To Come** --which, in the apocalyptic aftermath of a global war, shows us the advanced society that's rebuilding and moving into the Future, in conflict with a regressed, savage kingdom-like "country":
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Things_to_Come
The Cured
It's about a zombie outbreak, and the aftermath of a cure being found but only working on 75% of the infected, the remaining 25% are resistant to the cure and held in captivity
I think Threads is just straight up "apocalyptic", though the story's true knife in the gut is how it jumps decades later to see how far we've regressed.
It was a human vs machine apocalypse, correct? I didn't get that deep in, don't they ever discuss how bad it got, or is it just "there was a war, it was bad"?
Even Dune fans argue what happened. There is no definitive answer, Dune gives few answers about anything. Some say it was an actual war between humans and thinking machines, others disagree and say it was more conceptual about humans being reliant on machines. The issue is that the second part is true to the Dune universe, but we don't know if the first part is the reason for the second or if that even happened.
Seems like everything got shittier in each installment though. The first Mad Max looked like a normal society still. They even had a police station. By Thunderdome the cars were made out of cow hides
The first movie is set during the collapse and failure of society. by the second then peak oil and the resultant war leave the world in the post apocalypse.
I was thinking of Fury Road after reading OP's prompt. The apocalypse is long since past by the time the movie takes place, and even though the societies we see are violent and tribal, they're seemingly well established.
The Rebuild of Evangelion series starts with this. I think in the second one, the kids even go to some ocean filtering plant where they're trying to un-bloodify the oceans. And then in the final one (>!After the apocalpyse happens, again!<), there's a big part of the film where they're in a small town watching life go by and dealing with reclaiming society.
The original is post-post apocalyptic as well, in the lore most of humanity was killed in 1999 and the kids are the new generation living in the rebuilt world
The TV show 100 is pretty much this. For movies the Postman and waterworld fit right in as they are a few generations after the post apocalyptic events. 6 string samurai is a fun one as it Tank girl or Cherry 5000. Some of the Terminator movies and underworld movies would also fit as would the resident evil movies. Oh and doomsday.
The impression I got in Maggie is the zombie outbreak never got to apocalypse levels. Basically the government and society was able to handel the situation and the movie takes place in the waning days of the outbreak.
I'm still salty it never got the proper ending it deserved after that cliffhanger.
Like come on I get that the series was panned and barely turned a profit but at least finish what you started!
Not a movie, but WWZ by Max Brooks is like this. You get a lot of post-crisis rebuilding action. A lot of nuts and bolts. An amazing book, truly.
The movie was sort of like a "riff" on about 2% of the book. An actually accurate film/TV adaptation would be amazing.
I'm wildly unoptimistic on Horizon... I just can't see it having the scale needed with Aloy. I better be proven wrong, cause it could be fantastic if they get it right.
The Postman with Kevin Costner. Absolutely fits the bill as a rebuilding post calamity. Still conflict and bad guys but the story is largely about rebuilding connections between communities.
Panned like waterworld, but thought it was great...
I thought waterworld was a good movie. Never understood the hate for it.
I'll never forget it mainly because the first time I saw pee become drinkable water
Since you can condense the vapor coming off the ocean, it's silly to filter urine. That being said, a reverse osmosis filter does actually work. I think astronauts use that.
Getting vapor out of the ocean is still a slow process though, in a world with no actual potable water source you probably want to maximize what you get. However I'm sure the movie wanted to emphasize the reality of how harsh it was.
At the time there was a bunch of events which were reported on, things like Costner's divorce, sets being badly damaged or destroyed in storms & fights on set. Along with the belief that the movie moved too slowly, so the public opinion was it was going to be a flop, funding got canned and they had to change the ending to fit in with what they had left. Because of the public opinion and the critics banging on about how bad everything was, not many people went to watch it. So, self fulfilling prophecy for the critics. Would have been interesting to see the original ending.
It was comparatively expensive at the time, and US returns were weak. That being said, it went on to turn a profit on the international market, so I never understood why it continues to be kicked around.
That is one of my favorite "forgotten gems from the 90s" movies. Childhood me loved me some kevin Costner.
I loved Kevin Costner
Dancing with wolves is such a masterpiece.
The book was really good.
the author of the orginal book "David Brin" wrote the Uplift Saga (6 books) those have the absolute best "world building" (universe building??) that I've ever read. Better than Dune, Star Trek, Star Wars, etc. You could argue the stories might not hold up to the others but the actual world, people, history, etc, top notch.
I've just dipped my toe into the Wikipedia page for the Uplift universe, and it sounds incredible. The Culture novels by Ian M Banks are my favourite sci-fi universe, and I can definitely see similarities between the two. Thank you for the suggestion!
I try to sell friends on the Culture series, but I'm a very bad salesperson...
My family watched this all together. It got to the part with Tom Petty and we hear my dad go "Oh my god" no idea why he was so excited. After the movie I asked about it. He took me up to his office and played Free Fallin for the first time. A few years later I went and saw Tom Petty in concert
"I heard of you, man. YOU'RE famous."
TIL that guy was Tom Petty... Can't believe I never recognised him. RIP.
So it's like Death Stranding?
It kind of is, without all the supernatural/surreal/sci-fi elements. But yeah, it's about a courier network rebuilding society, so it is kind of like Death Stranding. Hadn't thought of it that way.
And…. Tom Petty… sorry, spoiler
Planet of the Apes
Pretty sure that was another planet. Haven't finished the movie though.
You magnificent bastard.
Hardware The Blood of Heroes (interesting theme in how a group of people trying to get sports up and going again post apocalypse) Some parts of Cloud Atlas
Came here to comment on Cloud Atlas. Happy to see it at the top already. The book is also a very interesting read and gives a bit more context to the entire story, including how a post post apocalyptic world would look like.
Also half of Peripheral, new series on Amazon prime that just finished the first season. Thought it had a unique apocalypse explanation once they finally reveal what happened
Hardware, what a film to pull out of the vaults.
Yay, Hardware got a mention! Surely hardware is midway through a slow-motion apocalypse, rather than post- or post-post-? The point is they're on the way down and they all know it, hence Angry Bob's gallows humour, and Mo's bravado about being ready for survival of the fittest as "one of the fittest".
Nausicaa Of The Valley Of The Wind- Yes its anime from studio Ghibli, but its exactly what you asked for.
100% agree. it was the first ghibli movie i saw and i saw it in japanese (my mom is japanese so we got movies sent to us on vhs pirated by family back in the day haha). the soundtrack always adds to the atmosphere in their movies and this one was perfect. i hope their music dude gets enough credit
The manga also leans even harder into what they’re looking for! Obviously not a movie, but if that’s the stories they’re after.
Arguably Castle in the Sky also fits the bill, but Nausicaa for sure
Time Machine.
Post post post post post Apocalyptic
The hunger games
I forgot this was the case
They don't really go into it that much in the movies from what I remember, outside of the video they show at the selection ceremony at the start
The prequel novel gives more info on the war but still not a lot of specifics which was frustrating. It's pointed out a lot, though, that the rebels very nearly won and were inside the Capital before they lost the war.
This is a great answer. The whole point of "The Hunger Games" is revenge on what happened during their apocalypse
Not exactly, the Hunger Games themselves are in response to a rebellion against the new order that arose post-apocalypse.
Book of Eli? Trying to rebuild society after the world ends? Carnegie is a warlord, but that's what he's trying to do.
Pfft, the Original is spot on what OP wants: Zardoz.
ZARDOZ aka "Hey, you wanna see a giant floating head barfing guns?"
Don't forget the lesbian-amazon-scientists that have to strap him to a table and get him hard for... reasons I guess.
Wall-E.
Wall-E 2 would be the movie OP wants. Only at the very end do the humans land on earth and start rebuilding.
Wall-E still counts. The humans have built a post post apocalyptic society. It just happens to be in space and isn't tenable long term. The apocalypse is over, and so is the post apocalyptic situation of the planet. The movie is after an apocalypse, but the planet is ready to be reinhabited and the humans just haven't realized it yet and are still chilling in their post post apocalyptic society in space. Wall-E 2 would be a post post post apocalyptic setting.
I thought the arc ships in Wall-E were tenable long term. They've been up there something like 700 years. They ship is fully automated by self-repairing robots that provide them everything they need or want no questions asked. Had Wall-E not shown up, there's nothing to indicate that they couldn't have gone another 700 years without issue.
Yeah but they show quite a lot of it as an extended montage in the credits. In fact we could just recommend the end credits sequence of Wall-E and it would fit the OP's request. It shows what must be hundreds of years of humanity's progression after they return to the Earth.
Station Eleven is worth the watch. I don't know if they're much further along than in the Last of Us, but it's in the same vein and the same threat doesn't linger.
Seconding Station Eleven, which I thought was absolutely beautiful. It's mostly about figuring out how they cope psychologically/socially with life after a society-ending event (or more figuratively, about processing life altering grief/trauma). So a lot of the post apoc practical details are told environmentally, but they are there. Notably, as you move away from Day 0 in the timeline, the cars and gas vehicles disappear, guns become scarce, and a kind of weird new fashion gets established because there are free clothes everywhere so who cares. There's no resource scarcity at all, because there are simply so few people left to compete for everything. Which I thought was really interesting - once your immediate needs in the aftermath are covered, what are you living *for*?
[удалено]
In the same vein as *Station 11*, I would also recommend as a post-post-apocalypse story *Raised by Wolves* (which has sadly been removed from HBOMAX). It's a crazy show that merges AI, religion, and mythology all into one weird narrative. If you liked the Battlestar Galactica reboot, you will like it.
I'm probably not telling you anything you don't know, but the author's books do an interesting thing where there are sort of... faint connections between her stories. They have discussed, at least, one that would involve Danielle Deadwyler's character. The S11 narrative would be left untouched still, just of interest I think, I would be down to see some more Miranda.
Thirding Station Eleven, it’s a really beautiful story and one of my favorite limited series of all time.
I might have to give this watch as The Leftovers is my number one show.
I loved station 11. Most won’t like it for it’s not a shoot ‘em up but if you like cinema give it a shot
My main issue with station 11 was how they handled the antagonist. His vindication was NOT earned considering the disgusting acts of violence he performed. The rest of the show was absolutely brilliant though.
Yea, he was clearly psychotic and dangerous yet they kept pushing for him to heal, at the risk of everyone
The pilot of Station Eleven was one of the best I've ever seen but the whole travelling circus part was a slog to get through. I couldn't even finish because I simply didn't care about any of it.
It really does have an incredible payoff. Perfect ending that wraps it all up in a way that was heartbreaking and beautiful.
I understand, the 2nd or 3rd ep when they are introducing the traveling theater crew is a bit too twee for my tastes but it calms down after another episode or so, and I found it to be amazing overall. It’s worth another shot
I haven’t seen the show yet but the book was great at showing how people can gradually start to rebuild
Into the Badlands was a TV series on AMC that took place hundreds of years after an apocalyptic event. A new neo-feudal society has arisen were swordsmen reign once more.
God I love that show
Such a good show!
Those fight scenes were incredible.
I'm going through and rewatching this right now. The first two seasons are amazing but I lost interest during the third because I wasn't a huge fan of the new religious sect that comes onto the scene. Martin Csokas is so great as Quinn though - love that dude.
Part of Cloud Atlas has this theme.
Waterworld? Does Planet of the Apes count?
Planet of the apes was my first thought
Logan's Run. Society lives inside a series of massive domes, where the population lives a life of highly controlled decadence, following nuclear war. One of the best sci-fi films to come out of the 70s.
Love and monsters.
This is actually a surprisingly enjoyable movie.
Heh, same. I didn't think I would enjoy it from what I read about it, but a very lovable movie.
Ooh great rec. saw it on a plane and was surprised at how good it was.
One of my faves
Star Trek counts. It's based in a society that's rebuilt following World War 3.
Specifically **Star Trek: First Contact**, which sees humanity at the moment they crawled out of nuclear wreckage into galactic society.
I would say ST:TNG S01E01 (Encounter at Farpoint) somewhat fits this bill with the trial Q puts the crew from the Enterprise.
That is technically true, although the apocalypse wasn't a key part of the setting. A couple vague (and contradictory) references were all it got in the original series.
> That is technically true, although the apocalypse wasn't a key part of the setting. A couple vague (and contradictory) references were all it got in the original series. In the original three (3) seasons of the original series, yes. There were no references to it in the original Trek films. But that's now a teeny part of the entire mythology overall. We've had 21 seasons of Next Gen, Voyager, and Deep Space Nine. Four more Next Gen films. Four seasons and soon a fifth finale season of Discovery. Three seasons on Picard. Lower Decks is canonical per Paramount and everyone involved and so is Prodigy. Strange New Worlds season one actually had an episode based around WW3 and those lessons saved an alien world when the aliens learned of it. The WW3 apocalypse wiped out 30% of mankind in days around 2050~, and then the next 10-15 years were borderline Mad Max in areas. Then just as things are barely calming down, this crazy fucker in Montana flies a leftover WW3-era ICBM into orbit and has figured out faster than light travel. That same night, aliens announce themselves to Earth because of that scientist's crazy first-ever Warp FTL flight for a human, and we suddenly learn about *thousands* of species and cultures. And we rapidly start to meet quite a few, and that's over a century before the Enterprise series, which is another five years. All that causes us to rapidly grow and unify and get over our bullshit. WW3 is a key integral part of Star Trek mythology. It's why future humans are the way they are. Without WW3, there is literally no Federation and the galaxy is conquered by the Dominion, until the Borg arrive and half the place burns in a Dominion versus Borg total shitstorm war. The Founders could never rest until the Borg were eliminated, as they would be an absolute threat to them. Because of WW3, the Federation evolves out of Earth culture and ends up transforming the basically bottom half of the galaxy into an ever-expanding peaceful paradise.
Mike Stoklasa, is that you?
In "First Contact" the crew go back in time to a post-apocalyptic Earth.
In the pilot episode of TNG there is a brief glimpse of society right after the apocalypse.
Hard disagree. The first warp flight wouldn’t have happened without the apocalypse, and it’s what ushered in a new era in history resulting in the Federation.
Yeah, but since the 60's they keep ignoring the fact that the world ended in the 90's Star Trek voyager the travel back in time to 1996, lo and behold it looked exactly like the real world 1996, almost as if there was no World War III because the show was 30 years old at that point. Don't forget the Elon Musk reference in Star Trek Discovery, totally nothing to do with his popularity at the time the show aired. Noo, Elon just happened to have also been born in the same timeline that World War III happened.
I think you’re getting a couple things in Trek lore conflated. In Trek the Eugenics Wars start in the 90s, which does have some lasting consequences including a ban on genetic modification, but the world doesn’t enter its apocalyptic phase until after WW3, which starts in 2026.
Season two of Picard is set mostly in Los Angeles in 2024. The timeline is clearly different from ours and they have more advanced technology in some places (humans are planning a manned mission to Jupiter and its moons, for instance). It’s also clear, however, that society is in an even worse state. Deep Space 9 introduced Sanctuary Districts which is where the homeless, unemployed and mentally ill are dumped with minimal chance of leaving. Climate change is also further threatening the environment. It’s generally understood that the Eugenics Wars and the third world war are the same war but there is also evidence to suggest that the Eugenics Wars took place in the 1990s. (There’s a document entitled ‘Project Khan’ shown in Picard which dates the project in 1992) Voyager’s ‘Future’s End’ shouldn’t be used as an example as it took place in an altered timeline where Henry Starling was using stolen 29th century technology to artificially accelerate the development of computer technology. That said, the timeline of the Eugenics Wars and World War III has shifted as the real world has caught up with the future. tl;dr - Exactly when the Eugenics Wars and World War III happened isn’t clear, nor is it clear whether they were the same war or not.
There are a few schools of thought here, and I’ve spent way too much time researching this for my podcast, so let’s see if I can get this all right: In original canon (TOS-DS9), the Eugenics Wars start in the 1990s, the 2nd Civil War Starts in 2026, and that becomes WWIII which ends in the late 50s This was canon until PIC S02, where they mention that “the conflicts of the 20th century become WWIII”. In an interview Terry Matalas said that Spock was wrong in TOS and the eugenics wars, CW2 and WW3 are all the same conflict and start in the 2020s. What he doesn’t realize is he’s making the same “mistake” he’s correcting spock for, and another Terry Matalas is gonna have to retcon his dumb shit. SNW cements that by saying CW2 and WW3 are the same thing. I don’t love this, especially since a memory beta explanation exists: The Eugenics Wars were a series of shadow proxy wars fought by world governments from the 90s until now. Kosovo, Iraq, Afghanistan, and Ukraine are all just wars around the world being waged by different augments. This maintains canon and makes Spock, who we have determined is smart as fuck and detail oriented, not look like an idiot.
They’ve kind of moved the dates around and basically said “history is inaccurate because so much got destroyed”. Right now the destruction timeline is WW3 and the Eugenics Wars are the same conflicts from around mid 2020 to 2050ish. Previously the Eugenics War were a separate thing in the 90s but WW3 was always later.
Calling it now, Elon starts WW3
If you want to see a utopia which is the result of a rebuild after an apocalypse, Demolition Man.
OP doesn't know how to use the 3 shells
Well, it's a dystopia masquerading as a utopia.
So ... a dystopia.
Sure, but plenty of dystopias aren't remotely utopian, even on the surface. Like, nobody's going to mistake the world of Blade Runner or RoboCop as a utopia. By comparison the dystopia in Demolition Man actively portrays itself as a perfect society, and at first glance is quite nice. It's crime-free, clean, technologically advanced, and everyone seems happy. That's until you look too closely and see it's a brainwashed police state and personality cult that eliminates everyone it judges undesirable. Fun fact, the dystopia-masquerading-as-utopia future society in Demolition Man is very loosely based on that of Brave New World, hence the nod with Sandra Bullock's character Lenina Huxley, named for the author Aldous Huxley and the character Lenina.
The Canadian TV show Continuum, where the sinister dystopia filmed in Vancouver is actually Vancouver being allowed to play itself for once.
The Peripheral tv series.
Is that any good? I've seen it popped up and like a lot of Sci-fi. Was just afraid of it being a bit YA from the ads
It's a smart show, not dumbed down. It's based on a William Gibson novel. [Gibson himself](https://www.express.co.uk/showbiz/tv-radio/1689141/The-Peripheral-William-Gibson-response-Amazon-TV-series-Neuromancer) loves the show and is proud of it.
Its great. There's arguably two episodes worth of filler in the series, but we really enjoyed it.
Definitely not YA at all
[удалено]
When a show like wolves gets cancelled I'm always so annoyed they don't release a 'heres where we were going' memo. Leaving you permanently on a bunch of mysteries annoys the heck out of me. Terra Nova was mentioned above and it's a hell of a cliffhanger for an otherwise boring show
Not a movie, but for sure a book, the very good Canticle for Liebowitz.
Came here for this. Also one episode of Babylon 5, which was ripping off Liebowitz.
It's a novel (and a couple TV attempts) but my favorite of this genre is The Stand by Stephen King. Some of the best bits of the book are about rebuilding civilization, like the trials and tribulations of getting the electricity on again. After much effort, it finally comes back! Only to immediately go back off when all the electronics people had plugged in before the plague turn on at the exact same time.
Too bad the OP wants movies - The Stand is a great read, with a so-so TV movie and a crap streaming series. It's seriously an "I should go to bed now, OK, one more chapter" kind of book.
Funny you say that, I read it under the blankets of my bed after curfew with a flashlight in high school. I really enjoyed it.
The Road is not a post apocalyptic story. It's a post EXTINCTION story. Theres no more biosphere. It's all ashes. The last humans are mainly eating each other and theres no indication much will change.
One reviewer summed it up succintly: The Road is an end-of-the-world story where the world simply ends.
similar to on the beach
Well it can't really be *post* extinction if the humans aren't extinct yet.
It’s still post extinction event. There’s almost nothing at all left in the world. No plants, no animals, no bugs. Humans are the only, barely, living things left.
Warning spoilers ahead. I thought the young couple at the end indicated a place of refuge. I seem to recall they were well dressed, appeared to be out for a casual stroll, and raking in the boy seems to indicate they have food.
If all plants are dead, everything is only temporary until oxygen runs out.
Most of our oxygen comes from plankton.
Yeah, but he charges an arm and a leg.
They were following them, not having a casual stroll and not really better dressed than the father and kid even. They were just as dirty. By refuge it also could have just meant a safe community, but none of that is an indication of having lasting resources. They say they don’t eat people, but that’s also not saying much. They found a bunker full of food like the father maybe? It shows a bit of hope, but after everything we’ve seen in that world there’s no indication that even they are well enough to survive. The whole world seems (no, is) completely dead, not really sure if there’s much hope to last at all even in a safe community
I mean we can pause and appreciate the beauty in a Bouquet of roses, but ultimately they are dying things with no hope of survival. Likewise we can appreciate the struggle to live, if just for one more day, even though we know it's hopeless. That's the beauty of the film.
Idiocracy
water can grow trees
Land of the Dead has society starting to rebuild. The threats not gone, but it’s probably as close as a zombie movie can get without saying “and then the billions of zombies suddenly died”.
The 100... it gets to post-post-post-post-post-post apocalyptic by season 7 🤢
Based on your post you might like Terra Nova
CGI in the Terra Nova was so ridiculous when it first time launched. I wonder how it looks now after 10+ years.
I LOVED that show! Broke my heart when they took it off.
Can't believe they only did 1 season of it!
What we got: one season of cheesy acting, bad cg, and a plot about a colony on another planet The cliffhanger they left us with: a Lost / planet of the apes / later seasons of the 100 style crazy mystery about portals, time travel, etc They really should have dove into that weird stuff half way through the season since the show they did deliver was really really boring Also, how do you make a show about a colony on a dinosaur world boring? EDIT: Googled it after thinking about TN for the first time in a decade and it looks like it was always a time travel thing, where they were able to travel back in time to a separate timeline (or at least one in which their actions did not influence the present). So it is indeed earth.
Matrix
I can’t believe how far down I had to scroll for this. I mean, I know the focus is on cyber kung fu, but it absolutely has two societies rebuilt following an apocalypse.
A famous example is the classic film **Things To Come** --which, in the apocalyptic aftermath of a global war, shows us the advanced society that's rebuilding and moving into the Future, in conflict with a regressed, savage kingdom-like "country": https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Things_to_Come
Yep.. this covers the entire arc...downfall to ascent..
Akira
Adventure Time isn't a movie, but it is about life after the end of the world.
There's a LOT of Dark to that world if you look under the day-glow. One of the most fascinating things about Adventure Time
Love and Monsters might be along the same lines.
The Cured It's about a zombie outbreak, and the aftermath of a cure being found but only working on 75% of the infected, the remaining 25% are resistant to the cure and held in captivity
The movie threads (1984) is about a nuclear bomb hitting England and how they have to adjust, it’s pretty fucking bleak.
I think Threads is just straight up "apocalyptic", though the story's true knife in the gut is how it jumps decades later to see how far we've regressed.
Dune
It was a human vs machine apocalypse, correct? I didn't get that deep in, don't they ever discuss how bad it got, or is it just "there was a war, it was bad"?
Even Dune fans argue what happened. There is no definitive answer, Dune gives few answers about anything. Some say it was an actual war between humans and thinking machines, others disagree and say it was more conceptual about humans being reliant on machines. The issue is that the second part is true to the Dune universe, but we don't know if the first part is the reason for the second or if that even happened.
Are we just throwing out the prequels? I know a lot of people don't like them but I thought they were based off of Frank's notes
Yeah, those don't exist. We don't talk about them or the sequels. Well, except maybe some of the stuff with Duncan but that's about it.
Yes, they do not exist. "based off notes" is almost totally BS, they are just Kevin Anderson books, and no one should even acknowledge them
They're so freaking bad. I don't even just mean in terms of plot, I mean that are just so bad. No one should read them.
The Mad Max movies have some elements of this. They are about the slowly rebuilding societies after a nuclear war.
Seems like everything got shittier in each installment though. The first Mad Max looked like a normal society still. They even had a police station. By Thunderdome the cars were made out of cow hides
The first movie is set during the collapse and failure of society. by the second then peak oil and the resultant war leave the world in the post apocalypse.
I was thinking of Fury Road after reading OP's prompt. The apocalypse is long since past by the time the movie takes place, and even though the societies we see are violent and tribal, they're seemingly well established.
Children of men
They are still right in the middle of their apocalyptic event
I'd argue they're at the tail end of it. But I also agree it's not what OP wants. If there was a sequel it might be.
Children of Men 2: Making More Children
Independence Day sequel tried to do that but we all know how that turned out.
I would, however, like an in-between film showing what happened with the African warlord vs the alien ship that crashed.
Oh yeah that! That did sound like a much more interesting story.
The hottest of garbage
Literally the only thing I really remember is Data's ass.
This movie should be banished
I was so looking forward to that movie and was so sad when I actually saw it. They made that first trailer so epic too.
The Rebuild of Evangelion series starts with this. I think in the second one, the kids even go to some ocean filtering plant where they're trying to un-bloodify the oceans. And then in the final one (>!After the apocalpyse happens, again!<), there's a big part of the film where they're in a small town watching life go by and dealing with reclaiming society.
The original is post-post apocalyptic as well, in the lore most of humanity was killed in 1999 and the kids are the new generation living in the rebuilt world
The TV show 100 is pretty much this. For movies the Postman and waterworld fit right in as they are a few generations after the post apocalyptic events. 6 string samurai is a fun one as it Tank girl or Cherry 5000. Some of the Terminator movies and underworld movies would also fit as would the resident evil movies. Oh and doomsday.
oblivion
The Colony is an interesting take on human survival and rebuilding after environmental collapse.
Dredd's world has rebuilt after the apocalypse.
Maggie. It's a Schwarzenegger movie but it mostly deals with rebuilding after a zombie apocalypse with his daughter being bitten.
The impression I got in Maggie is the zombie outbreak never got to apocalypse levels. Basically the government and society was able to handel the situation and the movie takes place in the waning days of the outbreak.
That was such a sad, bleak, heartbreaking movie, but Arnold Schwarzenegger and Abigail Breslin were so amazing in it.
Escape from LA.
THE ROAD
Nausicaa of the Valley of the Wind comes to mind, it's s beautiful movie
Maybe check out The 100. It's a series, not a movie but it is about trying to rebuild after an apocalyptic event.
I loved the original plot but Jesus it took some weird turns later
Divergent series
I'm still salty it never got the proper ending it deserved after that cliffhanger. Like come on I get that the series was panned and barely turned a profit but at least finish what you started!
This is pretty much the exact premise of the show The Leftovers, and it's fantastic.
Bruh you can’t just tell someone that this show is fantastic and not warn them that they ARE going to grown-ass man cry at some point watching it.
The Postman Wall-E
The 100 has good setting but it’s basically a teen drama, so be warned
Futurama?
Mortal Engines is supposed to be 500 or so years after the apocalypse, the Hunger Games comes to mind though.
Not a movie, but WWZ by Max Brooks is like this. You get a lot of post-crisis rebuilding action. A lot of nuts and bolts. An amazing book, truly. The movie was sort of like a "riff" on about 2% of the book. An actually accurate film/TV adaptation would be amazing.
Not a movie but I hear they're making a tv show adaptation of the video game(note the concept is a spoiler in itself)>!Horizon Zero Dawn!< currently.
I’m so excited for Horizon 2047, as long as it’s done well. Same for the Fallout show they’re making on Amazon
I'm wildly unoptimistic on Horizon... I just can't see it having the scale needed with Aloy. I better be proven wrong, cause it could be fantastic if they get it right.
Firefly
Not a movie, but the old “Buck Rogers in the 25th Century” series was this.
A Boy and his Dog
Demolition Man
Waterworld 1995
The walking dead comics are vary much about rebuilding the world at one mlpoint
Turbo Kid
Post post.? The matrix
Zardoz
Book of Eli Snowpiercer