Our most superficially hopeless genre, the post-apocalyptic thriller, is itself a collection of optimistic fantasies. Logan looks ahead to a new generation of young mutants even after his clone murdered Professor X. Looking back at the top twenty movies in each of the past ten years, it's hard to find any hopelessness at all.
We know in advance: hope will topple Thanos.Įven at our most cynical, hope is a constant. Hope pushes back death and invigorates whole armies. Perseverance, built of hope, keeps Mark Watney alive on Mars in The Martian. In Star Wars: The Last Jedi, the Resistance lives on, even after almost total defeat, thanks to the hope Luke Skywalker unleashes with his final sacrifice, spawning young rebels across the galaxy (In Rogue One, the last word spoken is 'Hope'). Against insurmountable odds, cinematic heroes triumph because they have hope. But more impressive, from a modern moviegoer's perspective, than the specifics of how Planet of the Apes ends-with astronaut Colonel Taylor (Charlton Heston) slamming his fists into the sand, shrieking, 'You maniacs! You blew it up! Damn you! Goddamn you all to hell!'-is its hopelessness, a quality since scrubbed from our pop art. And since it's now been 50 years since the April 1968 wide release of the original Planet of the Apes, it's a spoiler that can be discussed openly.
