“It is easier to imagine the end of the world,” lamented the philosopher Fredric Jameson, “than to imagine the end of capitalism”. The meaning he meant to convey is perhaps even more directly expressed in an 1994 essay collected in his The Seeds of Time: “It seems to be easier for us today to imagine the thoroughgoing deterioration of the earth and of nature than the breakdown of late capitalism.”

The climate movement, notwithstanding these observations, was once tearing its hair out at the absence of this existential threat from public discourse. The politicians were ignoring it, to the benefit of the all powerful oil industry. But the major cultural institutions - from Hollywood to the BBC - also seemed adverse to the topic. 

There was an overwhelming desire to see filmmakers, novelists, playwrights and newspaper columnists stoke the public imagination, and public indignation. This would in turn force the politicians to act. The environmentalists spoke in one breath of how the oldest story extant in our culture, the 3,500-year-old Epic of Gilgamesh, warned against the degradation of nature, and in the next argued that only by changing the narrative could we change the world.

Post-capitalist

This year, finally, there are signs that at least in some areas of Anglophile culture has responded to the crisis that engulfs us. There has been a veritable outbreak of films imagining apocalypse: some envision a hyper technological progression where the outlook for humans are bleak; others see medieval regression following social collapse, where the outlook is equally bleak. 

Nature is sometimes the cause of the collapse. Almost always, the collapse results in an epic struggle against nature for survival. People, other human beings, are often rendered part of nature again, as society gives way, and therefore also an existential threat. Nature is revealed as red in tooth and claw. These imaginings usually speak to Alfred Temmison and Thomas Hobbes. Life - except for the main characters - is "nasty, brutish, and short". 

The late Jameson would be disappointed. What all these stories have in common is that while humans are shown standing at the very edge of environmental calamity, of extinction, the capitalist system is seen as revving its engines until the very end. The Hobbesian justifications for capitalism seem also to be enduring. 

Here we review six releases showing in 2025 evidencing that the popular imagination is finally confronted by the reality of environmental collapse at precisely the same time as the possibility of preventing such an outcome, the potential for a post-capitalist world, remains very much outside the Overton window. Here we review Warfare (2025); Mountainhead (2025); The Last of Us (2025); 28 Years Later (2025); Mickey 17 (2025); The End (2024).

WAREFARE (2025)

The war film is the ultimate action movie. The protagonists achieve remarkable feats, against extreme circumstances, to the benefit of all. They might stop a nuclear bomb, or defeat the Nazi platoon, or save a damsel in distress.  Warfare from Alex Garland and Ray Mendoza is the antidote. This exercise in ultra-realism follows the attempt of a troop of US Navy Seals to leave a house and get into an armoured truck. 

This is a true story, as experienced by Ray Mendoza and told by the soldiers who served with him. It is distressing, engaging and challenging. It takes place in Baghdad during the Iraq war. It might seem out of place in a series of reviews about the coming armageddon. However, it serves as a reminder that for too many people, the armageddon started centuries, decades, and years ago. The war in Iraq, where the world’s most dangerous military killed a million people and tortured hundreds of thousands more, was the end of the world for the residents of Baghdad. 

Further, Warfare can be read as a prequel to Civil War. This is not, as far as I know, Garland’s intention. The first is almost a documentary, certainly a reconstruction of events, while the latter is more of a premonition of what is about to come. Civil War is set during the third term of a rogue American president. The genocide and sadism committed against the foe on the edges of empire has come to the imperial centre, Washington DC. 

Will Poulter plays Erik in Warfare. I don’t know what happened to him in real life. But Poulter looks remarkably like Jesse Plemons, who plays a militiaman in Civil War, almost certainly responsible for the massacre of the civilian population of a provincial town. The militiaman acts as a professionally trained soldier, and almost accidentally across the two films we can see how the shattering trauma of combat can be one cause of loyalty to an autocratic demigog. The films do not make this point, but if the world now seems like it is ending, that ending began with the industrial-scale wars waged since the birth of capitalism. 

MOUNTAINHEAD (2025)

Adrenaline and cortisol as entertainment. Jesse Armstrong delivers another essay on the vanity, venality and stupidity of the powerful. Like Civil War, Mountainhead is an ultra-realist projection into the very near future. Here, a small gang of tech bros come together for what should be an evening of poker, sliders and affectionate joshing. What we see is dissociation, paranoia and sociopathy. The main characters echo Elon Musk, Mark Zuckerberg, Bill Gates. The men stand together on the hill top, their current dollar wealth written on their chests with lipstick. The poorest has less than £1 billion which has earned the nickname “Soup” - for soup kitchen. 

The end of the world is teleported to us through the small screens and disinterested updates of our four friends. The wealthiest of the bros is present during the launch of a new set of AI tools that allow for the production of high rendition video content. The suite turbo charges fake news, and then serious conflicts of all kinds - nationalistic, chauvinistic and interfaith. 

The title Mountainhead is taken from the name of Soup’s freshly completed glass and stone mansion, where all the action takes place. Soup explains that it is a reference to The Fountainhead, the novel by Ayn Rand, the sociopath philosopher whose work remains a major influence on the madmen of Wall Street, and Silicon Valley, and whose life’s work can justifiably be reduced to “greed is good”. 

Armstong is of course the genius behind the blockbuster Succession. The five series study of a media mogul and his unsuccessful attempt to prepare his children for succession is very much the prequel to Mountainhead, the same dark humour, penetrating scrutiny and attempt to empathically discern the behaviour of the ultra-rich is present again. However, the standalone feature film does away with the rapid fire dry wit of Succession. Armstrong seems to be saying that the wealthy are in fact less self aware, less interesting, than he had previously had us believe. We’re all going to die, not because our overlords were mighty and brilliant, but because they were shallow little men more enslaved by capital than they could possibly understand.

THE LAST OF US, SEASON TWO (2025)

The zombie apocalypse of The Last of Us is presented as a direct result of climate breakdown. This is not meant to be an actual prediction of the future we face, but nonetheless the story has some scientific basis.

The fungus Ophiocordyceps unilateralis does infect ants, and does hack their neural structures to take over their behaviour. It is also true that fungi cannot currently infect warm blooded animals - this perhaps being the reason warm blooded animals evolved in the first place. And it is also true that as fossil fuel emissions drive temperature increases, fungi are slowly adapting so they can survive warmer environments - including that of host organisms. 

The extrapolation is that the Ophiocordyceps unilateralis would take over humans, and turn them into speedy, ravaging zombies. It does also make sense that the magic mushroom would want to multiply, to extend its own environment, by causing humans to infect more humans. The premise of The Last of Us, then, is more scientifically literate than the proposed rage virus of 28 Days Later, though no more likely.

The story of The Last of Us is socially prescient. We see that as society breaks down, humans can no longer meet their most basic needs. In the United States, where there are actually more guns than people, this might very well result in more people being killed by people than the zombie predator. But the show, which is already slated for a third series, has much more to say than this.

The classic horror story has a protagonist, sometimes with allies, survive in a hostile environment through a superhuman level of self reliance and unbelievable luck. Ellie and Joal survive through mutual dependence. The first season shows that the patrician male needs the increasingly independent and sassy younger woman to survive. The second season advances the story by showing how communities - indeed a communist commune - are much more resilient than lone raiders. It shows how survivalism usually descends into murder, into vengeance, and death. 

The narrative is propelled forward as different characters choose between working collectively and taking revenge. We watch as they begin to realise that the heroes themselves in avenging their own losses are killing others, creating a spiral of violence. The more curious and empathic even begin to understand the motives and perspectives of the rapidly evolving Ophiocordyceps unilateralis.

28 YEARS LATER (2025)

“We—can—stick—out—'unger, thirst, an' weariness.” Trauma and grief, amnesia and nostalgia. The shattering 28 Days Later was released in 2002 in the immediate aftermath of 9/11, when passenger planes were flown into New York’s Twin Towers and the world’s remaining superpower was goaded into war first in Afghanistan and then in Iraq. The supposed threat of weapons of mass destruction. The fear of each other, of the Othered. The sequel, 28 Years Later, is released this month, just as the US pounded imaginary nuclear weapons facilities in Iran, risking a dissent into the last world war. 

The apocalyptic free-based-Zombie movie has been marketed with a chilling rendition of Boots by Rudyard Kipling (quoted above) and equally brings to mind Albert Einstein’s warning: “I know not with what weapons World War III will be fought, but World War IV will be fought with sticks and stones.” The release of 28 Years Later is of course a reminder that films that imagine the end of the world are not new in 2025, the claim here is that they are becoming more precinct, more fact than fiction. This film is a warning, as was the first. The warning is yet to be headed. It is a warning that needs repeating. 

Danny Boyle and Alex Garland shattered the conventions of the zombie genre by introducing the concept of the rage virus, where humans were not resurrected from the dead to shuffle across the landscape but were instead infected, turning into rapid and rapacious human-seeking predators. The film also shattered convention by being more self-conscious of its analogies. The rage virus begins in a lab, as humans perform tests on animals for military purposes. Money has no currency. 

The story also turns on the fact that in the moment of apocalypse we can expect the worst from people, and the best from people. The challenge is deciphering who will help, and who will deliberately hinder. This is what gives horror its power, and its pathos. The military are assumed to be our protectors, but of course history tells us that they are usually the tormentors. If civilization breaks down, how will soldiers treat civilians? The question follows Garland to his later films.  

Community

The distinction between the behaviour of the human and the infected-human begins to break down. We might need to find the rage inside of us, in order to protect ourselves from such threats. 28 Days Later is therefore a zombie film infected with some traditionally progressive concerns: animal welfare, distrust of state violence, the sexual predation of women. The opening film developed a cult fanbase. It seemed uncannily prescient with the outbreak of the covid virus, with its portents of social collapse and apocalypse. 

The first sequel, 28 Weeks Later, has been somewhat buried by Boyle and Garland, who were not involved in its making. Nonetheless, the weaker 28 Weeks Later film does sit neatly between the days and the years. 

The opposite of rage - love - leads the characters to put family first, taking risks and breaking rules that result in the escalation of violence and horror. Here, the military is the protector but again the distinction between human and infected breaks down with the adoption first of shoot to kill and then of the policy of scorched earth. 

How will humans adapt to the apocalypse? This is the preoccupation of 28 Years Later. Spike (Alfie Williams) was born more than a decade after the rage outbreak. His mother, Isla (Jodie Comer), is suffering night sweats and delusions as she battles a mystery illness. Jamie (Aaron Taylor-Johnson), his father, is keen for his son to take his literal rights of passage with a hunting trip on the mainland. 

The family are part of a small community clinging to survival on Lindisfarne in the North West. The film somewhat rigidly follows the archetypal hero’s journey, as described by Joseph Conrad, with the call to adventure, the transgression of the home boundary, the confrontation with the feared adversary, and even the return home with treasure and the feeling of alienation the hero then feels among his former community. 

Rehearsals

The very fact that an apocalyptic event has taken place, and the benefits of modern society have been permanently lost serves as a warning about climate breakdown, and about war. Indeed, this film equally serves as a prequel to the film Threads, released by the BBC in 1984. A nuclear bomb is dropped on Sheffield, and the story ends with a horrifying childbirth scene. The film inoculated millions of British youngsters against the delusions of a ‘nuclear deterrence’. 

This zombie horror also serves as a sequel to The End We Start From (2023). In this realist film, Jodie Comer plays Woman, a protagonist so universal that she does not need a name, who has to contend with some heavy rain, which becomes a flood, which becomes a climate catastrophe, which becomes the end of civilization, at least for England. 

This film is one of the few apocalyptic dramas that actually imagines what the end will look like. People die for very practical, almost mundane reasons. Finding food and water is a preoccupation. 

In The End We Start From we see some people go full survivalist. Neighbour turns on neighbour. But in this rendition of apocalypse it is the reconstruction of institutions, of community, that ensures survival. It is not a coincidence that the film is directed by a woman (Mahalia Belo), written by a woman (Alice Birch) and and based on a novel by a woman (Megan Hunter). Woman briefly finds refuge on an island off the coast of Scotland, an island that could very well over the years become Spike’s island. 

28 Years Later is unusual in being set so long after the initiating catastrophe. It is a study of time, and of survival. There is something darkly quaint about Hope Island (filmed at Lindisfarne, Northumbria), the community hall filled to the girders with storytelling, song, and stolen kisses. The rage infection is confined to Britain. Here capitalism gives way, community and barter takes its place. We are cleverly reminded, though, that capitalism continues everywhere else. 

There are echoes in 28 Years Later of the successful survivors’ commune in The Last of Us where the character Maria from the series states, “This is a commune. We’re communists.” Garland confirms the story from the game influenced him to some extent. Here in England the community holds together, but appears to have no shared purpose, other than clinging on.

Humanitarianism

The future is firmly in the past, and they default to nostalgia and nationalism to develop a collective identity. They survive on poaching and patriarchy. We are lost at sea, but there is no horizon. The message is stark. Climate breakdown and nuclear war promise to degrade human existence not by decades, but by centuries. 

The parallels with reality are left unstated. Nonetheless, the insular island life clearly echoes the fantasy post-Brexit Britain. It echoes Adam Curtis’s latest documentarian masterpiece, Shifty (2025), which is also about political nostalgia and the loss of any progressive vision for the future. 

There is no new culture, only rehearsals and half-memories of all that has been lost. Shakespeare imagined Henry V rallying his troops. “From this day to the ending of the world / But we in it shall be rememberèd / We few, we happy few, we band of brothers.” 

Zombie films speak to moral panic, and the threat of the horde or the mass. People go mad or are driven mad. Everyone is out for themselves. The heroes of the story are forced to become hyper self-reliant. 28 Years Later is different. The first film - there are three planned - shows how survival requires community. 

The rage-infected lose all sense of their humanity, and the humanity of others. Rage as emotion is part of the human condition, and human history is replete with examples of its destructive effects. But rage should not determine our future. Dr Ian Kelson is the most articulate in extending humanitarianism to the infected.

MICKEY 17 (2025)

Witty Mickey 17 is a superb sci-fi comedy. We don’t actually get to learn much about the fate of planet Earth, so this does obviously fit within the genre of apocalypse. However, the eponymous protagonist Mickey is living through dystopia as only a capitalist system could produce.

He is in fact the 16th clone of the original worker, Mickey, and he is trapped in a deadly, if also dead boring, job out on the colonised planet of Niflheim (not to be confused with nihilism). Bong Joon Ho’s conceit is simple, and insightful.

Mickey is an Expendable, literally. The company that has employed him has worked out how to reproduce workers - ‘printing’ a clone and then copying across his memories. The planet seems to be pretty sterile, the workplace is a dank and cramped steampunk factory ship, and work is inevitably deadly. Mickey’s reincarnation has by now become so normalised the alienated technicians barely pay attention. 

The film, then, is a thinly veiled attack on capitalism, perhaps made safer as it lampoons a future iteration of our own political economy. This future casting provides an unambiguous argument about our collective past. Mickey’s current assignment is to capture a Creeper, a species native to Niflheim. Mickey, as the person on the shop floor, quickly learns that the Creepers are sentient, empathic, and friendly - if also fierce. The reference to Native Americans, and by extension the subjects of settler colonialism around the world, is strapped on the storyline like a remote controlled bomb. 

This film does provide a fairytale ending, reminiscent of a Wes Anderson film. A revolution, of a kind, takes place. Democracy triumphs. The cloning device is destroyed. But even in deep space, in the midst of time, through this deeply well meaning imagination, we cannot imagine the end of capitalism itself. It will mutate. We will die. 

THE END (2024)

Denial and claustrophobia: the musical. I did not enjoy the 149 minutes I spent in front of the smallest screen of the Everyman Cinema in Crystal Palace with Michael Shannon, Tilda Swinton, George MacKay and Moses Ingram. It was like being stuck spending Christmas with the racist inlaws - for 25 years. 

The End really is a musical, and it poses the question of whether the family we are forced to spend time with are actually breaking into song: I think they are. It is interminable, suffocating and uniquely unsatisfying. It left some reviewers cold. But for me, this was the whole point.

Cinema is not always meant to be a pleasurable experience, it should sometimes be challenging and discomforting. The film asks us to contemplate the fate of the last living family, surviving in a bunker deep in a disused salt mine as an unspecified environmental catastrophe has rendered our planet uninhabitable for humans. And it is not played for laughs. 

Michael Shannon is Father, an energy company executive. He thinks he is helping Son (George MacKay) write his book. Instead, of course, the ‘victor’ and last patriarch is drafting the final chapter of human history. The book is, then, a turgid sandwich of denial, vaingloriousness and self justification. The joke - if you can accept it as that - is that the titans of capitalist industry will never accept their responsibility for environmental harm even at the very end, when the results of this insane experiment are in, and all those who participated in it are dead.

Swinton superbly stages the pain of acquiescing to the man of the house, and the self-preserving denial which sits alongside it. The End is theatrical, but I like to read it too as ultra-realist. I like to sit and contemplate a film at the end, as the audience empties out and the titles roll reflected on the lens. Here, though, the whole audience sat motionless and silent. 

They were not delighted by what they had just seen, they were unsettled. Joshua Oppenheimer’s provocation is perfect. It will be roundly ignored by oil executives everywhere - the very people who would have the most to learn from sitting in a cinema and watching it through to the end.

Coda

Escalation and deescalation. We live in a very dangerous world. The decision by Donald Trump to bomb nuclear facilities in Iran is reckless in the extreme. The ongoing genocide perpetrated by the Israeli state against a population of two million people trapped inside a barbed wire cage is more dystopian than any filmmakers fantasy. 

The immediate threat of war again deflects attention and effort away from the climate emergency, where the window of opportunity to prevent a dystopian future for all of humanity may have already closed.

Climate justice and social justice activists have long called for the creative industries to raise awareness of the real threats we face. The hope is that the stories we tell can change the approaches we take, whether in individual acts or as sweeping policy shifts such as adopting a Green New Deal. 

But, as the meme goes, if history has taught us anything it is that history has taught us nothing. We watch the imaginary hell unfold as a distraction from the real horror that surrounds us. 

Dr Ian Kelson repeats the refrain Memento mori: remember we must die. We should accept this fate. But he also adds, Memento amare: remember we must love. The culture industry of the Anglosphere seems to be evolving, learning a new lesson. As individuals, we have no power. Collectively, we have the power to change the world. 

This Author

Brendan Montague is a member of the editorial team at The Ecologist.