3 Short Paragraphs: The Lost Future

2010, Mikael Salomon (hard working TV director including Band of Brothers, The Andromeda Strain and Camelot) -- download

This is one of those situations where I find out about a movie on some blog that I have already forgotten about.  This was post-apocalypse (PA) fiction starring Sean Bean.  OK, not exactly starring Sean Bean but he has a strong role, and guess what, he is not killed horribly. I am rather fond of PA fiction, especially the less-than-stellar stuff like ... weird, I cannot think of anything that is anything other than less than stellar.  So, stuff like Max Max 2: The Road Warrior, The Postman, Steel Dawn and The Book of Eli.  They take place long after an apocalypse but not so long after that the remnants of the old world are forgotten about.  Also, some element of the plot focuses on how things were, such as finding old tech or exploring lost cities or living off the detritus.  Geez, if I was to make this genre one of my '31 Days of...', I would again spend a lot of time saying why some movies are on my list and some would not be.

Anywayz, a plague basically wiped out mankind and many of those left are mutated into horrible beastly killing machines.  The group of survivors we meet have been primitive for enough generations they don't have knowledge of the old world; basically they are pretty cave people.  They hide inside an area they deem safe from the plague and the mutants and know little of the outside world.  I think there must have been some climate shifts as well because they all sound British but its the warmest, prettiest PA Britain I have ever seen.  One hunting group strays too far and brings back the mutants and the plot establishes as the young & brave have to go on a quest to bring back a cure for their village before all become monsters in sub-par makeup.

It is a very basic plot, as my favourites of this genre often are, about travelling to the unknown land, surviving its dangers, locating the object of the quest and bringing it back to save the day.  Very fantasy-based, very Hero's Journey.  Sean Bean is here as a source of knowledge, a once-member of a group of skilled explorers and plague detectors, aware of the cure as well as a collector of the old world.  He directs the young ones, a mentor of sort, and draws out the needed heroism in them.  While very very TV low budget, as many of this genre are, it was still not as bad as most of the 80s & 90s examples.