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HUMANS, THE MOVIE REVIEW

Sunday July 10, 2016

 

Oh my, how will it end?

Did we evolve to breathe chemicals, drink sewage – or die-off, kvetching oozing corpses washing ashore as credits roll?

Bad. Far worse. Some third world slums – parts of our own backyard. We make it. Our children will. Grandchildren too. Beyond that, can we predict virtue and value of earth-life a century hence?

What poses greatest risk – climate, predators, beliefs, politics or hot summer rage?

We’ve seen evil empires. Dynasties thrive, then die. Ancient history. Seen armies, warfare, famine and genocides – we’ve seen disease and natural disasters of every kind. Seen calamitous events. And we saw Ishtar. Twice.

Still, despite all these atrocities and accidents, we’re still here, swimming against currents of evils – or simply to wash up, flipping on the sand and gasping our last?

Space travelers visit somewhere in the future – transported to earth (or were they here all along?), what do they find? Adventurers confront surviving variation/mutations of ancient human earthlings – they sift through fossil records of this period, evidence we lasted. Perhaps. Or did humans die off, just another species gone … like coral or polar bears, passenger pigeons or mastodons – defied all lessons, ignored known risks and trusted their leaders?

Will those humans survive? Yes, we’ll make it through summer of ’16, but will there be a happy ending? Or an enormous fireball metaphor at the end, leaving us just a handful of words – or a phrase we know will repeat in next summer’s sequel – when hero and villain emerge as survivors from the ashes of wasteland to again tussle over our very survival.

What good is leadership when all the followers vanish? 

written / published from Calgary, AB

morning walk with Gusta:  12C/54F, steady breeze, cyclists roaring by – Gusta chased a rabbit and the rabbit looked frightened for 5 seconds – then laughed all the way down the street – sunny, cool, everything damp and green from last night’s thundershowers … 


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