Ummm....Yeah. Thundarr the Barbarian was the coolest thing I had ever seen as a child and boy was I disappointed in 1994 when the moon didn't split in two.

And it wasn't Wind in The Happening. It was the plants.

Great list.

I'm surprised Tank Girl isn't up there. Wasn't that apocolypse due to running out of usable water?

Hate to show off my nerdery this early in the morning, but the first adaptation of I Am Legend was The Last Man On Earth, starring Vincent Price, not The Omega Man.

Shame on you for putting Thundarr on this list. In a world full of crappy cartoons with annoying teen side kicks Thundarr was a buckett of awesomeness. I still catch the occasional episode on Boomerang. Shame on you indeed.

Yeah, you're going to get comments on Thundarr.

Besides, we all know the world's really going to end when God just decides to stamp 'FAIL' on Australia.

Man, I'm all for playing the devil's advocate, but for fuck's sake, Battlefield Earth sucks so bad.....

It's so awful, MST3K can't even make fun of it!

It's so bad, Barry Pepper was embarressed to be in it!

It's so terrible, it killed the career of John Travolta again, and Quentin Tarantino can't even bring it back to life this time!

Really, we should just have a top ten list of the worst inconsistencies in that movie! There are so many to choose from!

My brother in law gave me a Battlefield Earth poster for Christmas one year. It's signed by Travolta! But it's Battlefield Earth. So I hide it in the closet.

@DJ Maniak

Never be afraid to fly your colors, homie.

And, by the way, you're right.

I liked Reign of Fire.

Thundarr was awesome. You take that back.

It was the final cartoon that ended an era of awesome cartoons. After that, everything had a toy tie in, safety lessons and no one could get killed.

The Core is way, way worse than Battlefield Earth. Battlefield Earth is overacted and silly. The Core is offensively stupid. As in you will become a little bit dumber for having seen the movie. Nothing a university level physics-class won't fix, but still. The Core is the leading cause of creationism.

"2,000 years later the world emerges as a crappy hybrid of Conan the Barbarian, Star Wars, Lord of the Rings"

That sounds awesome. I have to watch this now.

The Omega Man was the second adaption.

"The Last Man on Earth" w/ Vincent Price was the first.

Nice list.

Ugh, I remember Reign of Fire. Such an interesting concept... but horrible execution.

Did you really just dis Thundarr? First off, its a fraking CARTOON. Second, it's mega cool blending both elements of fantasy and sci fi. Oh, and it's a CARTOON.

You just went from hater to actual douchebag.

P.S. Good call on Travolta at #1.

I forgive you.

Hate to be nitpicky, but Omega Man was not the first film adaptation of I Am Legend. The Last Man on Earth (1964) came before it. I wouldn't have held you to it, except that it stars the awesome Vincent Price, and that is a tragic oversight!

I still can't believe that Forest Whitaker played in that big pile of shite..

I enjoy the hell out of "Reign of Fire". If the Earth is gonna go down, getting annihilated while fighting dragons is a good way to go.

I was a Thundarr fan from episode one. Ookla's so lovable. You've forced me to make a Princess Ariel costume.

Are you happy now?

I agree with everything else.

Reign of fire was good.
Thundarr was good.
Omega man not the first adaptation. I own all three!
And you left out the Day After Tomorrow where the global warming hoax destroys the planet.

@GUMBERCULES! Maybe MST3K can't make fun of BFE (since MST3K ended a year before BFE premiered), but Rifftrax did.

ditto on Thundarr -- it was fun.

But narrowing the Bad Apocolyseseses down to ten was an ambitious undertaking in the first place. What about The Day After Tomorrow. Or The Day After for that matter. Most all zombie movies. Night of the Comet, being a prime example.

Note on Reign of Fire: enjoyed the movie despite gaping holes in the premise. For example -- it's shown the dragons can be hurt by firearms... so how did they not get the hell killed out of them by hundreds of fighter jets? And why is *that* not the movie? Matthew Macahonahonahey shirtless we've all scene before -- I wanted to see some A-10's riddle dragons with depleted uranium rounds.

Was it Thundarr the Barbarian that had the shot of the guy's face switching to an evil face in the into? For some reason, that used to scare the shit out of me.

Also, how could you leave out The Day After Tomorrow or Waterworld where global flooding apparantly happens overnight.

The validity of the entire list is trashed by the ludicrous description of Thundar as "crappy."

Lords of Light! How can you possibly diss Thundarr?

One time I saw this dude talk the smack on Thundarr The Barbarian at GenCon. He was all, like, "Yeah, Thundarr was all retarded, and blah blah blah."

So he's, like, 45 squirm-inducing seconds into his aloof, pithy tirade when a buncha guys in full Klingon rig stalk up to him. They're wearing STAFF passes. "Sir," they grunted, "Give us a moment of your time." They kinda herded him away then.

Couple hours later, I see the Thundarr basher at a little indie company's booth, and there's a Klingon dude pokin' him in the back with a stick. And what's the dude doing?

He's running demos of Snorks: The Role-Playing Game.

No lie.

P.S.: The besterest apocalypse movie EVER in the history of pictures that move and have Mare Winningham in them is Miracle Mile.

The paragraph about The Core made me laugh out loud at work. I'm surprised that the producers didn't green light a music video with whatever popular band was on the soundtrack rocking out at the core of the Earth. Also, South Park's spoofing of The Core in "Die Hippie, Die" was classic.

Before I knew what frauds Scientology and L Ron Hubbard were, I read and LOVED Battlefield Earth. Awesome book. When I heard they were making a movie, I got so excited I soiled myself. Going against my usual practice of being a late adopter, I skipped work to see the first showing the first day it was out. During said showing I soiled myself again, but for different reasons. Before my eyes I saw the story I had grown up with and loved completely shat, whizzed, and vomited upon. I've never forgiven Travolta for that.

Thundarr the Barbarian was a cool-ass cartoon! I loved watching it on Saturday mornings. What is cooler than the moon ripping in half I ask you???

@MattK

I know what I'm looking up when I get home.....

@Frode

The Core, to me, at least has some level of entertainment. Despite the awful writing, Aaron Eckhart can deliver that absolutely garbage script with skill. Truely, it is a testament to his ability as an actor. Anyone can sound like a hero when they play Capt. John Miller in Saving Private Ryan, but try to put that level of emotion and sympathy to a character in The Core!

Next time you watch it, just pretend it's taking place on an alternate Earth in an alternate universe where all the laws of science and physics that we know today don't exist, and you might just enjoy it. Battlefield Earth, however, is retarded in every way, shape, and form.

Let's look at it this way: Aliens were on their way to Earth to help us build a new society and travel to the far reaches of space. They've been monitoring us for years, and believe we are ready for the next step.

Then they see Battlefield Earth.

They not only turn around, they quarantine our planet, for fear that the black hole of bad cinema may actually create entire sectors of space completely devoid of any kind of culture. Humans are considered "cosmic lepers." Our probes never detect any other life in the universe, because they hide from us out of fear.

THAT'S how bad that movie was.

Reign of Fire was plenty of fun, although, yeah, the high concept behind the movie wasn't quite delivered.

Still, it wasn't taking itself seriously at all - I mean, c'mon, they were doing shit like turning Star Wars into the oral history of the remaining people. When you're pulling shit like that, you're having fun with the idea.

(Oh, and to whomever mentioned it: the dragons weren't really SEEN for a long time, if memory serves, and by the time anyone figured it out it was too late. They did a really good job with all the backstory material, come to think of it.)

I can not believe you would diss Thundarr. This makes me sad. I like this website. Why have you done me wrong?

Wow, you missed the biggest one of all: Zombie Apocolypse. Let's be realistic, the shambling undead who die by brain popping aren't taking over your neighborhood, let alone the world. Even those 28 Days infected/zombies can't wage a long term war of attrition. Now if we're talking Return of the Living Dead zombie apocolypse, suddenly we have a very probable apocolypse. Seriosuly, you can't kill them, they run, and they think. Oh, and if you cremate them, the toxic gas turns everyone still alive into zombies or raised uninfected dead... Now THAT'S an apocolypse.

I wonder why the Mad Max movies weren't on here too. Plus Red Dawn. Plus that horrible modern remake of the Time Machine. Plus Terminator (killer robots take over the world). So many dumb apocolypses.

If "The Core" made this list, then I think it should include "Armageddon" and "Deep Impact" (which to me are the same movie). Although I do agree with the pick for number one. Death by Travolta. Horrible.

#8- Great to see that a Volkswagen Beetle has survived TWO THOUSAND YEARS without so much as the paint chipping.

#4- HOW DO YOU MESS UP A CONCEPT LIKE THAT?!

@Halfazedninja
In the Tank Girl movie, I believe the apocalypse was caused by a meteor strike, water is just a sparse resource. It's kind of stupid though, that they had to make America a desert rather than set it in Australia (without an apocalypse IIRC) like the comic.

"During said showing I soiled myself again, but for different reasons. "

Ha. In those days, when I was younger and stupider, I actually went to see that in the theater. I'm much wiser now.

10.5 was awesome made for TV fun. My favorite part was imagining Barbara Streisand and all of her self-righteous libtard friends wailing as they plummeted into the Pacific, wondering how Mother Gaia could have betrayed them.

I have to add my voice to those that enjoyed Reign of Fire. Yes it was no Citizen Kane, but it was a fun movie with a cool concept (dragons living near the core of the earth because of the heat, they are unearthed accidentally through drilling- no spoiler this is in the first 10 minutes of the movie) and it seemed like the actors were having fun making it.

Ditto on Thundarr. You must atone for this sin.

I have the box set and I'm watching it tonight and throwing a hex on you.

@LAY
Night of the Comet is awesome. One of my favorite 80's movies.
Thundarr was good because it was the only decent thing to EVER come out of Hanna-Barbera. The only worse animation company was Nelvana who did the Droids and Ewok cartoons.

Say what you will about Reign of Fire...But dragons are about the best apocalypse possible. That's how I'd want to go out.

I expected KNOWING to be there, in fact I assumed it was the rationale for the rest of the list.

REIGN OF FIRE, sorry, I refuse to believe that a creature that could be light enough to fly would be unaffected by .50 machine guns. And they'd have a mother of a heat signature...a few heat-seeking missiles...human race wins.

nice to see battlefield earth getting on a list it deserves to be one but thundar would have put it on a different list and robot holocaust would have been higher and omega man would have made the top five. otherwise nice list

I can agree with you in that Thundarr's treatment of the apocalypse was silly, but the show was far from crappy.

I mean for chrissakes,this site drools over He-Man's dutchboy haircut and furry undies 8 days a week, but Thundarr is a crappy sci-fi/fantasy hybrid?

You guys seriously prefer Orko over Ookla? WTF?????

You know what always bugged me about Tank Girl (the movie)?

There's no water, right? I mean, it's very scarce.

So how in the hell does Rebecca have a WHOLE CASE of lager in her tank at the end of the movie? You know, the main ingredient in beer is WATER.

They act like beer is made from something other than water, as it's sort of hanging around, ready to quench thirst and be wet, while everyone is is fighting over a few drops of H2O.

You forgot the mutant chronicles. In the begining those things are invincible. Half hour later they retcon it and say you can shoot em up. Then later its cool to cut em up with swords. After they almost take over the earth they get beat by thomas jane stabbing hellboy in the head with something. Dumbest apocolypse movie I've seen. I lost three hours of my life that sci-fi owes me. I want them back. I coulda played shining force, prolly should have.

In Beneath the Planet of the Apes, the explanation for the ability to blow up the planet with the doomsday bomb is that the it would cause a chain reaction in an already unstable atmosphere (due to the previous nuclear war.

Why would a doomsday bomb be created? Mutual Assured Destruction (MAD). That is what kept the U.S. and Russia from blowing each other up during the Cold War. The threat that if you lob bombs at us, we'll retaliate by lobbing bombs at you, insuring that both sides would lose. It's called detente.

@Greg: Hiding a poster of John Travolta in the closet.

What you did there...I see it.

Another one here in the Thundarr camp.

So TP, how about doing a Top 10 of "Coolest Things about Thundarr"?

@MattK

I loved the rifftrax for battlefield earth so much. In general I love most of their work, but I think battlefield is one of the absolute best they've ever done. It just has that perfect blend of stupidity and pauses amid an absurd movie that allows for perfect riffing.

Thundarr was great and you should make a list to make up for it as Zimon66 mentioned. And Dark Reign was great.
atone atone

I can't wait to see the list of top apocalyptic scenarios narrowly avoided; including "Cobra-La seeds the shit out of the world, Retconns the everloving fuck out of Cobra Commander." and "Tim Curry dehorns unicorn; world plunged into darkness as rainbow power is forever sapped".

Reign of Fire was good.
But no mention of any of the made for tv movies that involved an asteroid, or aliens taking over the human populace via rocks. that's right rocks.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Invasion_%281997_film%29

You might have lost some nerd credit for dissing Thundarr.

The worst thing about Battlefield Earth was that is butchered a decent (as I recall, been several years since I read it)action/SF book. Of course, deciding to turn a 1,000+ page book into a 2 hour movie was doomed no matter who got their hands on it. Try that with LOTR sometime and see how many Oscars it gets...

I also liked Reign of Fire. 100% ridiculous but I never thought it took itself seriously. McConahey (however it's spelled) had to be drunk as hell for most of that film and, as someone already mentioned, they use SW as gospel! Hilarious!

And calling The Core 'stupid' is like getting mad at an egg because it came out of a chicken. Of course it's stupider than hell - that's why it's so fun! Plus Delroy Lindo makes anything better.

How "Anything by Michael Bay" isn't on this list beats me. Armageddon alone will strike you blind if you watch it too many times.

I also agree with the poster who mentioned "Knowing". That movie was ass on a stick.

How about the population of the world being wiped out by a gorilla in a diving helmet shooting his bubble-gun (Sorry, Ro-Man, using the "calcinator death ray") in Robot Monster?

Thundarr wasn't Hanna Barbara, it was Ruby-Spears, it predated MotU, had characters designed by Jack Kirby, and stands up as pretty decent show, for what it was. The Two-faced bad guy was called "Gemini", and there's an episode of the show where you can see a semi-destoyed poster for "Revenge of the Jedi". Yes, I lost interest in the theme of the list, I can't think of anything else right now than how cool it would be to have a 24" tall Jumbo Machinder(Shogun Warrior) Ookla the Mok- but you already ran this contest, I think.

How dare you sir! How dare you! Thundarr is a classic as I was Ookla for Halloween for two years straight as a kid. You sir are mistaken!!

Unicorn apocalypse! Awesome! The world needs some unicorn apocalypse. So wait a minute... you mean the king and the red bull in "The Last Unicorn" actually were the good guys. Damn, they saved us from them unicorns.

". McConahey (however it's spelled) had to be drunk as hell for most of that film"

As a friend said at the time: "It's like they tried to get Steve Austin, failed, and then just loaded up Matty with beer, showed him an Austin 3:16 DVD, and then told him to go to town."

Also, Bale's involvment makes this the first of his Batman vs series, such as:

Batman vs. Dragons
Batman vs. The Terminator
Batman vs. Wolverine (which is a good movie in its own right, come to think of it.)

What about everybody going blind from looking at some meteorites and then getting mullered by giant mutant plants?

Don't get me wrong, I love Day Of The Triffids but that's still a pretty silly way to go out.

...There's a major mistake here that needs to be corrected:

"In The Omega Man, the first second movie adaptation of the novel"

...both "first" and "second" need to be replaced with "best". Will Smith and Vincent Price can't hold a candle to Mr. NRA himself, Chuck Heston!

what, you mean there's no such thing as a runaway planet capable of passing between the earth and the moon unleashing cosmic destruction? no way!

(actually, as a kid, i totally believed it and slept with a hard grip of the covers over my head for a couple of weeks in fear of my cosmic destruction, no lie.)

"Battlefield: Earth" while easily one of the dumbest things ever written at least has a semi-plausible cause to the apocalypse, even if it's poorly-written and horribly acted.

"The Happening" on the other hand, has PLANTS EMITTING ...SOMETHING TO KILL OFF HUMANITY. Not only does it have that, but ALL plants, no matter the type somehow can release the SAME compound and are somehow able to communicate with each other in regard to when to stop!

I'm sorry, as much as "Battlefield: Earth" was utter shit, "The Happening" is MUCH worse.

Reign of Fire was the worst to me. The trailers looked so cool, 21st century men vs. DRAGONS!!!!!!!!! Then, oh yeah, we'll show you the beginning and then........... men living in the ruins like rats and everything sucks and there's no big giant battles or anything, just a bunch of bullshit that grinds to a suckie ending...

Add another vote for Knowing. "What happens when the numbers run out?" Uuhhh... aliens? Brilliant! Give this man several million dollars and a film crew!

Did anyone see a movie called Sunshine? The Sun runs out of fuel so we send a ship with a giant _fission_ bomb to start it back up. They actually make a point that it is fissionable material in the bomb. Nice.

@Hachiko: Don't forget Tome Cruise's ultra short man-skirt. He makes Zapp Brannigan look fully dressed.

One more thing; anytime someone mentions The Happening I think of the 1967 movie about the former mob guy kidnapped by hippies. Nobody is willing to pay ransom for him so he takes over the gang, blackmails his former associates for the money, then burns it all. Semi-dark 60s comedy > toxic plant barf

I loved how Thundarr Would shove Areal out of the way when it was time to fight, even if she had just the right magic spell to solve the particular problem. In our PC world that shit just won't fly... and for that I am eternaly greatfull.

Trash talking Thundarr? Shame on you!

@maachubo

Don't forget Tome Cruise's ultra short man-skirt. He makes Zapp Brannigan look fully dressed.

The horrors of Tom Cruise showing off his gams in the same manner that Woody Woodpecker used to pretend he had can-can girl legs was dwarfed by the horror of the kids from the Tin Drum running around as a near-nekkid elf.

However, thanks to my lust for Mia Sara, Tim Curry's performance of a lifetime, and an awesome score, Legend still lives up to it's name.

Oh man this list brings back awful memories of when I actually watched The Happening (in my defense, I only saw it with a friend to kill some time). One of the most painfully lame apocalyptic movies I've seen, but then I'm not an avid movie-goer and after seeing a glimpse of all the other movies on this list, that might not be saying much.

Only redeeming part for me was when that group meets a creepy old lady who asks them if they want some "lemon drink" before she tries to murder them in their sleep or something.

"Chance said:

they use SW as gospel! Hilarious!"

That scene was pure gold in all kinds of ways.

I have not actually seen "The Happening" or "The Core" yet, but it does sound like they would make for fine homemade MST3K action with some friends and copious amounts of alcohol!

Ok was The Core supposed to be a funny movie or a Serious one because every time I watch it it feels more like a comedy

Fun fact: The Earth's core has stoped spinning a few times in fact it just restarts

What about that upcoming 2012, where EVERYTHING happens all at once, on that signal day for no reason.

Just a reminder...Thundarr the Barbarian's apocalypse was based on the earlier science fiction novel [u]When Worlds Collide[/u], right down to the earth tides.

You shut your whore mouth about Thundarr!!!

I'm truly shocked that nobody mentioned "Plan 9 From Outer Space".

I've been watching that 10.5 apocalypse and it's a kinda good movie.

Really though, that Thundarr thing is very stupid. That show should've never existed.

since we're already THIS low, why not apocalypse by -wait for it- MAPLE SYRUP!!

"Look out Dick, it's Mrs. Buttersworth!!"
"Jane!! NOOOOOOO!!! WHY, you evil syrupy goodness?! WHYYYYYYYYYYYYYY?!!! -overdramatic sobbing-"

let's pitch this idea to fox! they'll do anything for TITSANDASS!!

Battlefield Earth is so spectacularly stupid that it's actually kind of awesome. Really it should have been advertised as a workplace comedy about sadistic aliens. Travolta's character is put through so much humiliation and corporate bullshit, it was almost like Office Space (no pun intended). If they'd cut out the humans entirely it would have been a brilliant comedy.

Hey!!! Thundarr was awesome!!!