Apocalypse is an unique theme among all the film genre due to its practicality. Unlike other films, the theme of apocalypse relates to every individuals living on the earth, people may not care about it, but it does influence everyone,and everyone have responsibility of taking care the environment and society. Noticeably, there is a very common phenomenon : films dealing with apocalyptic themes seem always have a happy ending, especially in the hollywood genres. Newpert argues that “the ‘happy ending’ has become a cliché of the classical Hollywood cinema. It is often the goal of Hollywood stories to delight the spectator with the film’s conclusion, rewarding the worthy protagonist and satisfying the desires of the audience by reinstating a …show more content…
In detail, this essay will analyze the five main aspects with respect to the “happy ending” phenomenon: identity aspect, what-ifs aspect, entertainment aspect, warning aspect, and business aspect in three apocalyptic theme films including Knowing, Shaun of the Dead, Go Goa Gone, etc.
The first aspect is identity. It means the audiences are very likely to regard the protagonist in the film as representatives of themselves, especially those characters with a familiar figure that could be found in our daily life.
For example, the main character Shaun in Shaun of the Dead is a salesman who has no goals for his life, all he does is repeat the same thing every single day — working for a boring job, and even tripped at the same place on his way to the work. Meanwhile, he has terrible relationships with people in his life, such as his girlfriend Liz, his stepfather Philip, and his colleagues. Shaun represents a normal worker figure in the daily life, just like some audiences themselves. Virtually identical identity appear in the film Go Goa Gone, the three main male characters Hardick, Luv, and Bunny are also normal office worker, they do not satisfy with their life either. Hardick loses his job, Luv loses her girl friend, and Bunny is just a feminized coward