A few months back while watching the animated sci-fi feature "9" (not to be confused with the musical "Nine" or the alien apartheid film "District 9") I was struck by the thought that future historians will speculate that we, or at least the filmmakers of our time, had an enormous global death wish.

Whether by plague ("Zombieland"), Mayan prophecy ("2012"), or nuclear war ("The Road"), the end of the world scenario has literally forced us to embrace apocalypse now.

It may be because, as hard as things have been financially lately with layoffs and businesses closing, we take some comfort in seeing things could be colossally worse. Struggling to get back on one's feet can be difficult, but doing so in the face of the complete breakdown of society makes for a cinematic redefinition of character - one that's irresistible for a filmmaker with a large budget.

Tireless CGI constructs a world just for the sake of destroying it. Yet in the aftermath, lying somewhere in the rubble, is always a smidgeon of hope. Survivors who have struggled through the worst of odds are not just our multiplex heroes. They are us, dealing with daily indignities with no choice but to forge onward.

With movie landscapes full of the debris from mass destruction or societal collapse replacing shiny computerized cities with conveyor belts and flying cars, Yogi Berra's line "The future isn't what it used to be" is more appropriate now than ever before. These movies function as cautionary tales as well as entertainment with an emphasis on how we are squandering our resources, abusing our privilege on this planet to the point where we can't ignore it anymore. They're telling us that we will bring upon our own demise.

Set on a not too distant moon in 2154 "Avatar" has its protagonist say of his home planet Earth: "There's no green there; they killed their mother". That's a disturbing prediction but one that makes for a wake-up call. That message can get lost amid the special effects, but the fact that it's there is encouraging.

So this spate of end of the world movies is obviously not of the "feel good" ilk, but in their beneath-the-despondent surface way they are actually life affirming.

We learn most who we are through hard times. We go to the movies for a window into another world, one we'd like to think we could conquer if we were in the shoes of the lead characters. That these worlds have become exceedingly more treacherous speaks volumes of how we can and will be able to face down whatever obstacle.

Over 40 years ago Stanley Kubrick's classic cold-war farce "Dr. Strangelove" ended with a montage of atom bomb detonations. The world ended in black and white right before our eyes, but as musical accompaniment for these images there was Vera Lynn singing "We'll Meet Again" as an ironic counterpoint. This is the bottom line - no matter how bad things get, life goes on.

The post apocalyptic worlds we visit on the silver screen provide cautious commentary on our present place in reality and show us that we can defy the doom.