Environmental Film Review: “The 100”

The 100 is a science fiction and teen romance mashup series on Netflix that follows a similar plot to LOST and Eureka. A group of teenage delinquents find themselves banished to a post-apocalyptic Earth when their spaceship starts experiencing technical failures. To make matters worse, their parents arrive on the planet shortly after ready to take the reigns and enforce new rules because politics and more infrastructural issues finally made the spaceship unlivable.

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Image from The 100 on Netflix.

If The 100 is chock-full of teen angst and terrible plot structure, why do I watch it? No one knows. What I do know is that amidst the dystopian outlook on Earth’s future, there are also some really positive outcomes displayed in the television series. For example, there seems to be some kind of nuclear fallout from the war still left in the atmosphere that makes it uninhabitable for humans. However, some humans have a radioactive-resistant gene that allows them to roam Earth and disrupt the teenagers who just landed there. But here’s the main point: At least someone survives the end of the world, so that’s good, right?

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Image of Swiss Family Robinson movie set from Flickr.

I probably should have done the spoiler alert before this, but it’s too late now. Another interesting point of the series is the part where the teenage ex-convicts from the spaceship discover people living inside the mountain. The castaways are living in a secluded location because they don’t have radioactive-resistant DNA. Leaving their spacious, luxurious mountain home would lead to instant death. This is very interesting because they must have known they had a weaker DNA before the nuclear war began. Otherwise, it would sorta be too late to build a private self-sufficient facility inside of a mountain. Am I right or am I right?

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Cast of LOST by TV Series Finale.

The series doesn’t directly address how the war started or how the new arrivals are going to treat the Earth now that it’s livable again. In the series, war and human greed are credited for strange and lethal environmental conditions like acid fog and radioactive fallout. I think there was more potential to address scientific concerns here but again, this series took on a more adventurous tone than a serious one. It leaned more toward “LOST” than “Eureka” without the clout of either production.

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Dolphins from WallpaperUP.

If you’re going to bore me with the all-too-common universal demise theme then at least make it funny. Give me Swiss Family Robinson. Make it strangely enticing like Lord of the Flies. Let me escape from the drama of real life with a novel like The Music of Dolphins. The possibilities are endless.

What environmental films do you approve of? Sound off in the comments section!

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