In case you haven’t been to the movies lately, the world is coming to an end. But does it end with a bang — or a monologue?
To find out, check out this nifty mash-up of the trailers for 2012, the apocalypse-now thriller set to open on Nov. 13, and Collapse, the sensational new documentary (here’s my original review) in which author/alarmist/visionary/conspiracy theorist Michael Ruppert spends 82 mesmerizing minutes talking about what he thinks is going to happen to the United States. (Warning: It’s not a pretty picture.)
These movies would seriously make a great double bill. The time could hardly be more right for them, since both films exploit vogue-ish variations on the imagination of disaster to tap into our most primal fears. So which end-of-the-world-as-we-know-it spectacle do you plan to see — 2012 or Collapse? The popcorn Armaggeddon or the eggheaded doomsday? Or both?
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A bluntly unassuming and rather plain-looking man in his late fifties, Ruppert sits in what looks like a brick bunker and talks about where he thinks the United States is now headed. It is not a pretty picture, but it’s not a naive one, either. Ruppert has more than a perception — he has a welter of facts, a restless and skeptical intelligence, a grasp of history that is professorial in the best sense, and an ability to slice and dice the platitudes of mainstream media. He’s like Noam Chomsky as a gripping pundit of doom. The drama of the movie, and it’s intense, is that even if you want to argue with him (and you will, since he’s predicting very bad things), you can’t dismiss what he’s saying. 
