Life After People
Imagine all the people… suddenly gone
Tags: Misc DVD 2009 Categories: DVD/TV Reviews, Reviews
Posted by Daniel "monk" Pelfrey on Oct 16th, 2009
The History Channel has moved away from showing an endless array of World War II documentaries to a mixture of reality television and some historical edutainment documentaries. One of the more interesting turns the network has taken is with the scientific – looking at our universe, and with Life After People what the future history of our planet would look like.
Apparently it is a full series now, but originally it was a two hour (with commercials) documentary about what life on our planet would be like if humans were to suddenly vanish. Life After People doesn’t try to be preachy with question of why people are no longer around, but simply take a serious look at the answer to the fantastical question of what would happen to the planet if every person suddenly vanished.
The first segments are fairly predictable, looking at structural damage over time, such as bridges and skyscrapers as well as power plants and dams. It is when we get a modern day parallel to what the future might look like that things really et interesting – watch for Chernobyl to make an appearance, not as a case for the sudden disappearance of humankind, but what a city would look like years after being abandoned.
Through time-lapse photography and computer imagery the viewer is given a sense of what might happen to cities, towns, and famous landmarks. It’s an interesting examination of a possible future history that goes by perhaps a little too quickly. With the commercial breaks we get just over 90 minutes of actual program, and then because there were commercial breaks, there is a bit of repetition as the viewer is “caught up” with what was going on before the commercial break. This, and the overly dramatic narration winds up detracting from the program. A lot.
The Blu-ray comes with some additional scenes, but they seemed more like promotional bits and commercials for the program rather than a cohesive set of deleted scenes. A bit of editing actually putting together a true “behind the scenes” making of featurette would have been much better. Heck, editing the program itself to take out the recaps and adding in all the deleted stuff and maybe some additional footage (which you know exists) would have been even better still.
As it is, Life After People may not be perfect, but it is worth watching once if just to see what might happen if we were to all suddenly vanish. Rent this though, don’t buy it.
| What Works | Score |
|---|---|
| + Interesting examination of a complicated topic | 6.0 |
| What Doesn't | |
| - OVERLY DRAMATIC NARRATION!!!! - Are we really that stupid to require a summary after every commercial break? Especially on home video? | |
| Under the Shrink-wrap | |
| If you have ever found yourself idly wondering what would happen if we all disappeared, then by all means rent this. | |
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Tags: Misc DVD 2009
Posted by Daniel "monk" Pelfrey on Oct 16th, 2009 and is filed under DVD/TV Reviews, Reviews. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can skip to the end and leave a response. Pinging is currently not allowed.
