Skies ashen with doom. Jagged, broken-topped skyscrapers like ruined wedding cakes. Lines of deserted, dust-gathering cars stuck in eternal gridlock. An empty pram pushed along by an uncaring wind. And of course a newspaper – every apocalypse film should have one – blowing down Main Street and mourning or mocking a world where the utterances of The New York Times, San Francisco Chronicle or (dare we think it?) the FT no longer matter.

The world has ended so often in movies that one is amazed there is anything left. By the gospels according to I Am Legend, Planet of the Apes, Mad Max, On the Beach or now Pixar’s Wall.E, we should be a blitzed planet, putrefying or petrifying into eternity. Post-apocalypse movies are one more proof, with horror films and murder thrillers, that bad news is good news at the box office. How we love to be appalled. End-of-the-world cinema is Schadenfreude on a stick: give it to us on the right day and we’ll lick it, lovingly, all the way to meltdown.