(This meandering line of thought contains spoilers for the movies The Abyss (special edition), directed by James Cameron, and 2010: The year we make contact, novel by Arthur C. Clarke, and the graphic novels The Dark Knight Returns by Frank Miller and Watchmen by Alan Moore.)

I was born in 1987, so I don't remember the end of the cold war, and I have no idea what it felt like living in a world where there seemed a very real chance that two superpowers could spiral into a scenario wherein the world is destroyed (not to say this is no longer a possibility, but it’s been replaced my other doomsday scenarios). Just thinking about it seems more alien and science fictional than most science fiction I've read. Out of the thousands of novels, short stories, comics, and movies dedicated to describing an endgame to this scenario, very few offer any real hope, since most of them are post apocalyptic. If science fiction is any real gauge of a period’s zeitgeist, people seemed pretty sure that it would all end in fire.

The four titles I mentioned in the beginning, however, show a way out, but I hesitate to call them optimistic since the salvation of mankind in all four comes not from diplomacy or the victory of the human spirit agains petty rivalries but from the intervention of unfathomable alien powers. The only optimistic factor is the belief that these powers would care enough to save us.

For those who believe in synchromysticism, the simillarities between these four titles is worth checking out. All four are set against the backdrop of the cold war, with news reports continually showing a steady increase in hostilities and a progression towards a nuclear conflict. The main stories are at first tangental to this conflict, which is altered by the endgame revelations. Then something blows up, then something weird happens, and the world is saved.

I'm going list some more simillarities between the titles not really necessary to prove my point, but it's alright in that I don't really have a point to prove.

The Abyss and 2010 both revolve around a rescue operation that's not really a rescue operation. One in the depths of the sea, one in the depths of space. In The Abyss, a private deep sea mining operation is hired by the government to attempt to rescue the crew of a downed nuclear submarine, and gradually coming into contact with an advanced alien species that've been residing in an even deeper-sea tract for some time. The government nearly mucks it all up (helped by the plot-necessitated crazyness of one of the Navy SEALS overseeing the operation), but in the end the aliens save the world by nearly wiping out human civilization as a heavy-handed warning not to do the same thing, apparently because they can do it better than us. So, humanity is saved thanks to the enforcement of a new terror-balance, one we can't match, by a vastly superior race. Yay the human spirit.

In 2010, a joint Soviet-American expedition is sent to find out what happened to the Jupiter from 2010: a space oddyssey, and what that Monolith thing is all about. The government nearly mucks it up, but in the end the mysterious creators of the monolith turn Jupiter into a new sun (enter Wolfean new son/second coming theories) and its moons into habitable worlds as a warning, and humanity is saved because what is that thing.

Watchmen and The Dark Knight Returns, oft recognized as two of the greatest graphic novels of all time, were both published in 1986, with very simillar backdrops. Vigilantism has been outlawed, with one ridiculously gritty masked crusader(Rorschach for Watchmen, Batman for DKR) refusing to obey. The US has the upper hand in the cold war thanks to having a super-being on their side (Dr. Manhattan for Watchmen, Superman for DKR), but a Soviet invasion of a vague distant territory is about to plunge everything into nuclear hell. Both novels even have real-world republican presidents (Reagan and Nixon) who’ve altered the constitution to stay in office beyond the traditional two terms.

In Watchmen, the worlds smartest man has come up with a master plan: if the world thinks they're under attack by a race of eldricht horrors, they might be less keen on destroying each other first. As an unfortunate consequence, he'll have to kill most of the inhabitants of Manhattan. He manufactures said eldricht horror, unleashes it on Manhattan, killing millions, and humanity is saved because what is that thing and how can we kill it. The Soviet Union offers to help the US in its time of need.

In DKR there is no master plan, Superman being a puppet for the very agencies in charge of the world’s downward spiral. Still, he is the agent of change, steering a Soviet nuclear warhead into an uninhabited desert, with results still catastrophic but not totally so, as the EMP leaves the United States without electricity. The Soviets offer their aid, though here they seem to have the upper hand.

The interesting thing is the imposition of a secular-religious solution to what seemed an unsolvable puzzle (the only way to win is not to play, after all). Frank Millar and Arthur C. Clarke are both atheists, and while Moore famously worships a sock puppet, it is way of a complicated and ultimately materialistic theory of the supernatural. Yet all make use of overtly religious symbolism.

In DKR, Reagan, tongue in cheek, refers to Superman by words to the effect of ”We have God on our side, or at least the next best thing”, and he is indeed illustrated as an Old Testament angel, or a pre-monotheistic god, tearing through Soviet armies. Later, as he sacrifies himself by diverting the warhead, he expresses regret for the wildlife that will perish, asking mother earth to forgive humans their foolishness as the blast takes him, before ascendingto the heavens, desiccated and corpse-like, and absorbing the energy of the sun. New age sentiments nonwithstanding, the entire sequence is filled with parodically overt Christian symbolism.

2010’s religious overtones are perhaps more ambiguous, the famous Monoliths being akin o any number of sphinxes, oracles and burning bushes, and the revelation of the new sun I mentioned earlier (called Lucifer, no less). To twist Clarke’s famous quote, any sufficiently advanced aliens are indistinguishable from the divine, and the divine is in this case very much interventionist and anthropocentric.

As for Watchmen, though brimming with Egyptian artifacts, the prime mover is motivated more from a romantic view of Alexander the Great and Rameses the II, men, ostensibly, of reason, and the Atlantean societies they tried to impose on the world. The methods used for uniting the world, however, are tragically familliar; the threat of unfathomable peril and the glorious saviour, building the Utopia not on a bedrock of reason but of fear. In addition, Dr. Manhattan is the quintessential secular God, both in appearance and capability, though ultimately unwilling and unable to save the world from itself. Thus divinity fails and, suggests the last panel, religion as well, making Watchmen the most ambiguous of these stories.

Finally, the Abyss, though it is hard to say if any movie can hold a central philosophy after being put trough the trauma of rewrites, interference from producers and the imposition of directorial vision, has the most overtly religious overtones, with its Seraphic aliens dwelling in a city of light, threatening to exterminate mankind new flood but staying their hand as the main character, in the form of Richard Harris, sacrifices himself, descending down to the underworld to redeem the sins of mankind (disarming a nuclear bomb meant to destroy the aliens) and ascending as a saviour. When he asks the aliens why, their answer is simple; they did it for his capability for love.

Now then, the point which I may or may not have; four stories concerning a solution to the problem of the escalating arms race and increasingly likely chance of mutually assured destruction. One of them, perhaps, sees no hope at all, while three can only posit the unlikely event of more or less divine intervention. There is a subtext here beautiful but fatalistic, perhaps even nihilistic. Man’s positive traits are celebrated, yes, but in the end are not enough, except to stir the compassion of superior entities, who save us from ourselves like the unruly children we are. Amuing, then, that it was economics that finally ended the most dreadfull stalemate in the history of our species.


Of course, there could be objections to this conclusion?