ChristineCB

Yes, it's fiction. The film depicts malaise (or fatalism or acquiescence to the inevitable - whatever) and offers an interesting anti-malaise, anti-acquiescent ending to it.

Moor Larkin

I've noticed 'Threads' gets talked about a lot on classic TV forums, but I have to confess I don't remember it myself. I do recall quite a fuss when a Jason Robards TV series was broadcast on television. Googling, I note that it was a late entrant in the armageddon stakes and was American (boo!! hiss!!).



Nuclear Winter was it's big message I recall.
Having survived, we'd all have the pleasure of freezing to death....... brrrr

ChristineCB

Actually, I think THE DAY AFTER is mostly a week-or-two's length, I believe. Great little snippets in the first third of the film radio and TV clips getting people's concerns, then as the missiles launch and land for the middle-third, then the final third is watching the survivors decay. And the closing text that volunteers that an actual nuclear war will be much, much worse. ha ha

Steve Crook

It's either that or global warming. You can't win :

Steve

Steve Crook

I felt that the biggest problem with The Day After was that it was "too Hollywood" with a lot of very well known faces appearing in it, so it was obviously a drama.
Things like Threads or The War Game were more believable because of their documentary style and that they weren't full of internationally recognised "stars". Just normal people

Steve

MarkG

'The Day After' seemed quite tame in comparison to the British movies, though much of America would have been hardly affected while there would be few places in Britain outside the blast zone of a nuclear bomb and pretty much the whole country would have been covered with fallout from some bomb or other.

'Threads' also made a big thing out of 'Nuclear Winter', but that seems to have been pretty much debunked since. It would affect the climate, but nowhere near as bad as the original claims... so you might starve or die from radiation poisoning, but at least you wouldn't freeze to death in an Arctic summer.