2020 truly has been a year to forget for many reasons. And Hollywood havn’t failed to capitalize on this disaster of a year by dropping two unique movies by the end of the month, dissing this year – Death to 2020 and Yearly Departed. Death to 2020 is a mockumentary which is currently streaming on Netflix and Yearly Departed is an all-women eulogy-styled roast which is expected to drop tomorrow, on 30th December 2020 on Amazon Prime Video.
The Australian Bushfires which ended back in March destroyed 18.6 square hectares of land, over 5900 buildings and killed at least 400 people. Flash floods killed more than 150 people in Afghanistan during August. Hurricane Eta wreaked havoc in Central America killing at least 150 people in November. Other multitude of natural disasters such as cyclones, earthquakes, tsunamis, hurricanes, volcano eruption and more floods took hundreds of lives in India, Bangladesh, Philippines, Greece, Turkey, Haiti and Indonesia.
On 4th of August, a large amount of ammonium nitrate stored at the port of the capital city of Beirut, Lebanon, exploded, causing at least 204 deaths, 6,500 injuries, and USD 15 billion in property damage, and left an estimated 300,000 people homeless. And this is not even including the biggest disaster of the year – the coronavirus pandemic. The Covid-19 virus strain has affected over 81 million people on the planet and killed over 1.77 million of them. The pandemic is still on-going with cases of a different mutagen of the Covid-19 having recently surfaced to light.
With all of the disasters mentioned above happening in 2020 alone, taking advantage of this situation may be seen as inhumane by some, but we think that at a time when everything in the world is stacked against you (the collective you), injecting some humor will go a long way in getting people back on track and looking forward to a post pandemic world, eventually.
Even the Indian film industry has capitalized on the pandemic by making two brilliant feel-good anthologies – Putham Pudhu Kaalai and Unpaused. These two unique films have helped spread humanity and empathy among those forced to stay at home. Both films can be streamed on Amazon Prime Video.
However Michael Bay decided to create a disaster movie Songbird centered around the evolution of the Covid-19 virus into Covid-23. The film is set in 2024, where everyone is forced to stay at home, as the virus is extremely deadly and has destroyed multiple economies. The film’s concept itself is fine and eventually with time, we are sure the film could have done well. But currently with the pandemic is still ongoing and multiple people having lost their loved ones to this wretched virus, perhaps the film was too early to be made. Critics also panned the film, most not happy with the subject matter.