We are rapidly running out of time and heroes

The Doomsday Clock is ticking. Ultimately, the end of the world could come not because of megalomaniacal villains but because we-literally-run out of world

- SANDIP ROY

The end of the world hangs heavy on our minds.

Or at least in the mind of the big summer movies.

In Oppenheimer, atomic bomb scientist Robert Oppenheimer channels the Bhagavad Gita as he proclaims, "I am become Death, the destroyer of worlds." In Indiana Jones And The Dial Of Destiny, a Nazi-turned-Nasa scientist wants to travel back in time using the Dial of Archimedes to change the outcome of World War II so that the Nazis can win.

In Mission Impossible-Dead Reckoning Part One, the evil genius mastermind is no longer human. The new Dark Lord is AI.

In the upcoming Expend4bles, the old grizzled gang of Sylvester Stallone and Jason Statham et al has to come back to save the world yet again because a gang of terrorists has seized a submarine with nuclear warheads.

Even Barbie cannot escape the feeling of impending doom.

"Do you guys ever think about dying?" asks Barbie as she twirls around pinkly in the new Barbie film with her fellow Barbie gal pals in Barbieland, where every day is the "best day ever".

The party around her screeches to a halt. She hurriedly course-corrects and explains she's just dying to dance, and everything returns to perky party-girl normal.

Barbie inadvertently makes more of a comment on us and our times than Oppenheimer. In a time of climate change, when ice caps melt at the poles and wildfires shut down chunks of Europe, we are still partying like it's 1989. When Weird Barbie asks Stereotypical Barbie to choose between her old party life (high heels) and the truth (Birkenstocks), she tries hurriedly to choose the high heels. Who could blame her? There's no party quite like a denial-of-reality party and we have all been there.