I watched ‘Greenland’the other night. It’s an ‘end-of-the-world-by-asteroid’ disaster film, starring Gerard Butlerbeing all Gerard Butler-ish. It was a fun romp through every ‘disaster film’ trope/meme, with some above average CGI effects thrown in for good measure. I was entertained.

Some time later I was describing the movie to Mrs Widds which, even later still, triggered a bit of an epiphany.

Yes, my friends, I epiphed! … and what I epiphed about was this …

In all of these sorts of movies we see what I like to call the ‘noble sacrifice’. It’s where the, almost always, curmudgeonly elder, usually a disaffected parent of one of the estranged lead couple, dies. (who incidentally almost always have a child, who sports a vulnerability of some sort – in the case of ‘Greenland’ the kid is a diabetic)

The curmudgeonly elder who has survived for their requisite three-score-and-ten…