Flash forward twenty years. A young couple is just getting to know each other and, as is part of normal mating procedures, they are discussing their favorite bits of pop culture, musical preferences and favorite books and important childhood games or puzzles or something. And movies, of course movies. “I remember this movie I saw when I was a kid. I’ve never met anyone else who has seen it. It was so weird!” she says. “There were like monkey pirates and some slutty teenage wooly mammoth and, I think, a creepy subplot with sirens? Like, icky fish things that turned into sexy versions of whoever was looking at them, even that evil monkey pirate? And the Earth was melting? And a big whale and a lot of violence and even some guinea pig things that were super into Braveheart? I have no idea if this movie even exists, really, but it also had a bunch of family-friendly messages that were way too on-the-nose. I don’t know, maybe it was like a special I saw on television? It was animated?” “No,” he says, “that was Ice Age: Continental Drift, that was a big studio release. It was, like, a franchise.” “No way,” she says. Yes way, fictional future girl. Yes in a big way.

What is Movie News After Dark? It is our nightly promise to keep you on the up-and-up in the world of movie news, interesting links, strange occurrences and developments in the world of Breaking Bad. It is also breaking new ground this evening by defying popular opinion on the new Batman movie and featuring stories about not one, but two pop stars! Tonight’s top story, a first look at pop star Rihanna in Battleship, making her big screen debut as a member of the Naval squad who happen upon some Transformers-esque alien tech in the middle of the ocean and are forced to battle it out via a decades-old board game. B2! Oh, you sunk my interest in her character.

Fox just gave us a reason to look forward to the end of the world in 2012.