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The Media Earth Movies

Should Climate Change Be Acknowledged In Movies? (latimes.com) 103

Posted by EditorDavid from the weather-or-not dept.
The Los Angeles Times publishes a weekly "Boiling Point" newsletter about climate change and energy issues. And this week they examined whether the scientific fact of a change climate is reflected in the mass media: For the second year running, nonprofit consulting firm Good Energy applied its Climate Reality Check to the actual Oscar-nominated films [which] tests whether a movie and its characters acknowledge global warming... Of last year's 13 Oscar-nominated films that met Good Energy's criteria (feature-length movies set in present-day or near-future Earth) three passed the test. This year, there were 10 eligible films. Only "The Wild Robot" passed...

Maybe a few years from now, studios will release a torrent of movies and shows reflecting the realities of a scary-but-still-salvageable world, helmed by producers and writers jolted into renewed awareness by the infernos. But for now, the picture is bleak. A peer-reviewed study slated for publication this month, led by Rice University English and environmental studies professor Matthew Schneider-Mayerson, analyzes climate change mentions in 250 of the most popular movies of the last decade. The authors found that just 12.8% of the films allude to global warming. Just 3.6% depict or mention the climate crisis in two or more scenes. "A lot of times, it's really being mentioned in passing," Schneider-Mayerson said...

[Good Energy Chief Executive Anna Jane Joyner] pointed to another analysis led by Schneider-Mayerson, which found that movies passing the Climate Reality Check and released in theaters earned 10% more at the box office, on average, than films failing the test. Netflix, meanwhile, says on its website that 80% of its customers "choose to watch at least one story on Netflix that helps them better understand climate issues or highlight hopeful solutions around sustainability...." [Netflix's "Sustainability Stories" collection includes Dr. Seuss' The Lorax, Chicken Run: Dawn of the Nugget, and Waterworld]

Sponsors are interested in selling audiences on climate-friendly products, too. I was sitting in a movie theater last weekend enjoying "Captain America: Brave New World" — the latest entry in Disney's Marvel Cinematic Universe — when, to my surprise, Sam Wilson (Anthony Mackie) got out of his SUV and pulled his iconic red-white-and-blue shield out of the front trunk. Yes, a front trunk, where an internal combustion engine would normally be. That meant Captain America was driving an electric vehicle, right? Indeed, he was. I did some research after I got home and learned that Wilson was driving a GMC Hummer EV, the result of a paid partnership between Marvel Studios and GMC parent company General Motors.
Ironically, the movie does not at any point acknowledge global warming, the article points out (adding "Also, SUVs kill more pedestrians and cyclists than smaller cars.")

"But the more movies and TV shows spotlight climate solutions — electric vehicles, solar panels, induction stoves — the more likely people are to support those solutions. For Hollywood, that's a step in the right direction."

Should Climate Change Be Acknowledged In Movies? More | Reply

Should Climate Change Be Acknowledged In Movies?

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  • It doesn't care whether you believe or acknowledge it, or not. It just is.

    • You're describing reality. Science is just our interpretation.

  • Easy question (Score:5, Insightful)

    by cmseagle ( 1195671 ) on Monday February 24, 2025 @07:44AM (#65190799)
    Is it relevant to the story the writers are trying to tell? Then sure. If not, then no.

    • Re: (Score:2)

      by Zocalo ( 252965 )
      This, or maybe something akin to passive product placement like driving past a solar/wind farm instead of rows of "nodding donkeys" extracting oil, but only if it's relevant to the plot and/or not entirely out of place. That said, totally random and irrelevant to the plot dialogues do work from time to time; the "Like a Virgin" discussion in "Reservoir Dogs", for instance, although somehow I doubt any discussion on rising sea levels or whatever would prompt as much after movie discussion as the real meanin

    • Re: (Score:2)

      by XXongo ( 3986865 )

      Is it relevant to the story the writers are trying to tell? Then sure. If not, then no.

      +1 insightful!

      If climate change has nothing to do with the movie, no, don't put it there?

    • Re: (Score:2, Insightful)

      by Anonymous Coward

      'Luke, I am your father. Also, isn't it getting a bit warm?"

  • They already did that (Score:5, Insightful)

    by stealth_finger ( 1809752 ) on Monday February 24, 2025 @07:50AM (#65190807)
    They made the day after tomorrow and a bunch of other disaster movies. What if climate change has no relevance or bearing on the plot at all, are they going to start having forced refences to it like some character arbitrarily saying they are gay/trans/whatever for no reason other than to tick a box?
  • When someone does a reboot movie of 'Seven Brides for Seven Brothers', or 'Oklahoma!', I expect that all of the horses will be replaced with Hummer EVs.

  • Marketing at its finest (Score:3, Informative)

    by DarkOx ( 621550 ) on Monday February 24, 2025 @07:56AM (#65190817) Journal

    A certain segment of the population just loves be told how virtuous they are. They are dopamine junkies. All the do seek pleasure and avoid pain.

    There is literally nothing easier they could do feel virtuous and validated by nodding their head in agreement with some techno-greenie-fascist messaging that enables to feel like they are part of some kind of group and their mere membership in the group is 'doing something'

       

    • Re: (Score:1, Insightful)

      by mjwx ( 966435 )

      A certain segment of the population just loves be told how virtuous they are. They are dopamine junkies. All the do seek pleasure and avoid pain.

      There is literally nothing easier they could do feel virtuous and validated by nodding their head in agreement with some techno-greenie-fascist messaging that enables to feel like they are part of some kind of group and their mere membership in the group is 'doing something'

      And these people are upset that reality keeps leaking into their orange fascist world. They've worked very hard to make sure that no trace of what is really going on penetrates their Fox News shield.

    • All we need is a climate emergency movie with a girlboss team of Zendaya, Amy Schumer, Rachel Zegler, and Brie Larson fighting against a treasonous corporate oligarch with suspiciously tangerine-colored skin, perhaps played by Jon Voight.

  • Hollywood doesn't dare (Score:5, Informative)

    by Artem S. Tashkinov ( 764309 ) on Monday February 24, 2025 @08:16AM (#65190865) Homepage

    They had a brilliant movie, Don't Look Up, four years ago.

    Half the people dismissed it as woke propaganda. The public doesn't care, doesn't want to see, "none of my business!"

  • The Water Knife (Score:4, Informative)

    by necro81 ( 917438 ) on Monday February 24, 2025 @08:16AM (#65190869) Journal
    I'd love to see a Hollywood treatment of Paulo Bacigalupi's The Water Knife [wikipedia.org]. It's climate change-adjacent, dealing with water scarcity in the American southwest, but the "things are fucked and it's our fault" theme is front and center, as are the clear delineations between who's scrambled into a survivable future and who's left behind to rot. (You see similar themes, for instance, in Mad Max, but this story is more grounded in the here and near future.) In my mind's eye, it's helmed by Denis Villeneuve, who I feel could be trusted with the source material, and done in a style similar to his Sicario [imdb.com].

    Ultimately, though, Hollywood is a business, and (most) projects only get greenlit when studios see there's money to be made. There's unfortunately not a lot of money to be made in polemics, no matter how entertaining.
  • Some group with a bug up its ass wants everyone else to have bugs in their asses and wants the entertainment industry to help jam them up there. That is BS. We should all just ignore them.
  • SO we update Its a wonderful life to have George complain about the weather and all the snow before throwing himself off the bridge. Maybe Luke Skwalker can complain about the barren land and the damage climate change has caused or Legally Blonde 3 Elle can sue companies for skin damage done by the sun? No climate change doesnt need added to moves where the climate change is not part of the movie.
  • my low wattage laptop or handheld for viewing pre-Code Hollywood or films on free servers on a cool/breezy hilltop without AC like our house

    Phuck some ignoramouses bugging us all the time with their particular political message, on our leisure time.
    Maybe this is controlled opposition for MAGA, just pissing people off with intrusive climate messaging.

    Reminds me of one Rice University prof in the early 1970s claiming there was a problem with a lack of new [strategic metal] mercury reserves being disco
  • What makes it a necessary part of the story? A key element? Chances are it's as relevant to the movie's story as dropping contend about Idaho on potatoes into Starship Troopers.

  • Seriously, do it. Cram in all the Forced References you want.

    Then, when you go broke because no one will pay to watch your climate change tripe, new creators will pop up to replace your now-dead, staid legacy business, and make films we want to watch.

    .

  • I can only speak for myself, but I personally don't care what universe a movie is in. i.e. I don't care what assumptions they're making it about the world. If you think the evil white man is keeping women down but you don't push that one me with far-fetched plot points, inappropriate dialogue and poor actor choices I may enjoy your movie just the same. It's not your beliefs that bother me, it's the poor quality of movies that attempt to force those beliefs into my brain with ham handed rants and blatant plo

    • I can only speak for myself, but I personally don't care what universe a movie is in. i.e. I don't care what assumptions they're making it about the world. If you think the evil white man is keeping women down but you don't push that one me with far-fetched plot points, inappropriate dialogue and poor actor choices I may enjoy your movie just the same. It's not your beliefs that bother me, it's the poor quality of movies that attempt to force those beliefs into my brain with ham handed rants and blatant plot devices that make the movie inconsistent or unbelievable for its universe. Take The Day After Tomorrow. It's set in a world where we're all gonna die because climate. I enjoyed the movie despite disagreeing with its premise and despite the laughable physics because it was consistent. There may even have been a rant or two about the climate in there, it's fine because it fit the movie.

      Good post.

      I was on a jetboat ferry from Naples to Key West when they were playing that movie. I was laughing so hard and often that the wife had to elbow me to quiet down. But yes, it was about climate. So while having sketchy physics, and that last scene where astronauts revel how clear the atmosphere while not even thinking about the billions dead took me from laughing to WTF. Wife told me very subtly maybe I could get a short nap in before we got to Key West.

      Take those same rants and shoehorn them into the middle of a superhero movie about explosions and man vs gods, and now you're not in the same universe. Now those rants stick out like a bug in my soup. That's the wrong way to do it.

      We're there to be entertained, and when "Th

  • Should? Movies are, for the most part, for entertainment. They can be educational too. In that sense, they are welcome to show the effects of climate change. But - should? I don't think - we do not want the kind of things typical of such charming regimes as Russia or North Korea.
  • Ah, movies. Where people go when they want lectured. Where people go to because pop stars are the smartest people on earth, and we must listen to and obey them.

    Now don't get me wrong, if a mention of global warming has an integral place, then sure. And documentary movies of course. But a lot of times, indeed most of the time, I watch a movie to get away from the world, and relax a bit.

    If I read the tea leaves correctly, this whole thing is the checkbox culture getting ready to demand more of their kook

    • Watching Captain America: Brave New World sure scared the crap out of me. I know I'm NEVER gonna take pills laced with gamma radiation now! See... we CAN learn from movies!
  • Sensationalize it , get the best directors & producers of the scariest movies to make it really scary too
  • Because...it is just political and globalist propaganda bs as far as an eye can see. They (polilyingticians and scientistsnot) have been saying it for at least 6 decades and the sea level has remained the same for even longer than that. At first it was global warming and bla bla bla and then when nothing happened it "became" climate change because they found out that the current period is colder than it was 20k years ago so they changed the narrative. Then they started burning forests. Yes, ARSON has been t
    • Arson or not, forest fires are inevitable. At worst Arson can only ever change the timing of the next fire, not actually create a fire that wouldn't have happened. Delay the fire and you make it worse. The only way to actually prevent forest fires is to send crews out to cut down dead trees (replace the nutrients, please) and take out the dead wood.
      • The natives used to intentionally set fires to create meadows. Most of the old growth oak trees in California grew up in meadows created by fire. There is a lot to be said for controlled burns, Also, new growth burns much more easily than old growth.

  • This is totally what Gladiator 2 needed.

    Maximus Jr. steps into the arena. A faceless gladiator enters the arena opposite him, to thunderous applause. A bead of sweat drips down Max Jr's forehead.

    Maximus Jr. : Its really hot out today, I wish the emperor would do something about climate change.

    Faceless Gladiator: YOU'LL NEVER TAKE AWAY MY INTERNAL COMBUSTIAN ENGINE TRUCK, I NEED IT FOR WORK!

    Their swords clash.

  • No, it's obvious slave training by elites who want to kill the middle class by taxing them more.

    • Are the richest man in the world and a guy that shits in a gold toilet in some way not "elite"?

      • He has golden toilets to match his golden showers.
      • With Tesla stock price plummeting, he won't be the richest man in the world for long. Estimating net worth based on stock holdings that can't all be sold at face value is fiction and fantasy.

  • Where everything is drowned in water, but apparently nobody has taken a bath in five years.

  • Fear sells.

    Be not afraid - fear dampens right action.

    I'd rather more movies show the homeless veterans with PTSD living on the streets but they won't do that. Almost like they don't want movies to be used to highlight important social issues.

    If they want to show the ocean being 2cm higher than it was in 1900 that doesn't bother me. Hardly a dramatic plot device, though.

  • You know what is lacking in Hollywood.....Good storytelling! I don't care what the message is but if it gets in the way of a good story it needs to stay the heck out of the narrative. And vice-versa.

  • This just draws attention away from the much simpler Bechdel test, which movies still fail regularly.

  • If it is part of the story then sure, have it in there. If not, then no, and don't try to shoehorn it into the story.

    Make all the documentaries about it that you want, but movies are supposed to be for entertainment and escapism, not activism.

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