The Seven Climate Movies (And The One We Need Next). – Forbes

DONT LOOK UP tells the story of two low-level astronomers, who must go on a giant media tour to ... [+] warn mankind of an approaching comet that will destroy planet earth. In select theaters December 10, on Netflix December 24.

Dr. Randall Mindy: Why arent people terrified? What do we have to say? What do we have to do?! Dont Look Up, Netflix, 2021.

While the latest climate movie isnt technically about climate change (spoiler warning: its an asteroid) it is ugly-laugh funny, surprisingly moving in places and an excruciatingly precise satire on the everyday experience of climate scientists, activists and change makers.

Its also a blockbuster. Dont Look Up has been viewed for over one hundred million hours in the week after its release and comfortably tops Netflixs most watched chart. Arguably, its the most successful climate-inspired movie since The Day After Tomorrow in 2004.

On the surface, Dennis Quaid heroically battling through a new ice age and Leonardo DiCaprio bumbling through disastrous TV interviews are very different stories. But I think its interesting, and worrying, that these two stories take on environmental risk is essentially the same that people are dumb about climate change. No one listens to the scientists in either movie, with the resulting Armageddons then depicted in vivid CGI. With 17 years between them, the two most successful climate movies are based on the premise that we wont solve humanitys greatest challenge.

Of course, those arent the only climate stories out there (although it seems to be a good blockbuster formula). Ive identified seven typologies of climate story or parable with similar arcs. As you read down youll probably notice one story that is very obvious by its absence;

1.Were So Dumb Stories pioneered by Dr Strangelove back when nuclear annihilation was the existential threat de jour, these Were So Dumb stories revel in the schadenfreude of humans profound stupidity when faced with magnitude threats. In Day After Tomorrow the politicians are dumb, and in Dont Look Up everyone is dumb. Cautionary tales or painful prophesies?

2.Post-Climapocalyptics - since 1973 with Soylent Green, the greenhouse effect has been useful fodder for movie dystopias. My personal favourite is the utterly lacking in nuance Waterworld in which (to hammer home the eco point) the baddies literally live in a dirty old oil tanker. Interstellar, uses biosphere collapse to drive the search for another world and the terrific German horror Hell makes global warming less creepy than its survivors. Im tempted to put Wall-E in this category alongside Mad Max Fury Road.

3.Super-Fuel Utopias almost every space opera assumes humanity will truly advance once we dump oil as fuel. The starship Enterprise doesnt run on petrol. In Tomorrowland this potential is given a rather dull outing, but Back To The Future nails it by powering the DeLorean with organic waste in a mass produced Mr Fusion machine.

4.Man-Made Monsters as climate parables go, Frankenstein is the story that most resembles much of our climate discourse man makes monster, then monster destroys man. From the The Matrix to the The Terminator these man-made monster stories are easy analogies for climate change, and I expect as our climate anxiety grows well see more of them.

5.Evil Humans V Good Nature Avatar, Fern Gully, Princess Mononoke and even Frozen II all lean into the truism of people being bad for everything else on the planet. Whilst the moral of these stories is laudable, seeking to ignite a more biophilic mindset, I do wonder if theres also a touch of misandry in them.

6.Oops, Wrong Solution! Ive written before about Thanos from the Avengers and his terrible Malthusian mistake, similarly, Downsizing takes a bad solution to resource crunch (make people smaller so they consume less) but turns it into a reasonable comedy. Snowpiercer is an excellent thriller set aboard a single train that survived a failed geo-engineering attempt. But its First Reformed that explores a very tangible and terrifying climate response nihilism and violence in an exquisite film.

7.Deus Ex Machina are films where tech, magic, aliens or superheroes fix the planet. In the 2008 remake of The Day The Earth Stood Still, alien Keanu Reeves is sent to protect Earths fragile biosphere from humanity. Even the alien Predators are worried that global warming will change human DNA. In Geostorm a satellite network conveniently manages the climate (until it doesnt) and in 2067 a future ravaged by climate change invents time travel to a far future that might not be. Ive always been a little surprised there arent more of these. Perhaps the Avengers will eventually take on climate change?

Yes, I do watch too many movies. But the experts at Yale have watched even more and I recommend their brilliant list of cli-fi movies here if youd like to explore the genre.

But, theres one typology of climate movie that is notably missing even though audiences yearn for answers

8.How We Fixed It stories - not the Deus Ex Machina quick fixes but the story of real, messy, challenging and unexpected ways to solve and recover from climate change. Ive written before about how amazing that story could be.

I adore the ending of the penguiney childrens movie Happy Feet after people discover the plight of the starving penguins, an emotionally soaring montage shows in just a few frames exactly how we could go about solving over-fishing. Theres a media frenzy of coverage, protest marches, government pronouncements, consumer action and then a global fishing treaty. Its like a mini masterclass for kids on how we change things for the better. I wish we had even one montage like that for climate action!

Of course, we do have a familiar movie blueprint for heroes overcoming terrible odds from the brutalised Dumbledores Army gathering in Harry Potter, all the free peoples of the west preparing to battle Saurons army in Lord of the Rings and perhaps even the superheroes stepping through those swirly portals to back up Captain America in Endgame. Thats what we need for climate change, story after story of courage and compassion in the face of our climate monster.

The story exists, just not yet on film. I hope Netflix is planning to follow Dont Look Up with a big-budget adaptation of Kim Stanley Robinsons astonishing The Ministry For The Future novel. Its the most compelling, unputdownable story of facing into the solutions that Ive ever come across.

For once, Id like to cheer the solutions of climate change, rather than darkly laugh at our response to it.

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The Seven Climate Movies (And The One We Need Next). - Forbes