In Movies, Earth’s Enemy Is Human
Humans ruined everything. They bred too much and choked the life out of the land, air and sea.
And so they must be vaporized by half or vanquished by irate dwellers from the oceans’ polluted depths. Barring that, they face hardscrabble lives on a once verdant Earth now consumed by ice or drought.
That is how many recent superhero and science-fiction movies — among them the latest Avengers and Godzilla pictures as well as “Aquaman,” “Snowpiercer,” “Blade Runner 2049,” “Interstellar” and “Mad Max: Fury Road” — have invoked the climate crisis. They imagine postapocalyptic futures or dystopias where ecological collapse is inevitable, environmentalists are criminals, and eco-mindedness is the driving force of villains.
But these takes are defeatist, critics say, and a growing chorus of voices is urging the entertainment industry to tell more stories that show humans warding off climate threats.
“More than ever, they’re missing the mark, often in the same way,” said Michael Svoboda, a writing professor at George Washington University and author at the multimedia site Yale Climate Connections. “Almost none of these films depict a successful transformation of society.”
In “Avengers: Infinity War,” the archnemesis, Thanos, opts to head off environmental collapse by reducing humanity, along with all living beings, by half. In “Godzilla: King of the Monsters,” eco-terrorists unleash predatory beasts to forestall mass extinction and keep the human population in check. In “Aquaman,” King Orm, the leader of an undersea kingdom, concludes that the only way to prevent earthly destruction is to wage war on humans.
David Leslie Johnson-McGoldrick, one of the writers of “Aquaman,” said using pollution as a motivator made Orm more relatable and added, “It gave him some nuance.”
But Mr. Svoboda sees Orm as part of a trend that moves the climate crisis into comfortable territory. The villain is defeated and the audience feels relief, he said: People may be doing harm, but the alternatives are worse.
On both sides of the Atlantic, there are efforts to infuse narratives with hope. The Producers Guild of America, and, more emphatically, the British Academy of Film and Television Arts, are showing content creators how to incorporate green themes into their films and shows.
On the Producers Guild’s Green Production Guide site, a report by the Rocky Mountain Institute, a nonprofit, lays out ways renewables can be portrayed onscreen. Some suggested plotlines come with a wink, ranging from showing characters who go off the grid to philanderers who fall for their solar-panel installers.
This spring, the British film and television academy released a study showing how many times ecological terms appeared on British television in one year (the report did not include film). “Climate change” appeared more than “zombie” but trailed “gravy,” and was trounced by “queen” and “tea.” The academy also started an initiative, Planet Placement, exhorting film and television content creators to help “make positive environmental behaviors mainstream.”
With screen industries’ wide reach, it said, “it’s a chance to shape society’s response to climate change.”
“The past 25 years of the environmental narrative is about sacrifice and doom and not doing what you want and not getting what you want,” said Aaron Matthews, head of industry sustainability at the academy. “We don’t think that’s the right tone to get people over the line.”