I have a question for you. What is the definitive movie about climate change? Take a moment to think about it. Does anything spring to mind? I’m going to be honest: It took me a while to come up with my answer. And that right there, that need for reflection, is absolutely fascinating.
Let’s first look at some other examples of social issues. What is the definitive movie about antisemitism? I’d say it’s pretty clearly Steven Spielberg's Schindler’s List. What about the definitive movie about the AIDS crisis? Clearly Jonathan Demme's Philadelphia. Racism in America? That one’s tougher, and there are a lot of options to weigh. The answer, I think, is Spike Lee's Do The Right Thing, though not quite as clearly.
My question to you, then, is why do all of these social issues have a definitive film—one that when you reach its associated unit in high school, your teacher will inevitably get lazy, turn it on, and sit in the back—while climate change does not? What makes this issue so unique among all the rest?
I will present you with a series of contenders that I think have at least an argument to be “the climate change film” and in doing so will illustrate what I think sets this issue apart from the rest.
To start, let’s define some parameters. To be the definitive climate change film, the movie has to both be about climate change and properly engage with it as an issue. This can’t just be a case where climate change is the plot catalyst in a blockbuster with no actual engagement with the issue. At the same time, the film must be popular enough to have pierced the popular consciousness. The definitive climate change film can’t be an arthouse film only a select few have seen.
Now that we have our rules, we’ll start eliminating some contenders. I’m going to remove all documentaries from contention, including ones like Davis Guggenheim's An Inconvenient Truth, because while documentaries are important, I don’t think they can be the definitive film on a subject. After all, Claude Lanzmann's Shoah is an incredibly important film that everyone should watch, but I don’t think it can be the definitive Holocaust film.
Next, let’s talk about a couple of cash–grab blockbusters that use climate change as their core premise but fall short of ever really engaging with it. I’m talking about movies like Roland Emmerich's The Day After Tomorrow, Dean Devlin's Geostorm, or Kevin Reynolds' Waterworld. These movies obviously vary in quality (I’ll softly stick up for Waterworld) and conceit (I’d recommend the Plot section of the Geostorm Wikipedia page if you want a wild ride), but these represent a certain genre of blockbuster that emerged in the late 1990s and rose to popularity throughout the 2000s that used climate change as a setting for their typical disaster or blockbuster picture. They use climate change as the engine for their story but don’t actually contend with the issue intellectually.
I should note that I do think these movies are important for an issue like climate change to enter the popular lexicon in a more accessible way. It can’t only be high art films discussing an issue. If that were the case, the debate would be limited to certain coastal filmgoing populations and never enter broader American culture. For movies to properly serve as a platform for hot–button issues, they need to discuss the issue in many forms. You need your Gerard Butler action programmers tackling the issue just as much as you need your prestige documentaries.
The next group of films worth discussing is those that tackle the issue head on. These are the movies are explicitly about climate change. Some examples include Adam McKay's Don’t Look Up and Daniel Goldhaber's How to Blow Up a Pipeline. I use these two examples because one is a $75 million Netflix movie starring every single person in Hollywood and the other is a good movie.
Don’t Look Up has its moments—the final dinner scene is particularly enjoyable—but by approaching the issue of climate change so directly, McKay loses some of its power. Adam McKay very clearly thought he was making the definitive climate change film in Don’t Look Up, and that hubris gives the film a grating tone. How to Blow Up A Pipeline is far more nuanced and effective. It tackles how young people are becoming disillusioned with the current lack of action taken on the climate issue. By dealing more with the effects climate change is having on today’s youth, Goldhaber makes the issue feel more tangible. However, it’s hard for a tiny indie movie starring nobody you’ve ever heard of to be the definitive climate change movie.
That takes us to our third and largest grouping of movies: mid–to–big budget films by auteur filmmakers. There is a group of directors who clearly care a lot about this issue and have allowed it to permeate their films.
These include films tangentially about climate change like Christopher Nolan's Interstellar and James Cameron's Avatar, both films that could theoretically fit into our first blockbuster bucket but get elevated by the talent of their filmmakers. Both films similarly use climate change as their backdrop and importantly engage with how humanity will react to a climate crisis, but both have so much else on their mind that it’s hard to dub either the climate change film.
You also have something like George Miller's Mad Max film series, which is explicitly about the aftermath of climate change and how humans have adapted to live on a dying earth. Miller’s mastery elevates the series from the typical action fare, but I do think these films are thought of more as action films than climate change films.
That brings me to another pair of auteurs, for whom you could make the argument that all of their films are about climate change: Bong Joon–Ho and Hayao Miyazaki. Most of Bong’s work, like Snowpiercer and The Host, touches on the concept of climate change. More than most filmmakers, he uses human’s impact on the world around them as the catalyst to make genre films.
Miyazaki has also always been deeply skeptical of attempts by humanity to tame the natural world. Films like Nausicaaä of the Valley of the Wind and Ponyo are more explicitly about the harm we do to the world around us, but almost every single one of Miyazaki’s films are at least tangentially connected to climate change. His films are known for their gorgeous depictions of nature and that usually comes with at least some commentary about our duty to protect that nature. Both Miyazaki and Bong’s films come close to championing the cause, but I still think they’re not quite engrained enough in the popular consciousness to be our answer.
So, finally, we arrive at the final two films on my list. The two that I think come closest to being the mythical “climate change film.” The first one is, admittedly, an off–the–board pick: Paul Schrader's masterpiece First Reformed. The film follows Ethan Hawke as a reverend grappling with the uncertain future of our planet. It is the best depiction of someone worried about the climate crisis I’ve seen. Schrader’s film contends only with people concerned about the climate crisis, not with its effects, and thus cannot quite be our answer. It is, however, an incredibly important film in the climate change canon.
The other contender is far more popular: Andrew Stanton's Wall–E. Stanton’s film is the best depiction of the aftermath of climate change, and what a certain dark future could look like, in the genre. The film portrays a small robot, the titular Wall–E, as it is left abandoned on a climate–ravaged Earth in the far future. The film checks most of the boxes we’re looking for: It’s a big hit, making over $500 million at the box office while still engaging with the underlying issues of climate change. At the end of the day, however, it is still a kids' movie. Just like blockbusters, that’s still incredibly important, and Wall–E did introduce a generation of kids to the idea that we actively need to take care of our planet. However, I have a hard time believing that in 50 years, Wall–E will be “The Climate Change Film.”
That brings me to the end of my contenders and leaves us without a clear answer. Climate change is unique in cinema because in some ways it is both the largest and most amorphous social issue you can make a movie about. It’s easier to portray different forms of bigotry or hatred in film because that’s tangible. You can feel its effect in real life. Climate change is too big to wrap your head around in one film. It takes incredibly talented filmmakers to even partially tackle it.
Wall–E and First Reformed come the closest of any films because they thoughtfully and coherently address incredibly specific aspects of climate change. They don’t attempt to tackle the entire issue at once. Perhaps a filmmaker will come along and manage to do that one day. But in the meantime, many more will struggle wrapping their head around such a gargantuan issue.
