Apocalypse Now

In simplest terms, climate change refers to the rapid warming of the planet mainly due to the burning of fossil fuels. This emits greenhouse gases that act like a blanket covering the Earth and trapping heat within the atmosphere (UN Climate Action, n.d.). The tricky bit is that this doesn’t mean the Earth is just getting a little hotter; our Earth is a dynamic, complex system. A change in one pattern, influences changes in another, think of it as the Butterfly Effect. Sometimes the effects are felt in places far away or the consequences of a change are delayed so it’s not always easy to make the connection. The UN’s Climate Action report tells us, “The consequences of climate change now include, among others, intense droughts, water scarcity, severe fires, rising sea levels, flooding, melting polar ice, catastrophic storms and declining biodiversity.” This can make it challenging to communicate to audiences with different knowledge backgrounds and interests. But wait, it gets worse…

The Perfect Storm

As we have seen, climate change is one of the most pressing issues of our time, but it is also a money-making plot line for Hollywood action movies starring A-list celebrities. In fact, an entire genre has been created around climate change called ‘Cli-fi,’ short for climate fiction. The term has been accredited to journalist Dan Bloom who coined it as a literary sub-genre of science fiction (Chameides, 2013). It describes fiction writing that uses climate change as a major plot device. As we are already seeing the effects of climate change, it ‘is the increasingly pressing context for stories about extreme weather, energy, business, finance, real estate, politics, food, travel, and even the arts.’ (Guenther cited in Widdicombe, 2020). As cli-fi has solidified its legitimacy as a separate genre, many films with themes of climate change now fall into this category. Furthermore, several sources show that ‘the general public gains most of its knowledge about science from the mass media’ (Andi, n.d.). This means we have an unique opportunity to educate, raise awareness and develop our narratives around climate change for a large audience.

Methodology: The methodology for this investigation consists of a literature review of academic and popular sources. The Day After Tomorrow has several papers discussing different aspects of its effects on audience perception around climate change and will constitute the main focus of this analysis. For more recent movies an analysis of popular sources, critical reviews and audience reviews was conducted.

Geostorm, was released in 2017 with less than stellar reviews. Critical reviews ranged from lukewarm to disappointing. Everything from the writing, to the CGI effects to the acting, was criticized (Brameso, 2017; Eggert 2017; Scott, 2017; THR, 2017). One reviewer described it as ‘dumber than a street full of hailstones’ (Bramesco, 2017). Ouch. Some reviews mentioned the portrayal of global warming in the movie, but noted that it got lost in the theatrics of the movie. The Geostorm audience didn’t have anything better to say either. Sifting through reviews revealed hardly a mention of climate change. The majority of moviegoers did not connect the depictions of climate change in the movie to the climate change in reality (IMDb, n.d.; RottenTomatoes, n.d.). Geostorm was considered just an entertaining, albeit poorly executed disaster movie by its audience.

Most recently, Don’t Look Up (DLU) was released on Netflix in December 2021. Although the movie revolves around two astrophysicists discovering a comet on a collision course with Earth and their futile attempts to alert governments and the general public, it is clearly an allegory for how we, as a society, are dealing with climate change. Nonetheless, this makes the movie an interesting subject to try and gauge audience perceptions from critical reviews and viewership data. DLU produced two very different reactions among viewers. When looking at critical reviews DLU received mostly negative reviews and was viciously attacked in the news media (Gewertz, 2022) despite racking up about 360 million viewing hours and becoming Netflix’s second most popular film debut to date (Keck, 2022). There was vocal opposition to its depiction of society’s handling of the climate crisis as exemplified by an opinion piece in The LA Times. Goldberg (2022) rejects the notion that there isn’t enough coverage of climate change in popular media asserting any more would amount to hysteria. To close out his argument the author states climate change does not pose an existential threat. Burke (2022) gave the movie a poor review as well, but this is because ‘This movie reflects far too much of what is happening right now, and so does not offer escapism through art – it just reminds us of our own present failings as a society.’ Unlike Geostorm audiences, DLU audiences definitely made the connection between the movie’s portrayal of how society deals with an existential threat and how our society is currently handling the climate crisis. A few comments popped up here and there explaining the movie was about ‘climate scare tactics, nonsense,’  but most criticisms centered around what reviewers felt was the moralistic nature of how the content was presented and that this was very off-putting (IMDb, n.d.; Rotten Tomatoes, n.d.). 

We Need To Talk About Climate Change

‘Overwhelmingly the stories and narratives around climate change are negative and play off of people’s fears and anxieties’ (Guyathri, 2018). This was already confirmed by Lowe’s (2006) survey in which some participants experienced heightened climate-anxiety after watching TDAT. Although it had an effect on the audience’s perception, it did not translate into profound engagement with climate change mitigation action. Other cli-fi movies had seemingly little effect according to audience reviews. DLU garnered record-making viewership and generated a heated debate, but again it seemingly had little effect on audience perception. Going by Lowe’s survey results for TDAT it seems unlikely it would have. So what seems to be good movie-making practice and good for attracting box office sales, may not be the best strategy for shaping our mindset about climate change. Maybe it’s time for a new story. ‘People are much more likely to act when future scenarios are placed in a positive light, emphasizing terms such as “resilience,” “sustainability,” and “nature-based solutions.’ Maggie Messerschmidt (cited in Vaidyanathan, 2018).

Movies such as Tomorrow, released in 2016 and 2040, released in 2019, have been released that have a positive, hopeful, and solution oriented narrative however, these are documentaries and not fictional narratives. That’s not to say these movies are not impactful or needed, on the contrary, Lowe’s (2006) survey clearly demonstrated that participants wanted to know more about concrete actions they could take to help fight climate change. ‘It’s difficult to know where you are going if you don’t have a clear vision of what that [future] should look like, in particular, a positive vision that you could get excited about and motivated to really make a transformative change’ says Timon McPhearson (cited in Vaidyanathan, 2018). So, there is something to be said about the intangible movie magic of stories that help shape the mindscapes of society; the deep structures of myths and metaphors that act as accelerators of change. And it’s precisely these we desperately need more of. ‘Only a story can beat a story’ (Solitaire, 2018). We must tell the tale of the underdog hero overcoming the climate change monster instead of being overwhelmed by the monster of our own creation. The ‘90s animated series Captain Planet, as well as Marvel’s cinematic universe, come to mind as a blueprint

‘So that solving climate change becomes the greatest story of the 21st century.’ (Solitaire, 2018)