Hollywood films rarely reflect the climate change crisis. These researchers want to change that

PORTLAND, Maine – Aquaman may not care if the oceans rise, but viewers might.

This is one of the conclusions of a new study conducted by researchers who set out to determine whether Hollywood’s current blockbusters reflect the current climate crisis. The vast majority of films failed the “climate reality check” proposed by the authors, who researched 250 films from 2013 to 2022.

The test is simple: the authors looked to see if a film presented a story in which climate change existed and if a character knew that it existed. One film that passed the test was the 2017 superhero film Justice League, in which Jason Momoa’s Aquaman character says, “Hey, I don’t care if the oceans rise” to Ben Affleck’s Bruce Wayne.

But most films fell short – less than 10% of the 250 films approved and climate change was mentioned in two or more scenes in less than 4% of films. That’s out of reach for moviegoing audiences who want “to see their reality reflected on the screen,” said Colby College English professor Matthew Schneider-Mayerson, the study’s lead researcher.

“The bottom line is that the vast majority of films, popular films produced in the last 10 years in the United States, do not portray the world as it is,” Schneider-Mayerson said. “They are portraying a world that is now history or fantasy – a world where climate change is not happening.”

Researchers from Maine’s Colby College published the study in April with Good Energy, an environmental consultancy based in Los Angeles. The results have been peer-reviewed and the authors are seeking publication in scientific journals. Researchers see the test as a way for the public, writers and filmmakers to evaluate the representation of climate change on screen.

Some results were surprising. Films that at first glance appear to have little overlap with weather or the environment have passed the test. Marriage Story, Noah Baumbach’s emotional 2019 drama about the collapse of a relationship, passed the test in part because Adam Driver’s character is described as “energy conscious,” Schneider-Mayerson said.

2022 cop Glass Onion and 2019 folk horror film Midsommar were others that passed the test. Some that dealt more explicitly with climate change, such as the 2021 satire Don’t Look Up, were also approved. But San Andreas, a 2015 film about a West Coast earthquake, and The Meg, a 2018 action film set on the ocean, do not.

The authors narrowed the film selection by excluding films not set on Earth or set before 2006 or after 2100. They found that streaming services had a higher percentage of films that included climate change than the major studios.

The study is “valuable for marketing purposes, informational purposes and data accumulation,” said Harry Winer, director of sustainability at the Kanbar Film and Television Institute at New York University’s Tisch School of the Arts. Winer, who was not involved in the study, said it could also help serve as an incentive to connect audiences with stories about climate.

“The public will be more open to hearing a dialogue about what is right and what is wrong,” Winer said. “It’s a conversation starter.”

The study authors said they see the climate reality check as a kind of Bechdel-Wallace test for climate change. Bechdel, a cartoonist, is credited with popularizing this test in the 1980s by incorporating her friend Liz Wallace’s test on gender representation in film into a comic strip. The test asks whether a film includes at least two female characters who talk about something other than a man.

Bechdel herself praised the study’s climate test, which she described as “long overdue” in a social media post during this year’s Oscars season. Bechdel said in an email to The Associated Press that “for a film set in the present, ignoring this existential threat simply no longer makes sense” in the era of climate change.

“I worry that writers might do this in a rote way, which might be counterproductive, just like ‘strong female characters’ are,” Bechdel said. “But injecting an awareness of our community situation into the stories we ingest seems like a no-brainer.