Movies with climate change commentary that went under the radar

Words by Alexi Barnstone

There is no shortage of film focused on Climate Change. From Before the Flood to Gasland movies and television shows have explored the crash course humanity is on, the way to solve the problem, and the dire nature of the situation. Some media purports market solutions and camaraderie on an international scale as the fix, others decry the capitalist system and call for its destruction. Film has had its say on the issue. But not all environmentalism is so blatant in the industry. Latent environmentalism has permeated the industry for decades. Here are some of the movies that you may not have appreciated for their climate change narrative.

Kingsman

A James Bond spin off? Surely that couldn’t embody the soul of the environmentalist movement. Think again. The villain in this popular movie, Mr. Valentine, is an animated and charismatic character played by Samuel Jackson. His motive? To kill of the majority of the human population and start anew. His plan? To use a free phone chip that drives people to violence, killing each other and losing all inhibition. His take? “Humanity is a virus, and I am the cure”

Princess Mononoke

For the Studio Ghibli fans out there, this may come as less of a surprise. But the Miyazaki films often play out an environmentalism narrative, often exploring the contemporary world’s incapacity to exist in symbiosis with nature. Princess Mononoke epitomises this narrative. The story follows a warrior prince from an ancient tribe on his quest to cure himself of a deadly disease he contracts from a demon. As his adventure unfolds he discovers industry, in the form of Iron town, a mining export town build for extraction and desolation. The townsfolk endeavour to kill the spirit of the forest in a ploy to expand their extractive capacities into the forest. When the spirit of the forest’s head is shot off it becomes an expansive glob of darkness, killing everything in its past. The more cynical among us may liken it to expanding carbon emissions. The only way to rectify the problem is for a human to offer the spirit animal its head back, a clear call to human action to reinstate a stable relationship with the natural environment.

Children of Men

Alfonso Cuarón’s masterpiece takes place in a world where homo sapiens are infertile. Main character Theo Owen is taken on a journey when he discovers a single woman that is pregnant, the only pregnancy in the last twenty years. In Cuarón’s dystopic future countries have collapsed, the people forgoing all notions of civility in their confrontation with extinction.  Refugees seeking safety in a functional England are regimented and imprisoned as the government endeavours to maintain control. The movie adopts much of the Holocaust imagery in its portrayal of the tyrannical state, including prisoner transport trains and people in cages.

The movie never unveils the reason why humanity is infertile. Thematically, the plot could be extended to age old conceptions of mother earth. The suffering endured by the characters in the show reflect a world of infertility, and often a world after the worst of climate change. The potential repercussions of mass migration is a focal point of the environmentalist movement, with a projected 140 million people displaced by 2040 if current carbon emission rates continue.

The Avengers

Thanos, a raging lunatic for some, but an eco-fascist when his personal past is considered. Thanos’ entire aim is to annihilate half the populace of the universe. His motivations stem from his own home planet, where he witnessed overpopulation bring suffering upon his people. His consequentialist attitude toward life manifests itself in a simple rational; kill half the universe to save the other half, it is the only way.

The dire motif goes further than a simple environmental narrative, it also reflects an imbedded disbelief in societies capacity for change. At no point does Marvel entertain another solution to the problem of human expansion, death is the only morbid solution. Could it be that one of biggest action-packed franchises of all time is running a latent climate change dialectic against the forces of capitalism?

The Road

John Hillcoat’s adaptation of Cormac McCarthy’s novel The Road exemplifies the dark and unfriendly future of life after nature. It’s terrifying cannibalism and violence are a pointed reminder that environmental desolation could be the catalyst for the regression of humanity.  As characters face a battle for bare survival in an unlivable world they lose all sense of civilization.  In one of the most depressing films of the last decade, all the worst symptoms of environmental decay are explored.