Climate of fear

Why Hollywood is reluctant to change its narrative on the environment

- David Smith

A RODEO CROWD WAVES COWBOY HATS as a man rides a bucking horse. Then comes a shower of leaves, a chorus of mobile phone rings and a wail of klaxons. Horses run wild and cars collide.

One vehicle is whipped into the air by what a weatherman calls a once-in-ageneration tornado outbreak.

This is a scene from Twisters, starring Glen Powell and Daisy Edgar-Jones, in which rivals come together to try to predict and possibly tame ferocious storms in central Oklahoma. A sequel to the hit disaster movie Twister from 1996, it is a Hollywood summer blockbuster designed to entertain - but also a lost opportunity to raise awareness of the climate crisis.

"I just wanted to make sure that with the movie, we don't ever feel like [it] is putting forward any message," director Lee Isaac Chung, who grew up in Oklahoma's tornado belt, told CNN. "I just don't feel like films are meant to be message-oriented." That may not come as a surprise to scientists and climate activists. Despite global heating's existential threat to humanity, and despite Hollywood's left-leaning tendencies, the subject rarely makes it to the big screen.

A study published by the nonprofit consultancy Good Energy and Colby College's Buck Lab for Climate and Environment analysed whether the climate crisis was present in 250 of the top-grossing fictional films between 2013 and 2022. In only 32 of the films (12.8%) was it clear that climate change exists, and in only 24 of them (9.6%) was it clear that a character knows it.

The most notable recent example of a film that did tackle the topic - albeit via allegory - was Don't Look Up, a 2021 satire about two scientists who try in vain to warn the world about a planet-destroying comet. Starring Leonardo DiCaprio, Jennifer Lawrence, Meryl Streep and Cate Blanchett, the film memorably depicted TV hosts consumed by trivia rather than the extinction event - a stark warning about humanity's ongoing insouciance as the planet burns.