Can Hollywood movies pass a ‘climate reality check’? Justice League, Glass Onion. San Andreas, Meg La

Aquaman may not mind rising ocean levels, but moviegoers might.

This is one of the findings of research conducted to determine whether today’s blockbuster Hollywood films reflect the climate crisis. The vast majority of films failed the “climate reality check” suggested by the authors, who surveyed 250 films from 2013 to 2022.

The test is simple: the authors looked to see if the film presented a story about climate change, and whether or not the character knew about it.

One movie that passed the test is the 2017 superhero film Justice Leaguein which Jason Momoa’s character Aquaman says to Ben Affleck’s Bruce Wayne: “Hey, I wouldn’t mind if the oceans rose.”

But most of the films did not achieve the desired success, as less than 10% of the 250 films succeeded, and climate change was mentioned in two or more scenes in more than 4% of the films.

This puts them out of touch with movie audiences who want to “see their reality reflected on the screen,” says Matthew Schneider Myerson, the study’s lead researcher and an English professor at Colby College in Maine.

“The bottom line is that the vast majority of films, popular films made over the past 10 years in the United States, don’t depict the world as it is,” says Schneider-Myerson. “They depict a world that is now history or fiction – a world in which climate change does not happen.”

Researchers at Colby College published the study in April in collaboration with Good Energy, a Los Angeles-based environmental consulting firm. The results have been peer-reviewed, and the authors aim to publish them in scientific journals.

The researchers view the test as a way for audience members, writers and filmmakers to evaluate the representation of climate change on screen.

Some results were surprising. Films that at first glance don’t seem to have much to do with climate or environment pass the test.

Marriage storyNoah Baumbach’s 2019 emotional drama about the breakdown of a relationship passed the test in part because Adam Driver’s character is described as “energy-conscious,” says Schneider-Myerson.

Crime 2022 Glass Onions: A Knives Mystery And the popular horror film 2019 midsummer The others had to pass the test. Some were more vocal about climate change, like the 2021 satire Don’t look upalso passed.

but San AndresA 2015 film about the West Coast earthquake disaster MegAn action film produced in 2018 that takes place in the ocean.

Alison Bechdel, the cartoonist who popularized the Bechdel-Wallace test of gender representation in film

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

Harry Weiner, director of sustainability at the Kanbar Film and Television Institute at New York University’s Tisch School of the Arts, says the study is “valuable for marketing purposes, informational purposes, and data collection.”

It could also help serve as a catalyst to connect audiences to climate stories, said Weiner, who was not involved in the study.

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

The study’s authors say they view the climate reality check as a kind of Bechdel-Wallace test for climate change.

Alison Bechdel, a cartoonist, is credited with popularizing the test in the 1980s by incorporating her friend Liz Wallace’s test on the representation of gender in film into a comic strip.

The test asks whether the film includes at least two female characters having a conversation about something other than a man.

Bechdel herself praised the study’s climate testing, which she called “long overdue,” in a social media post during this year’s Oscars season.

“For a film set in the present to ignore this existential threat just doesn’t make sense anymore” in the age of climate change, Bechdel said in an email.

“I worry that screenwriters might do this in a perfunctory way, which might backfire, just like strong female characters,” Bechdel said. “But injecting awareness of our collective plight into the stories we absorb seems like a no-brainer.”