They Tried to Warn Us: 20 Facts About Movies Predicting Climate Change

Here’s something to think about: the Wikipedia page for “climate change movies.” If you check it out, the first thing you’ll notice is that there aren’t many. Weird, uh? By comparison, here’s the page for women in prison movies. Okay, now that we think about it way too intensely like the pervs we are, that long list makes total sense. But back to climate change movies: what’s weird is that there are a million movies about any other disaster. Meteors? Aerosmith starts playing in our minds. Volcanos? God, Anne Heche was cool. Earthquakes? We’re disappointed that The Rock didn’t fight an earthquake with his bare fists in San Andreas, total missed opportunity there. The disaster genre is full of movies for every single disaster — and yet, climate change movies are scarce. You know, like water. In the climate-collapse future. That is already here. Hence, our theory is simple: climate change movies are scarce because the topic is way too real.

Of course, volcanoes or earthquakes are also disasters that kill people, duh, but they kill other people. Climate change, however, will sooner or later affect every single one of us – and so, yeah, it is too real to even contemplate, let alone actually acknowledge politically. And now you’ll say, “whatever, Cracked, how about The Day After Tomorrow? That’s an iconic climate change movie right there.” Yeah, sure, but that is the point: it could only say what it had to say by turning the slowly creeping process into a blockbuster disaster — and then it was criticized for it. Don’t Look Up? Yeah, another good example, but again, its real-life reaction mirrored its very plot. The Mad Max movies? Well, they’re set after the crisis. You can never really win with this concept, which is why the most appropriate movies about the topic are ultimately documentaries. So maybe watch them too, let’s all get our act together, and in the meantime, enjoy these 20 facts about these movies, because hey, it’s not like they haven’t tried to warn us.