Buzz
Movies in the 'cli-fi' genre, ranging from delightfully cheesy to deeply moving, explore climate change. But do these films truly offer a peek into our potential future? Here’s a collection of cli-fi films to consider, along with expert perspectives on what they get right — and where they miss the mark — in addressing the global climate crisis.
1. Soylent Green // 1973
Set in 2022 New York City, Soylent Green portrays a world overwhelmed by overpopulation and crumbling cities with 40 million residents. Detective Thorn (Charlton Heston) and his partner, former professor turned police analyst Sol (Edward G. Robinson), are investigating the murder of a powerful figure at the Soylent Corporation. Soylent dominates the global food supply with protein replacement bars in three varieties—red, yellow, and green. When ocean acidification decimates plankton, Soylent’s green product is threatened, and the company must discover a new key ingredient (spoiler: it’s people).
In the movie, human-induced changes to the planet have ravaged the food supply. Soaring temperatures and soil erosion have made land suitable for farming exceedingly rare. Older characters reminisce about real meals. “When I was a kid, food was food—eggs they had, real butter. How can anything survive in a climate like this … everything is burning up,” Sol reflects.
Soil scientist Jo Handelsman described the film as “so clairvoyant” during an appearance on NPR’s Science Friday. She stated, “We’re losing soil about 10 to 100 times faster than we’re producing soil,” emphasizing the looming crisis.
However, Soylent Green doesn’t entirely escape outdated perspectives; the film’s environmental themes are paired with a dose of 1970s-era sexism.
2. Waterworld // 1995
In Waterworld, the Earth has been submerged following the melting of the polar ice caps. Land has become a rare commodity, with entire cities slowly sinking into the ocean depths. The plot centers on rescuing a young girl who supposedly has a map to dry land tattooed on her back. The journey is met with skepticism, as no one truly believes that a remnant of the old Earth still exists. “It’s funny. I always thought that dry land floated,” one character muses. “That it drifted with the wind and that’s why we couldn’t find it.”
The scenario in Waterworld is a plausible one, as supported by a 2015 study in the journal Science. The study suggests that if humanity consumes all known reserves of coal, oil, and natural gas, virtually all of the planet’s ice could melt, causing sea levels to rise by as much as 200 feet, Mother Jones reported. The silver lining is that this process would span a few thousand years. The downside: the complete melting of ice sheets isn’t necessary to trigger catastrophic climate change or sea level rise — both are already occurring.
3. AI Artificial Intelligence // 2001
In AI, after the polar ice caps have melted, some nations cope with the resulting economic collapse by restricting childbirth and making it mandatory to have a license to have a baby. The gap left by the loss of humans is filled by robots, known as Mecha, in this Steven Spielberg-directed film. (Originally, Stanley Kubrick had planned to direct, but the project stalled due to technological limitations. It was eventually handed over to Spielberg in the mid-1990s.)
Mecha take on roles as housekeepers, nannies, valets, and even gigolos. Eventually, scientists develop a child robot prototype named David (Haley Joel Osment), who bonds with its ‘parents’ and experiences the same deep emotional attachment as a human child. The film raises a quintessential cli-fi question: What responsibility do we bear for the things we create? In AI, humans ultimately fail to take responsibility. David’s mother, for example, makes the heart-wrenching choice to abandon him in the woods.
This failure to take responsibility for our creations dooms the movie’s human characters—and could be our own undoing. “The seeds of this future have already bloomed in our present,” says Joshua Rivera at The Verge. With the planet collapsing, he argues that we’re still focused on trivial solutions instead of addressing fundamental issues. AI highlights our fatal flaw, as Rivera points out: “Humanity doesn’t even love itself enough to ensure its own survival.”
4. The Day After Tomorrow // 2004
In The Day After Tomorrow, the Gulf Stream halts, triggering a global climate catastrophe within a matter of days. The northern U.S. plunges into a deep freeze, while residents in the southern states are evacuated, flooding the Mexican border. Despite the rapid onset of the crisis, it wasn’t entirely unforeseen. Paleoclimatologist Jack Hall (Dennis Quaid) had warned the UN and U.S. vice president about the impending disaster, but his warnings went unheeded. When disaster strikes, Jack must trek through the icy ruins of the northern states to rescue his son, Sam (Jake Gyllenhaal), from New York, where the city floods and freezes almost simultaneously. Sam and his friends seek shelter in the New York Public Library.
As numerous scientists have noted, a sudden ice age triggered by a collapse of the Gulf Stream is a highly improbable scenario. “There’s strong scientific evidence for global warming, but you won’t find any of it in this film, because the filmmakers apparently believe you’re too stupid or easily bored to care about the scientific facts,” Keay Davidson complained in the San Francisco Chronicle in 2004.
5. WALL-E // 2008
In WALL-E, Earth has turned into a literal garbage dump, abandoned by humanity and ravaged by violent storms. The titular robot, a trash compactor named WALL-E, is left behind to clean up the mess while humans relocate to space, continuing the very behaviors that led to the destruction of their home planet. In space, they consume meal replacements, glide around in flying chairs instead of walking, and buy endless quantities of things—things that hold no true value. Ultimately, WALL-E is a cautionary tale about the devastating effects of overconsumption on both humanity and the Earth.
Bloomberg’s Alex Webb suggested that the film is prophetic. “There are uncanny parallels to much of our present reality, with extreme weather events becoming more frequent, rising obesity rates, Zoom calls taking over our daily lives, and the emergence of meal replacement companies like Soylent and Huel,” he writes. (Indeed, there is now an actual company named Soylent.)
Alvaro Castano Garcia, a Ph.D. student at the Centre for Regional Economic and Social Research at Sheffield Hallam University, shared with Popular Science, “The things we purchase and the activities we engage in contribute to greenhouse gas emissions … the greater the consumption, the higher the emissions linked to our lifestyles, which worsen other environmental challenges.”
6. Beasts of the Southern Wild // 2012
In Beasts of the Southern Wild, the Gulf states are isolated from the rest of the U.S. by a levy. Some residents have decided to remain on the flooded side of the levy, including those living in the Bathtub, an island where 6-year-old Hushpuppy (Quvenzhané Wallis, who made history with an Oscar nomination for Best Actress at age 9, making her the youngest-ever nominee) lives with her father, Wink. They face looming economic and environmental collapse, as one character warns: “One day the storm’s gonna blow, the land is gonna sink, and the water’s gonna rise up so high, and there ain’t gonna be no Bathtub, just a whole buncha water.”
When the storm finally hits, many of the Bathtub’s residents flee, while others, including Wink’s father, choose to stay even as the waters rise. The state ignores them until Wink blows a hole in the levy to drain the Bathtub, which attracts the government’s attention. Soldiers arrive to “rescue” them, a fate far worse than remaining in the flood zone. “It didn’t matter that the water was gone,” Hushpuppy reflects. “Sometimes you can break things so bad that it can’t be put back together.”
The tale mixes fantasy with reality—Hushpuppy envisions ancient ice age creatures emerging from the melting polar caps, for example—but the post-apocalyptic environment, complete with factories spewing pollution, mirrors today’s New Orleans. The Bathtub doesn’t just evoke the post-Katrina southern city; it also reflects the many storm-related disasters that have occurred since 2005. “Climate change is increasing flood risks in neighborhoods across the U.S. much faster than many realize. In the next three decades, the cost of flood damage is projected to rise by 26 percent due to climate change alone,” explained Oliver Wing, a research fellow at the University of Bristol, in The Conversation earlier this year.
7. Snowpiercer // 2013
In Snowpiercer, the world tries to avert a climate disaster by releasing a chemical called CW7 into the atmosphere. However, instead of reversing global warming, it causes a global freeze, leading to the extinction of all life except for a group of survivors on a train named “Snowpiercer.” The train’s occupants are divided into a strict caste system, and this inequality sparks a rebellion that derails the train, leaving only two people fighting for the survival of humanity.
The film presents a “scientifically plausible concept,” says Jonathan Overpeck, a climate scientist and dean of the University of Michigan’s School for Environment and Sustainability. He shared with CNN, “The idea of geoengineering the planet’s climate, and the mistakes likely to come with it, is transitioning from science fiction to a very real possibility. However, most climate scientists believe it’s far more logical and safer to shift away from fossil fuels and create a sustainable future.”
8. Interstellar // 2014
In Interstellar, the planet has become a vast dust bowl in 2063, suffocating and starving humanity. In a desperate attempt to survive, NASA sends four scientists through a wormhole to search for a new habitable world. The film only becomes more mind-bending from there, featuring a plot that revolves around a black hole, future humans living in five dimensions, and communicating via gravity across immense spans of time and space. With its astrophysics-driven twists, this film stands out in the cli-fi genre as a unique narrative.
At its core, Interstellar raises a recurring question in cli-fi: if Earth is destroyed beyond repair, is there hope of finding another home? If that home happens to be another planet, we may eventually discover it. However, as Marcelo Gleiser, a theoretical physicist at Dartmouth College, points out in an NPR op-ed, the journey would take roughly 100,000 years without the wormhole used in the movie. He adds, “If wormholes exist, if they have wide mouths, and if they can be kept open—three big but not impossible ‘ifs’—then it’s conceivable that we could travel through them to distant corners of the universe.”
9. Mad Max: Fury Road // 2015
In Fury Road, Earth has once again been reduced to a dust-choked wasteland. The villainous warlord, Immortan Joe (Hugh Keays-Byrne), holds a monopoly on the water supply. His forces capture Max Rockatansky (Tom Hardy), a former detective tormented by his past failures to save others when the world collapsed. In his escape, Max is reluctantly drawn into a mission led by the fierce warrior Furiosa (Charlize Theron), who seeks to free Immortan Joe’s concubines. A thrilling chase unfolds as the warlord hunts to reclaim his wives, while Furiosa and Max search for the elusive “green place,” a legendary location that turns out to be Furiosa’s birthplace.
While Fury Road is undoubtedly exaggerated, it’s not entirely far-fetched, says Jay Famigletti, NASA's chief water expert. Famigletti pointed out to KPCC that desertification in the Southwest could intensify as droughts worsen, making dust storms more frequent. “It’s scary,” he warned.
10. Geostorm // 2017
The opening voiceover of Geostorm solemnly declares, “Everyone was warned, but no one listened.” In 2019, Earth experiences extreme weather events on an unimaginable scale—floods, hurricanes, tornadoes, and droughts combine to create a deadly geostorm threatening the planet’s survival. In response, scientists from 17 nations come together with a plan to use satellites for weather control, although the specifics of their operations remain unclear. The plot takes a turn when Jake (Gerard Butler), the scientist who invented the system, is fired after a heated confrontation with a senator. Three years later, the space station that manages the satellites begins to fail, unleashing disastrous weather and triggering a new geostorm. Jake returns to investigate the malfunction and prevent further destruction.
Geostorm delves into the field of geoengineering, a real scientific discipline focused on weather modification to mitigate climate change. However, the film takes liberties, suggesting that geoengineers can solve the climate crisis. In reality, methods like cloud seeding may help reduce drought severity, but they cannot prevent such disasters from happening in the first place.
11. Don’t Look Up // 2021
Graduate student Kate Dibiasky (Jennifer Lawrence) is elated when she discovers an asteroid, but her Ph.D. advisor, Dr. Randall Mindy (Leonardo DiCaprio), soon calculates that it is on a collision course with Earth. The pair sounds the alarm, securing a meeting with the president (Meryl Streep) and launching a nationwide campaign to urge action. However, a tech mogul (Mark Rylance) reveals that the asteroid is made of a rare and valuable mineral. Ultimately, a mission designed to prevent the asteroid from striking fails, sealing the planet’s fate.
At its core, Don’t Look Up is a commentary on global warming and the failure to take decisive action to prevent a climate catastrophe. The film mocks some unsettling truths: the status quo benefits both politicians and corporations; people readily turn a blind eye to an impending apocalypse; and the entertainment industry profits by offering distractions to the masses.
Climate scientist Peter Kalmus called Don’t Look Up “the most accurate film about society’s terrifying non-response to climate breakdown I’ve seen,” in an article for The Guardian. He added, “Humanity desperately needs stories that shine a light on the absurdities of knowing what’s coming but failing to act.”
If you’re on the lookout for a new movie to dive into, or perhaps one that’s new to you, check out Mytour's latest book, The Curious Movie Buff: A Miscellany of Fantastic Films from the Past 50 Years. It offers fascinating behind-the-scenes insights and trivia about some of the greatest films of the last five decades. Grab your copy now at your go-to bookstore or online right here.
