By Dan Bloom
CHIAYI CITY, Taiwan — It’s winter in some parts of the world, and summer in other regions, and even in America the temperatures vary widely from Alaska to Florida. It might be pouring raining in one state and snowing heavily in another state. But one thing strikes me as we enter a new year on the man-made calendar: We are skating on thin ice at this moment in human history and man-made global warming.
It’s my hope that Hollywood will use its power to both entertain and educate by greenlighting more and more ”cli-fi” movies this year, with future release dates set for 2016 and beyond. Films with climate change themes cannot save the Earth, or put a stop to global warming, but they can bring home some important emotional cues to movie-goers worldwide.
This planet’s not for burning; this planet’s meant for saving. But how?
In a recent online discussion at a general-interest website called Salon, readers were asked to chime in on the topic of “Does Hollywood Get Climate Change?”
Salon’s editors asked: “2014 saw Hollywood stepping up its climate game. Is it succeeding?”
My own feeling is that Hollywood is getting the message, and slowly bringing into production movies with climate themes. But these things take time. Often a popular novel will be optioned by a savvy film producer for a possible movie. Next, a writer has to be found to pen a script. Then funding has to be procured to pay for what might become a $50 million film. Then actors have to be secured who have time in their busy schedules to fit in yet another movie. A director has to be signed up and a technical crew assembled.
Movies take a lot fo time to plan and make. So if any good climate-themed movies are greenlighted in Hollywood in 2015, chances are that the film won’t be released until 2020 or even later.
But I’m optimistic. An ancient Hebrew saying goes: “Without a vision, the people perish.”
I believe in Hollywood visions, and I believe climate-themed movies can not only deliver timely messages but also provide entertaining film fare.
Imagine if TV and movie drama wunderkind Aaron Sorkin penned a cli-fi screenplay based either on a novel someone else wrote or on an original idea of his own? Would it screen? Would it scream: ”Oh woe is us if we do not do something to stop climate change and global warming?”
Film critic Noah Gittell has written that while he applaud’s Hollywood’s positive handling of many controversial social issues, he laments that the film capital of the world “has yet to adequately address the issue of climate change.”
Could this be changing? I think so.
The Salon piece in early December noted that 2014 was a good year for “cli-fi” in Hollywood, adding that several cli fi movies even received some film awards, dubbed “The Cliffies’,” as part of an annual Cli-Fi Movie Awards program.
“In its charmingly low-fi debut year, the nominees for Best Cli Fi Movie of the Year included ‘Young Ones’ and ‘The Rover,’ two films with climate change inspired plots set in near-futures on the edge of environmental and political collapse,” Salon editors said of the online awards event.
One special Cliffie award went to ‘Snowpiercer set in a world where geo-engineering tragically created a new ice age. Salon‘s own film critic Andrew O’Hehir praised the South Korean movie, saying that “its final and tragic understanding that if we are ever to escape our train of planetary destruction, our delusional consumer paradise built on the suffering of many, the price will be more than most of us are willing to pay.”
So is the film industry beginning to engage seriously with climate change?
Will 2015 give movie fans more cli-fi movies to watch and contemplate?
I hope so. Time is of the essence.
*
Bloom, based in Taiwan, is an inveterate web surfer and a climate change activist. Your comment may be placed in the box provided below or you may send it directly to the author at dan.bloom@sdjewishworld.com