Only one Oscar-nominated movie passes 'climate Bechdel test': Report
The vast majority of Academy Award-nominated movies do not acknowledge climate change or environmental issues, despite those issues being increasingly present in mainstream blockbusters, according to a report from the consultancy Good Energy.
The group on Thursday released its second annual Climate Reality Check, a two-pronged test that assesses whether climate change exists within the world of a movie and at least one character knows it. It was inspired by the Bechdel Test, named for cartoonist Alison Bechdel, which measures whether a work of fiction contains at least two named female characters who discuss a subject other than a man.
The group narrowed down the 30 nominated films to the 11 set on Earth in the present, recent past or near future. Only one, the animated science fiction film “The Wild Robot,” met the Reality Check criteria. The movie, the story of a robot shipwrecked on an island only inhabited by animals, includes a shot of San Francisco Bay and depicts the Golden Gate Bridge as submerged due to sea level rise.
Good Energy founder and CEO Anna Jane Joyner told The Hill in an interview that while only one film met the full criteria, the film’s box office and critical success demonstrated that such themes can find an audience.
“What I love about ‘The Wild Robot’ is it's a story that really incorporates climate throughout all of it, and so it’s a much richer depiction of climate change, and I loved a lot of the themes. I thought they were really relevant, especially after such a harrowing year where we all experience climate disasters,” she said.
She pointed to devastating flooding last fall in the Asheville, N.C., area, her hometown, as well as the wildfires that ravaged parts of Los Angeles this year.
She also pointed to the success of other 2024 movies, such as “Dune: Part Two” and “Kingdom of the Planet of the Apes.” Those movies did not qualify in the test because they are set on another planet and in the distant future, respectively, but they still found box office success addressing many of the same themes, she said.
“Dune: Part Two,” for example, depicts how the plundering of natural resources on the desert planet Arrakis “not only affects the people who are living there, and the ecosystems ... but also the exploiters and the people in power, because they come very close to risking the source of energy that powered the entire universal economy,” she said.
The number of qualifying films is down from last year, when only two, “Barbie” and the biopic “Nyad,” fulfilled the test.
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