A rodeo crowd waves cowboy hats as a man rides a bucking horse. Then comes a shower of leaves, a chorus of mobile phone rings and a wail of klaxons. Horses run wild and cars collide. One vehicle is whipped into the air by what a weatherman calls a once-in-a-generation tornado outbreak.
This is a scene from Twisters, starring Glen Powell and Daisy Edgar-Jones, in which rivals come together to try to predict and possibly tame ferocious storms in central Oklahoma. A sequel to the hit disaster movie Twister from 1996, it is a Hollywood summer blockbuster designed to entertain – but also a lost opportunity to raise awareness of the climate crisis.
“I just wanted to make sure that with the movie, we don’t ever feel like [it] is putting forward any message,” director Lee Isaac Chung, who grew up in Oklahoma’s tornado belt, told CNN. “I just don’t feel like films are meant to be message-oriented.”
That may not come as a surprise to scientists and climate activists. Despite global heating’s existential threat to humanity, and despite Hollywood’s left-leaning tendencies, the subject rarely makes it to the big screen.
A study published by the nonprofit consultancy Good Energy and Colby College’s Buck Lab for Climate and Environment analysed whether the climate crisis was present in 250 of the top-grossing fictional films between 2013 and 2022. In only 32 of the films (12.8%) was it clear that climate change exists, and in only 24 of them (9.6%) was it clear that a character knows it.
We got a ton of disaster movies made 10+ years ago, to name a few:
- Contagion
- Day After Tomorrow
- The Wave
- The Impossible
- San Andreas
- 2012
- …
And around the same time we got a bunch of dystopian movies, so it’s not like Hollywood haven’t shown what can happen.
I don’t think they want to make movies about current events, instead I think we get more movies about how humans will live years after a global disaster.
Emperor@feddit.uk 3 months ago
Has the whiff of cowardice about it.
scrubbles@poptalk.scrubbles.tech 3 months ago
Looks at every film ever made - and then every other piece of media
If media isn’t supposed to have a message, what the hell has he been watching/reading?
jzzvid@lemmy.blahaj.zone 3 months ago
It’s newspeak for “I don’t want messages that I disgree with in my media.”
Just like when conservatives complain about something being “political” they mean “progressive” and by progressive I mean “they saw a minority.”
It’s a way of saying something without saying it.
BarbecueCowboy@lemmy.world 3 months ago
Not wrong, but poor dude probably just wants to get hired to make another movie someday.
UKFilmNerd@feddit.uk 3 months ago
As I said elsewhere, I think in reply to you again Emperor 😁, Twisters mentions there are more tornados than ever and its the worst they’ve ever seen.
I can’t remember them mentioning if it has been getting worse year after year, but to me, it feels like they almost want to mention climate change but not cross the line.
Despite that, it is two hours of wonderful entertainment. Wasn’t expecting that from a legacy sequel!