We will almost certainly hear about ICE and Trump and his oil wars in Conan O’Brien’s running commentary or in the acceptance speeches during Sunday night’s Academy Awards ceremony. But will anyone talk about climate change?
An analysis by Good Energy, a story consultancy, points to a good chance that someone will. In advance of the awards ceremony on March 15, the group conducted a “climate reality check” (sometimes referred to as the Bechdel-Wallace test for climate fiction) on the films that received nominations for Academy Awards.
In what it describes as “a defining year for climate at the Oscars,” the team found that 31% of the eligible nominees, a record high, acknowledged climate change.
To be eligible, a film has to be set on Earth in the very recent past, present, or future. To be judged as acknowledging climate change, the story world of the film must depict climate change in some way, and a character in the story must recognize it. The team that conducted the research on this year’s Oscar nominees concluded that five films met these criteria: “Arco,” “Bugonia,” “Jurassic World Rebirth,” “The Lost Bus,” and “Sirat.”
Because two of these films involve climate-intensified wildfires, if one of them wins the Oscar for its category, then the presenters or accepters may well speak the words “climate change.”
And that, Good Energy argues, is important for all of us. The filmmakers would have broken the climate silence, our reluctance to talk about climate change, in two ways: first, by incorporating climate change into their story, and second, by talking about that choice in public.
Fingers crossed. Let’s take a closer look at the five films Good Energy highlighted.
The films
In its reports, Good Energy cautions that “climate isn’t a genre”; our “one climate reality” can inspire many distinctly different stories. The five that passed this year’s climate reality check evidence these points, but they also call attention to the vagaries of the test, to the enormous qualitative and quantitative differences in how films engage climate change.
“Arco” tells the story of a young and misbehaving time traveler who leaves his sustainability community in the clouds and falls/flies into a suburban community serviced by robots and about to be razed by wildfires. “Sirat” depicts “a crew of desert ravers” touring on the edges of a world descending into climate dystopia. In “The Lost Bus,” a bus driver and an elementary school teacher endure a harrowing five hours of climate-stoked wildfires. In these three films, the connections with climate change are clear and substantial.
But in “Bugonia” and “Jurassic World Rebirth,” the climate connections are confused and incidental. Most of “Bugonia” is spent in the claustrophobic tension of the basement where Emma Stone’s CEO character is held by her seemingly deluded abductors. Only in the closing minutes, in a loopy rendition of a tired trope, do viewers learn that Stone is the leader of aliens who have come to Earth to teach humans an environmental lesson.
“Jurassic World Rebirth” offers a passing nod to climate change on its pseudo-genetic journey, but the problem has been reversed. In the film, the climate has not changed enough. Dinosaurs are migrating to the equator because the north is still too cold and won’t support the global expansion of dinosaurs depicted in the previous trilogy.
Climate change is not the point of these two films, and neither takes it seriously.
Other highlights from 2025
Films nominated for Oscars represent, by definition, only the most distinguished fraction of the films produced that year. In the final pages of its report for 2026, Good Energy applauds the strong environmental messages in “Avatar: Fire and Ash,” “Hamnet,” and “Train Dreams.” The report also notes the passing references to climate change in “One Battle After Another.” (I would argue that the film passes the climate reality test.)
To Good Energy’s list of noteworthies, I would add two other lists: films with glancing but undeveloped references to climate change, and films that could easily have incorporated climate change and passed the climate reality check but didn’t.
First, however, I want to call attention to a 2025 film that very directly addressed climate change and should have been nominated for an Oscar but wasn’t: “The Prime Minister.” This documentary about Jacinda Ardern’s six years as Prime Minister of New Zealand is an inspiring study in climate action, courage, and compassion. It deserves a wider audience.
The following films made glancing references to climate change. But these were usually lost in the melodrama or mayhem of their genres:
- “40 Acres” – Climate change contributed to the food-deprived dystopia depicted.
- “Life of Chuck” – Climate change is but one of many disasters ending this world.
- “Mickey 17” – Climate change, it’s implied, contributed to the decision to leave Earth.
- “Thunderbolts” – Like many MCU films, it offers a sardonic nod to climate change.
Other films, also of varying commercial success, missed manifest opportunities to include a nod to climate change.
- “Eddington” – A film about COVID and culture wars never mentions climate change
- “House of Dynamite” – Global nuclear watchdogs never think about climate change
- “Is This Thing On?” – Life and love in New York City, and no mention of Hurricane Sandy
- “Materialists” – Life, love, and condos in New York City, and no mention of Hurricane Sandy
- “Sorry, Baby” – Climate change is not part of this smart woman’s take on the world
‘A defining year for climate change‘
Has Hollywood turned a corner on the representation of climate change in film? Are we looking at “a defining year for climate change” in 2026? The results of previous studies are ambiguous.
Over the years, successive Good Energy research teams, originally organized and led by Matthew Schneider-Mayerson, now an associate professor of English and co-director of the Program in Environmental Studies at Rice University in Houston, have conducted four different climate reality checks.
- In the first, a study of the 250 most popular films produced between 2013 and 2022, the team found that only 9.6% of the eligible films passed the two-part test.
- In the second, a study of nominees for the 2024 Academy Awards, the researchers found that 23% of the films passed, a significant improvement over the historic average.
- But in 2025, in the third application of the test, only 10% of the eligible films passed, a reversion to the mean.
So what can we see in the movies on the screen or announced for 2026?
The prospects for cli-fi movies in 2026
At the cinema, 2026 is rolling out in reverse alphabetical order: zombies at the start, aliens at the end.
Renewable energy got a mention in “We Bury The Dead,” the zombie little sister to “The Bone Temple,” but no more. (When you’re battling zombies, it’s hard to focus on the climate.) Even the excitedly environmental “Hoppers” avoids climate change.
Much of the program for the 2027 Academy Awards will be set by the spring, summer, and fall holiday blockbusters: “Project Hail Mary” (dying sun), “Disclosure Day” (aliens among us), and “Avengers: Doomsday” (the MCU endures).
Many of the other Oscar likelies — Nolan’s “The Odyssey,” the Hunger Games prequel, the next installment of the Star Wars franchise, the “Dune” finale — will not be eligible for Good Energy’s annual review. (Likewise with two movies still in theaters now: “Wuthering Heights” and “The Bride!”)
Thus, while there’s a chance that more than 31% of the eligible Oscar winners will pass the climate reality check in 2027, it seems equally likely that the tally will fall back to 2025’s 10%.
I see nothing in the FirstShowing.net schedule for 2026 that might offer an extended engagement with climate change. Just more aliens, zombies, races/hunts/competitions to the death, and the psychopathic killers of horror films. Oh, and AI!
It’s been more than 20 years since Roland Emmerich released “The Day After Tomorrow.” The film was a box office success in 2004. I would love to see another major motion picture tackle climate change head-on and at length — but without the misdirection of the Atlantic Meridian Overturning Circulation, and without the bells and whistles of time travel or invading aliens. But that’s not what my climate fiction models are forecasting.
