The Climate Reality Check

Last year was the hottest year in recorded history, and our planet is currently warmer than it's been in at least 125,000 years. We wanted to know if the most critically acclaimed films of the year reflected this reality. To find out, a research team led by Dr. Matthew Schneider-Mayerson used the Climate Reality Check to analyze the films that received Oscar nominations in 2024.

Thirty-one fictional, feature-length films received Oscar nominations in 2024. Of those, thirteen fit our inclusion criteria: stories set in the present or near future, on Earth, in this universe. Those films were: Barbie, American Fiction, Anatomy of a Fall, Past Lives, May December, Nyad, Mission: Impossible—Dead Reckoning Part One, The Creator, Spider-Man: Across the Spider-Verse, Io Capitano, Perfect Days, The Teachers’ Lounge, and Godzilla Minus One. Each film was coded by two researchers  to ensure accuracy and reliability.

This is the first Oscars year coded using this test, and the results are surprising—in a good way.

In Barbie, nominated for eight Academy Awards, we see a quick mention that ties the climate crisis to consumerism. Teenage Sasha (Ariana Greenblatt) lays into Barbie (Margot Robbie): “You set the feminist movement back fifty years, you destroyed girls' innate sense of worth, and you're killing the planet with your glorification of rampant consumerism.” Though the words “climate change” aren't spoken, the tie between “rampant consumerism” and “killing the planet” evokes the climate crisis and connects climate change to one of its root systemic causes. And by juxtaposing feminism and climate concerns (“sexualized capitalism!”), the film makes the intersectional argument that it's all connected, all the same bad guy.

In Mission Impossible, nominated for two Academy Awards, Eugene Kittridge (Henry Czerny) warns Ethan Hunt (Tom Cruise) that “the next world war isn't going to be a cold one.” He goes on to say, “It's going to be a ballistic war over a rapidly shrinking ecosystem. It's going to be a war for the last of our dwindling energy, drinkable water, breathable air.” Ethan is hunting a rogue AI, a cyberweapon originally developed by the US to prepare for the climate chaos Kittridge evokes. One of the AI's key features is its ability to predict probable outcomes, a skill we might all wish we had as we enter the uncertainty of our climate future

In Nyad, nominated for two Academy Awards, climate change is explicitly mentioned as an obstacle to Diana Nyad's attempt to make history by swimming from Cuba to Florida. On Nyad's third try, she is stung by a box jellyfish, which almost kills her. Her friend and coach, Bonnie Stoll (Jodie Foster), tells a dazed Nyad (Annette Bening), “So the UMiami folks think that the box jellyfish came up off the shallow reef when we left Cuba. Global warming.” Earlier, the team on the boat accompanying Nyad say the box jellyfish “can kill you” and “shouldn't be” in this part of the ocean. Through dialogue in two scenes, climate change is linked to changes in marine animal ranges, which pose threats to individual species, ecosystems, and human health—and threaten the life of the film's protagonist.