A popular screening method for movies, the Bechdel Test, is getting a climate-focused facelift.
The Bechdel Test was first coined in 1985 when cartoonist Alison Bechdel created a comic strip that proposed new film criteria: A movie should have at least two women in it who talk to each other about something other than a man.
Now the nonprofit Good Energy has created a similar test to evaluate whether the reality of climate change is being reflected in films and television.
A story passes Good Energy’s Climate Reality Check if two conditions are met: Climate change exists in the world and at least one character acknowledges it.
It seems easy, but a lot of films fail. Even in films where the first box is checked — like the disaster flick “2012” — climate change is never mentioned.
To test their theory, Good Energy conducted a study with the Buck Lab for Climate and Environment at Colby College in Maine. They applied the Climate Reality Check to 250 blockbusters released from 2013 to 2022 and found that less than 10% of the films analyzed passed.
The hope is that simple measures like the Climate Reality Check encourage screenwriters to look at their stories through an added lens.
“If more films meet the Climate Reality Check, it would expand our capacity to respond to the climate crisis,” Schneider-Mayerson, the study’s lead author, told Yale Climate Connections.
And this latest entertainment checklist doesn’t have to come at the expense of good storytelling.
“We are very story-first at Good Energy,” said Carmiel Banasky, Good Energy’s editor-in-chief. “The writer is the expert; climate needs to bubble up in an organic way to that story, no matter what kind of amazing messages we think should be put out there.”
Three Movies That Pass The Climate Reality Check
- Nyad: Diana Nyad’s (Annette Bening) history-making swim from Cuba to Florida is interrupted by a box jellyfish, which is miles offshore from its normal habitat. “Global warming,” surmises Bonnie Stoll (Jodie Foster).
- Mission Impossible: Dead Reckoning Part One: Ethan Hunt (Tom Cruise) talks climate change with Eugene Kittridge (Henry Czerny), who says the next world war will be over “drinkable water” and “breathable air.”
- Don’t Look Up: This satirical climate allegory centers on two scientists (Leonardo DiCaprio) and (Jennifer Lawrence) as they desperately try to warn the world about an extinction-level event. In an interview with director Adam McKay, critic Nathan J. Robinson called it a film that managed to “reach people…entertain people and educate people at the same time.”
A version of this article originally appeared in the 2025 Environment Edition of the Goodnewspaper.
Header image via Don’t Look Up / Netflix
