IN THE FORTHCOMING film \u201cMother Nature,\u201d co-written by the actress Jamie Lee Curtis, several women in Catch Creek, N.M., fight back against Cobalt, an oil extraction company that\u2019s overtaken their fictional town. Among them is Nova, who, as a child, watched her father get crushed by an oil derrick. Now in her 20s, she\u2019s devoted her life to sabotaging the firm as it promotes a dubious water-cleaning technology. On Aug. 8, Titan Comics published a graphic novel adaptation in which one character resembles Curtis; in addition to directing the film, the actress, 64, plans to eventually play Cynthia Butterfield, the Cobalt heir.<\/p>\n
The project grew from a vision Curtis had at 19: After a piece of gravel hit her car\u2019s windshield, she pictured a body being pummeled with tiny rocks during a wind storm; she imagined a mountain had been blown apart to create a tunnel, and that the wounding of the land would incite a series of natural disasters \u201cuntil you rectified the situation,\u201d she says, \u201cuntil you stopped and repaired.\u201d<\/p>\n
The time for such repair is, of course, short. As the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change wrote in March, \u201cThere is a rapidly closing window of opportunity to secure a livable and sustainable future for all.\u201d (In the United States, carbon emissions rose last year.) We\u2019ve heard it before: Unless we change course imminently, we \u2014 and countless other species \u2014 will die.<\/p>\n
Impending doom lends itself to suspenseful onscreen narratives yet, when it comes to environmental disaster, such stories have typically created distance between the viewer and the catastrophes depicted: Think of Adam McKay\u2019s \u201cDon\u2019t Look Up\u201d (2022), a satire in which an asteroid hurtling toward Earth becomes a metaphor for the climate crisis, leaving audiences about as apathetic as the majority of its characters. We\u2019ve seen lots of fictional fallout after ecological calamity, from the second coming of the Ice Age in \u201cThe Day After Tomorrow\u201d (2004) to the fungus-spurred zombie chaos of \u201cThe Last of Us\u201d (2023) \u2014 both dystopias too exaggerated to imagine as our own. Other quieter dramas use a small town to represent a larger problem, notably \u201cErin Brockovich\u201d (2000) but, more recently, \u201cPromised Land\u201d (2012), about fracking in rural Pennsylvania and \u201cDark Waters\u201d (2019), based on the real-life lawyer who exposed DuPont\u2019s toxic waste dumping in West Virginia. Situations like these regularly occur, and yet these films make them seem like stories happening elsewhere, ones that can only be rectified by a hometown hero.<\/p>\n
It\u2019s a tough brief: making an eco-focused movie that people want to watch, while also inspiring engagement with an issue that feels too intractable to face. Yet a new genre is emerging \u2014 the environmental action film, or eco-thriller \u2014 that addresses the conundrum of climate anxiety by applying the tropes of a heist flick to the mission of curbing the consumption of earth\u2019s resources. Such works bring us to the edge of our seats, making us wonder: Can these people succeed in securing our future? And then, perhaps, can we?<\/p>\n
IN \u201cHOW TO Blow Up a Pipeline\u201d (2022), a group of 20-somethings assemble in West Texas to do what the title says. As we watch them build bombs, we learn how their lives have been destroyed by the fossil-fuel industry (Xochitl\u2019s mother died in a freak heat wave; Dwayne and his family were forced to move after an oil company claimed eminent domain). The film\u2019s writers, Ariela Barer, Daniel Goldhaber and Jordan Sjol, based their script on the Swedish human-ecology researcher Andreas Malm\u2019s 2021 book of the same name. They were also influenced by a 2011 documentary about the environmentalist group Earth Liberation Front and, less expected, \u201cOcean\u2019s 11\u201d (2001), starring Brad Pitt and George Clooney as casino robbers.<\/p>\n
This time, however, our protagonists aren\u2019t flashy or even talented, just fed up. In the Icelandic film \u201cWoman at War\u201d (2018), Halla, a 50-year-old choir teacher played by Halld\u00f3ra Geirhar\u00f0sd\u00f3ttir, spends her off hours pulling down power lines that fuel a nearby aluminum smelter. (Jodie Foster plans to direct and star in an upcoming English-language adaptation, set in the American West.) Another forerunner in which ordinary people take on Big Pollution is Kelly Reichardt\u2019s \u201cNight Moves\u201d (2013), featuring a trio of beleaguered Oregonians \u2014 a spa worker (Dakota Fanning), a farmer (Jesse Eisenberg) and an ex-Marine (Peter Sarsgaard) \u2014 who team up to explode a hydroelectric dam. In each of these movies, the villain isn\u2019t some evil mastermind but an industrial force going about business as usual.<\/p>\n
Despite following big-budget formulas \u2014 the tension rises as the characters race to execute their plans \u2014 these are women-centered independent films in which tactical logistics are interwoven with imagery of the landscape that\u2019s at risk: Halla hides between dripping glaciers; the \u201cPipeline\u201d characters are tiny against the broad, brown desert. In contrast to eco-horror films of the past that pit humans against the mysterious, malevolent force of nature (like M. Night Shyamalan\u2019s \u201cThe Happening\u201d [2008] or Alex Garland\u2019s \u201cAnnihilation\u201d [2018]), here it\u2019s the familiarity that\u2019s ominous. \u201cEverything I\u2019ve written \u2014 black ice, hurricanes, tornadoes, hailstorms \u2014 it\u2019s happening,\u201d Curtis says. \u201cYou can amplify the visuals in a movie but it\u2019s all [there], all the time now.\u201d<\/p>\n
We know now that the climate crisis can\u2019t be fixed by measuring our personal carbon footprints or planting trees to compensate for our commutes. But we still crave being part of a collective human solution to what we\u2019ve wrought. Barer and her co-writers started working on their movie during the pandemic, feeling \u201ctotally disempowered,\u201d says the 24-year-old actress, who also stars in it. When the group decided to adapt Malm\u2019s book, \u201cSuddenly it felt like there was something we could do, rather than sitting around with our hands tied waiting for an industry to reform.\u201d That\u2019s the real thrill of watching these films: not whether the protagonists are taking the right approach, nor whether they succeed, but the satisfaction that comes with seeing them try something, anything, as the world burns.<\/p>\n