Tomorrow is Earth Day so I’m getting all my movies lined up for the day so I can watch them while I’m running the dryer (empty), turning on all the lights in the house, leaving the minivan idling in the driveway, plugging in all my Christmas lights, and wrapping myself in blankets because I turned the air condition down to 54 degrees.
Brendan Fraser’s new movie made me think of all the ridiculous environmental movies that have come out of Hollywood. Here’s the top seven stupidest environmental messages movies I could think of right now.
Furry Vengeance (opening tomorrow) – So a big bad evil company wants to knock down a bunch of trees so the animals of the forest act like furry poltergeists and start annoying the heck out of Brendan Fraser. If the animals were doing this as payback for all the ridiculous Brendan Fraser movies I’d be supportive but sadly it’s just a case of animals picking on a sentient being with less intelligence than animals.
Thankfully, just yesterday the Supreme Court made animal cruelty videos legal again so the sequel where Fraser tries to get back at the animals could be fun. (It might have to be independently financed.)
AvatarAvatar tries to disguise its clever environmental message by disguising it as a club and beating us over the head with it like baby seals. Funny, while James Cameron had such a big problem killing trees, he didn’t seem to mind killing humans in the movie. Huh. You’d almost get the idea that super environmentalists don’t like humans all that much.
Return of the Jedi Really, if you look at it it’s the same stinking plot as Avatar with the natives fighting back against mechanized imperialists except that Luke didn’t get romantically attached to the Ewoks. If he did I think their kids would probably look a lot like me though. But I really hated the Ewoks. And the later introduced Jar Jar Binks was evidence that some races should be wiped out.
The Happening This wasn’t just a bad environmental movie this was one of the worst movies I’ve ever seen. I think the trees were just trying to kill Mark Wahlberg for the “Planet of the Apes” remake. A shame they failed.
The Day After TomorrowAnother “When Nature Attacks” movie. You gotta’ love a movie where a Dick Cheney look alike is the bad guy.
Fire Down Below Remember this classic? What Hollywood imbecile greenlighted this disaster? I’m betting the Steven Seagal fan base and the Al Gore fanbase are pretty freaking mutually exclusive.
And let’s face it. The only Fire Down Below Steven Seagal was feeling by 1997 was heartburn from too many cheeseburgers.
Happy Feet –
At some point in this awful pointless meandering snore fest I was hoping Steven Segal would appear and start slapping and tasering penguins. And then he’d probably eat them.
April 21, 2010 at 3:10 pm
You're forgetting the 1992 animated classic "FernGully: The Last Rainforest."
April 21, 2010 at 3:21 pm
Mr. Archbold,
While I normally agree with you, I must disagree about The Happening. I recommend you watch it again, and look more deeply at it. Most films by M. Night Shyamalan are not as they seem, and often, they're more Catholic than we realize. He has stated himself that "faith" affects many of his films (he was educated by Catholic nuns and is an Anglican). Perhaps it wasn't simply a movie about plants killing people – perhaps there was something more. A deeper look is required – using a "sacramental imagination."
Just a thought.
Respectfully,
Joseph
April 21, 2010 at 3:42 pm
I was just about to comment that even though M. Night Shamalayan generally gets a bad rap, I like most of his movies, but The Happening was the WORST M. Night movie I've ever seen! That's OK, most people hated The Village and Lady in the Water; I happened to like them.
Hmmm, maybe The Happening is worth another look…
Speaking of bad environmental movies, have you seen "The Bee Movie?"
April 21, 2010 at 3:43 pm
Ferngully….ahhhhhhhhh. Bad anon! Please. Have charity, we're trying to block that sort of stuff out. It's bad to have suffered through that once.
There's also Pocahontaus, but Avatar covered that already. March of the Penguins –deemed the dullest movie ever by my kids.
April 21, 2010 at 3:47 pm
Spirit: Stallion of the Cimarron
demonizes eeeeeevuhl white Europeans more than environmental but is right up there with the overtly preachy kid films like Happy Feet and Fern Gully
April 21, 2010 at 4:19 pm
…and wrapping myself in blankets because I turned the air condition down to 54 degrees.
Amateur. You're supposed to toss the blankets onto the fireplace with some virgin old-growth timber, and wrap yourself in genuine mink with spotted-owl feather trim. Then you roast dolphin over the flames.
As an eighth movie, I vote for The Core, in which a doomsday right-wing weather-weapon accidentally stops Earth's magnetic core from spinning, requiring a team of the world's most telegenic leftists to drill down there and get it re-started with nukes – which will then conveniently not be used on the peaceful happy children of utopian agrarian cultures.
Bonus: the "Insultingly Stupid Movie Physics" book and website named it the absolute worst example of physics in the movies.
April 21, 2010 at 4:52 pm
How on God's Green Earth could you forget Ferngully?!?! I'm ashamed ….
April 21, 2010 at 5:02 pm
I never saw Fern Gully. My kids had no interest in it. Sorry. But I'm not about to go out now and subject myself to it.
Instead I'll watch the new reality show "Steven Seagal, Lawman."
April 21, 2010 at 5:05 pm
Happy feet was not just a pro-environmental movie, it was down right anti-religion. The whole great-penguin-in-the-sky thing was outrageous. And I will never forget the scene when the penguins come upon the scary man village and the first thing in view is a church.
Don't let your kids watch this one.
The Happening actually scared the poop out of me and I will never watch it again. It was not "the trees turning against us" story line, but the self-mutilation that I couldn't handle.
There is one tree hugging book and movie that I absolutely loved…Lord of the Rings 😉
April 21, 2010 at 5:43 pm
I liked "the happening" and "day after tomorrow"
the rest are just comic book kid stuff – ridiculus
of course, i like to see disaster movies
it goes back to the saturday creature features when i was a kid
no matter how difficult i may think my life is and good disaster will lighten my heart
even if i don't end up rolling ing the asiles
April 21, 2010 at 5:45 pm
As bad as Fern Gully was, they actually made a sequel. Nope, didn't watch it. My eyes were still bleeding from the first one.
For a vintage stinker, rent "No Blade of Grass". It'll send you howling out the door. Don't say you weren'warned.
Two other enviornmentally themed flicks that'll send blood gushing out your ears are "Eight Legged Freaks" and "Mega Shark Versus Giant Octopus". That last one stars Debbie Gibson, she must really be desperate for the money.
April 21, 2010 at 5:58 pm
Now, now. As silly as the Ewok storyline in Return of the Jedi was, it is clear that their joining the rebels against the Empire was spurred by C3-PO's stories and not by any environmental concerns.
April 21, 2010 at 6:09 pm
Remember, in order to indoctrinate with your philosophy, feed it to the children. It's a shame these movies mostly target our kids. Another point is that Hollywood is trying to tell us how to live our lives and the movie industry is one of the biggest energy consumers and one of the worst polluters! And let's not get going on Nobel-Peace-Prize-is-meaningless Al Gore!
April 21, 2010 at 7:38 pm
I agree those movies are pretty lame and manipulative. But I did see others with a purer message e.g. the Medicine Man with Sean Connery re: preserving the flora and fauna in the rain forests as the source for the cure of cancer et. al. Then my favorite is the Andromeda Strain (remade 2008) that is against the exploitation of the environment to our detriment.
April 21, 2010 at 8:18 pm
Happy Feet was terrible for all the reasons already stated, but the worst is they sang the song: "Let's talk about X, baby". Saying X instead of exactly what the radio version said. In a kids movie. How inappropriate IMO.
April 21, 2010 at 10:08 pm
I'm surprised your list didn't include 'An Inconvenient Truth'. Surely the worst fictional enviro-disaster movie of all time.
April 21, 2010 at 10:34 pm
unrelated Star Wars fanboy comment: "Return of the Jedi" was not nearly as bad as that abomination they call "The Phantom Menace"
April 21, 2010 at 10:42 pm
Return of the Jedi? Really? There's nothing environmental about it whatsoever. The Ewoks were not fighting to save their virginal woodland. They chose to ally themselves with the Rebels in order to help them take control of the shield generator. Think of how many trees and vines the Ewoks chopped down to make their weapons.
April 21, 2010 at 11:06 pm
I would nominate "The China Syndrome" – bad movie and propaganda against actually clean nuclear energy. Or how about brainwashing kid movie FernGully: The Last Rainforest.
Day after tomorrow was at least delightfully bad. A good crappy movie.
April 21, 2010 at 11:20 pm
We should really get the B-movie Cathecism's take on this…