Action, comedy, drama, suspense – everyone has their favorite movies and genre of movies, but what about the wonderful world of green films? The apocalypse movies that say the world ends from too much pollution and this is what happens when we have to rebuild, the cutesy cartoons that teach kids not to pollute, the dramas about people living in a polluted world and having to destroy the main source of pollutants.
I’m aware that people have their own lists of their top 5 movies, but here are my top 5 picks for the best green movies of all-time (or at least my personal favorites!).
Finding Nemo
Call it what you will, but I consider Finding Nemo to be a green movie. We all know the story of the little fish that gets taken far away from home and has to find a way to adjust to domestic life while his father frantically scours the ends of the ocean to find him.
But think toward the middle/end of the movie when little Nemo and his bum fin find a way out of the tank in the little boy’s bedroom and back into the ocean. He fakes his own death so that he’ll get flushed down the toilet and end up back in the ocean. The moral of the story to all the little youngins: whatever you flush may end up polluting the ocean floor.
Happy Feet
In keeping with the kids’ movie theme here to start, Happy Feet is another great green movie for all ages. First of all, the main “characters” (the penguins, of course) are so isanely cute that you’d be crazy not to like the movie for that reason alone.
The big penguin that sits on top of a mound of snow and has his penguin friends bring him gifts, Lovelace (voiced by Robin Williams), has a soda can ring stuck around his neck that eventually ends up choking him. This is a very real environmental issues. Many people throw away the plastic rings that hold soda cans and bottles together for purchasing directly into the trash, when they should be cut so that animals in the wild where the trash is dumped (another environmental no-no) don’t get caught in the rings like that.
And, of course, the end of the movie is just a blatant, screaming environmental message if I’ve ever seen one. Mumble, the main character, sees all of the equipment that humans use to fish and run their businesses in those climates and he gets scared and almost dies. The moral of the story is that humans are getting too much in the way of so many animals’ natural climates and it’s disrupting the way these creatures live in their own home habitats.
The Day After Tomorrow
Moving away from the kids’ theme a bit is The Day After Tomorrow. This entire movie is advocating greener practices to save the world! No, really.
The main character, Jack Hall (Dennis Quaid) takes a trip to Antarctica only to find that a large piece of a polar ice sheet has been sheared off, which he later discovers triggers extreme climate changes around the world.
Jack’s son, Sam (Jake Gyllenhaal), is in New York in the meantime, where it rains for 3 weeks straight while there are other climate disasters happening all over the world. Sam (and everyone else) figures out that there is going to be a new ice age and people start scurrying to points south for their warmth. Daddy to the rescue, though, Jack goes against the rest of the world flocking south and heads back to New York to help save his son.
The entire movie is basically a prediction for what will happen to the world if the greenhouse effect and global warming continue, so it makes a pretty valid point about the advantages of thinking about going green. Hey, you could save the world!
Erin Brockovich
The classic true story of a single mother (played by Julia Roberts) looking for a job and ending up taking on the world. She loses a lawsuit against a doctor who she was involved in a car accident with and finally convinces her lawyer to let her work in his office as replacement for the loss.
She wears somewhat trashy clothing and is a bit hippy-ish, so of course no one takes her seriously at first, until she starts uncovering a questionable real estate case involving a multi-billion dollar corporation. She finds out that the company is covering up the fact that they’re buying land that is polluted with a deadly toxin that is poisoning the residents that live on it. They’re trying to buy the land because they’re the ones illegally polluting and dumping the toxins into it.
Erin Brockovich becomes an integral part in her law firm’s case against the company that’s polluting and then buying the land and they end up winning. Hooray, Erin, for saving the environment!
The Lorax
A classic Dr. Seuss book, the original Lorax, made for TV, is a great environmental lesson to kids and adults alike. In true Dr. Seuss fashion, the main characters are a Once-ler (a businessman, basically), a Lorax (a small and irritable creature that lives in the trees) and a little boy. The Once-ler tells the little boy a story about the land that used to be in the exact place where they sit.
The Once-ler invaded the area with an idea to make a useless fashion piece out of the trees on the land. One by one, he cut down the trees (truffula trees) and used them to make his products, even against the Lorax’s warnings. Soon, all of the animals in the area are forced to leave because they needed the truffula trees to survive, but the Once-ler’s business is booming, so he decides to continue chopping them down.
Eventually there are no truffula trees left to cut, so the Once-ler is forced out of business, and the Lorax has to leave his home for good. He leaves the Once-ler with a truffula tree seed, though, that the Once-ler gives to the little boy to encourage bringing back the forest that all of the animals lived in before he cut down all of their trees.
The best news of all about The Lorax is that a new, full-length version will be out this year! It’s a classic environmental movie that everyone should see.
Jackie Ryan is a freelance writer for various lifestyle publications. She’s a big movie buff and a big believer in going green – so throw your trash in your Rubbermaid garbage cans and get the recycling out every day to at least try to limit your impact on our beautiful environment!
