When looking at films of the future, we need to be looking beyond climate apocalypse.

And there are more movies giving us a little more hope.

So, with the scenes of ‘The Green Place of Many Mothers’, we get a Solarpunk vision embedded in the latest Mad Max saga.

Films rather less hyped up but still full of promise for the future have been coming out of Studio Ghibli for years. And even Disney has gone SolarPunk of late.

This is the opening of a very promising piece from this months World Crunch magazine, looking at Mad Max to Solarpunk to Last Of Us – or how climate disaster culture evolves:

Eco-disaster fiction has changed since Soylent Green, one of Hollywood’s first eco-disaster films, came out in 1973; there has been an evolution from catastrophic fatalism to a certain optimism, with TV series like The Last Of Us.

And for something more mainstream, today’s Varsity magazine looks at exactly the same subject, and the climate crisis in spring – or, how I stopped watching disaster films and learned to love the planet:

Almost every Studio Ghibli film that isn’t about planes and war takes an exemplary approach to environmentalist discussion… Known for welcoming both adult and child audiences, I encourage anyone struggling to start living greener to look at Studio Ghibli.

So, yes, films about the future can be both entertaining and inspiring.

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