Extreme climate and the anthropocentric conception of agency in cinematic ocean planets

Abstract

<p>Faeze Rezaii’s chapter explores the mediations of extreme climate events in the cinematic depiction of ocean planets in Star Wars: Episode II – Attack of the Clones (2002) and Interstellar (2014). Considering these planets as projections of Earth affected by global warming, Rezaii argues that, by showing the planets being beset by naturally induced extreme meteorological events, the films play down the existing human intervention in the formation of extreme climate events and affirm an anthropocentric conception of agency. The films thus indirectly suggest that the largely anthropogenic ecocatastrophe of the present has little to do with our actions. Such a figuration of planets ideologically naturalises the environmental collapse, glosses over human responsibility for it, and, ultimately, contributes to the persistence of the status quo.<br></p>