It has been a week since the release of M. Night Shyamalan’s new sci-fi thriller “The Happening“. So if you have not seen it already, you probably know what the big twist is; the trees are upset about how humans are abusing the planet so they decided to emit a chemical that induces suicide. Makes sense to me.

Not the bit about the conspiracy-yielding trees. That’s just silly. What does make sense is that the movie industry takes the side of the Mother Nature. After all, what makes a more compelling story than the tale of an underdog?

“The Happening” inspired me to look at other films that have also featured the fight between man and nature. There are good ones and bad ones that come to mind. Hayao Miyazaki’s “Princess Mononoke” is a prime example. With giant wolves and boars and menacing civilizations devouring everything in its path, it is easy to see just how extreme the entertainment industry views the battle for preserving the environment. Another example is “Congo”, a mid-90s B-movie that creates a fantastically exaggerated tale of what happens when a species is driven towards extinction by man’s greed.

What strikes me the most, however, is that according to the entertainment industry Mother Nature has a fury that can not be doused by the power of free love and peace. There cannot be a common ground for the two sides to stand on, there cannot be a compromise. For one way of life to live, another has to die. Maybe this is because with entertainment comes hyperbolic portrayals. Or maybe in the end, to take another Hollywood cliché, there can be only one.

Photo by Persefone Loki.