Humans despoiling the planet is a common liberal Hollywood trope for movies. Comic-Con 2018 just delivered two new trailers with environmentalist themes including a monster movie that calls humans “the infection.”
The annual San Diego event, which took place July 19-22, is known for buzzworthy announcements for TV and movies, and trailer releases. This year’s trailers included Aquaman and Godzilla: King of the Monsters. A commonality of those upcoming movies was the “humans are devastating the planet” plot points.
Godzilla: King of the Monsters was overt.
“Our world is changing. The mass extinction we feared has already begun. And we are the cause. We are the infection. But like all living organisms the Earth unleashed a fever to fight this infection,” declares scientist Dr. Emma Russell in the trailer. The cure? Huge monsters called the Titans, Earth’s “original and rightful rulers.”
According to The Wrap, the movie will involve Dr. Russell deliberately attempting to unleash organic forces of destruction to save the planet from humans.
“In Dr. Russell’s estimation, the only way to save the planet is to destroy it — so she and others look for the Titans to wake them up so they can get busy obliterating life,” they wrote.
Comic-Con also meant a new trailer for Aquaman. Already, Entertainment Weekly had reported that Aquaman’s half-brother and antagonist King Orm is a “kind of eco-warrior” upset at the surface world — aka humans — for polluting the oceans. As such, he’s a sympathetic villain according to actor Patrick Wilson who told EW “that’s very easy to understand."
Orm “is about to declare war on the surface world,” and Aquaman is sought out to unite the two worlds that made him. In the new trailer Orm says, “The war is coming to the surface and I’m bringing the wrath of the seven seas with me.”
