Is climate change Hollywood's new supervillain?

Eco-thriller Geostorm, with Gerard Butler as a weather-busting scientist, is the latest movie to battle the environment. From Blade Runner 2049 to Alexander Payne’s Downsizing, film are turning up the heat on the big screen

In 2004, when climate change was still called global warming, it was considered sensational enough to get top billing in The Day After Tomorrow, a city-smashing blockbuster by disaster master Roland Emmerich. But the incremental death march of the real thing was considered a little too slow for Independence Day’s king of kablooey. So impatient was he to bring forth a biblical flood and subsequent ice age that was epic enough to swallow the Statue of Liberty, Emmerich conspired to make his cataclysm happen in days, not decades, courtesy of a cosmically unlucky (and scientifically unlikely) flash freeze.

Related: Spoiler alerts: the five best climate-change films

The central message of Aronofsky's Mother! is consistent: what is wrong with these people?

Related: Downsizing review – Matt Damon thinks small in Alexander Payne's miniature masterpiece