When Will the World End Already?: Climate Change, Christian Eschatology, and the Hollywood Blockbuster after 9/11

Christian eschatological thought has had a profound impact on American culture and traditions. This thesis examines the ways in which Christian apocalyptic models and contemporary anxieties around climate change intersect in Hollywood blockbuster cinema in the years after 9/11. With religious fervour stirred up by the U.S. government in the wake of the attacks, films such as The Day After Tomorrow, War of the Worlds, Knowing, 2012, San Andreas, and Geostorm reclaim religiously conservative values through their focus on family drama in which the apocalypse acts as a positive force of social change. I argue that these films harmfully conflate climate change with notions of biblically redemptive Armageddon, reinforcing the idea that climate change can be understood within a Christian understanding of the End as cumulative and purposeful.