Captain Planet: the superhero reboot we need to fight climate change
I’m a child of the ’90s. I grew up reading Goosebumps, collected Polly Pocket and drank Capri-Sun at parties. I also remember many occasions on which I’d play with my friends in the schoolyard, and some make-believe catastrophe would be upon us, and we’d call out to “let our powers combine” — before raising one of our arms and yelling the names of four natural elements, plus one anatomical organ (if you’re laughing, you probably know exactly what I’m talking about).
All this would usually be enough to summon Captain Planet, who would prevent the impending disaster from happening — and, before disappearing, remind us that the “power” was ours.
“The power is yours.” That’s what he would say.
For those of you who didn’t rush home to catch Captain Planet and the Planeteers on TV, here’s a quick rundown. The Planeteers were five kids from five corners of the Earth (yes, the show was somewhat ahead of its time in terms of racial inclusion and diversity), who were each given special rings by Gaia (Mother Earth personified and regularly voiced by Whoopi Goldberg) that would give them powers to help stop environmental destruction.
The rings’ recipients were Wheeler from North America who could harness the power of Fire, Kwame from Africa who was given the power of Earth, Gi from Asia with the power of Water, Linka from the Soviet Union could command Wind… and Ma-Ti from South America who held the power of Heart. The last one sounds lame, but was actually the most important, because as Gaia said, without a heart to guide them, the other powers would be useless.
If ever their powers weren’t strong enough to fight whatever threat the world was facing, they could combine them to summon Earth’s greatest champion, Captain Planet — a superhero with green hair, blue skin, and red underpants; quite possibly the farthest thing from cool when it comes to how superheroes look. If he were to stand beside Tony Stark, the guys from Queer Eye would undoubtedly trade barbs over his choice of stylist.
However, unlike Spider-Man with his web-slinging abilities and ‘Spidey Sense’ or Hulk’s obvious anger management issues which turn him into a mean, green, smashing machine, Captain Planet wielded powers of a different kind. His powers were hard to define and broad in scope — ranging from the ability to shape-shift and conjure natural elements, to superhuman strength and telepathy — and each was used to counter the dangerous by-products of human greed. The villains he’d fight were loggers attempting to clear swathes of forests, poachers hunting animals for ivory, and miners drilling for crude oil in the oceans.
In 2019, these villains are more real than ever. From news reports, it’s evident that the environment has taken a back seat in the face of consumerism, big business, and greed. The future of the Great Barrier Reef is being threatened by coal mining, plastic pollution is choking many of the world’s waterways and wildlife; record hauls of elephant ivory are still being seized; the great Pacific garbage patch continues to grow; and the world loses 18.7 million acres of forests every year. Sadly, it’s clear now that there is no man with green hair and red underpants who’s coming to save us.
For over a month now, parts of the Brazilian Amazon — the world’s lungs — have been engulfed in flames. What has most of my generation done about it? We’ve shared the news on Instagram, on Facebook, on Twitter — spreading a wildfire of ‘awareness’. We called out billionaires for not helping to save the Amazon like they did for the Notre-Dame Cathedral. We’re using the hashtag #PrayForAmazonas, when, frankly, rain and an overhaul in government policy are what they need. To use millennial speak, we’re a really ‘woke’ generation — but we’ve got a pretty sleepy approach to the whole environment thing.
Sure, we happen to be the most digitally connected generation, and growing up with technology and being able to Google just about anything has made us more aware than our predecessors. However, studies have also pointed to a limited follow-through with offline action. While we’re vaguely clued in to the challenges that Amazonian tribes face in protecting their home, we’re keenly aware of every upcoming sale on Amazon.com.
That’s not to say that we’re completely inept at taking measures into our own hands. Today, millions are turning out across the globe to take part in the biggest climate protest in history — a move to demand urgent action from governments to tackle global warming. This includes a walkout by employees at Amazon (the online shopping giant, not the rainforest), whose pressure on CEO Jeff Bezos resulted in the company’s development of a comprehensive roadmap towards reduced greenhouse gas emissions. Like some kind of collective epiphany, it’s as if we remembered Captain Planet’s reminder that the power is ours — and so, too, the responsibility — to “take pollution down to zero”. So, now that we’ve seen our power effecting small changes in companies too big to fail, what’s next? Where do we go after we get home from our rallies?
I get it, not everyone is Greta Thunberg — nor may they wish to be. While some of us actively try to do our part to reduce our carbon footprint and cut down on waste, for others, things like turning off the lights when you’re not using them, or even saying no to plastic bags, is a fleeting thought. We turn up to rallies demanding change, but how many of us will cave to exhaustion and take an Uber home, instead of walking? We draw up witty placards, but do we put as much thought into the ethical practices of our outfits that will inevitably feature in our #ClimateStrike OOTD? We wield social media as a weapon against inaction, but how many of us are doing so from a brand new iPhone 11; perpetuating the cycle of the smartphone’s one-year lifespan?
Humans are notoriously shortsighted and selfish; if we think we have extra time on the clock, or are unwilling to give up a few creature comforts, we won’t take radical steps to wholly make those changes. What does evoke radical action, however — for better or worse — is our fanaticism for superheroes.
Consider Marvel’s 2018 superhero blockbuster Black Panther: the fervour with which audiences praised the movie’s black representation was unprecedented for the genre — and, as many will agree, long overdue — and has inspired scores of directors, actors, and audiences to challenge Hollywood whitewashing. On the other side of the coin, Marvel diehards succeeded in making Avengers: Endgame the highest grossing film of all time at the box office, having activated fans across forums and social media to attend as many screenings as possible. Whether they bring about societal progression, or further feed into our consumer mentality, we know that superheroes work. If a powerful movie serves as a reflection of present-day society and the challenges it faces, what better time than now to give rise to a new ‘Cap’? P.S. I’ll miss you, Chris Evans.
In 2016, there were reports that actor and environmentalist Leonardo DiCaprio (of course!) had bought the rights to the cartoon series — but that buzz died down, and we haven’t heard anything since. In light of his US$5m pledge to save the Amazon, among countless instances of environmental activism, this makes total sense; through Captain Planet, he has a golden opportunity to tell a widespread audience that there’s no ‘Planet B’, driving the urgent message that it’s time to wake up from our consumerist slumber.
In an age in which cinematic reboots have become the norm, and studios prey on our love for nostalgia, green-lighting Captain Planet for a second lease on life should, in theory, have studio executives rubbing their palms together a la Mr. Krabs. The multi-movie franchise possibilities are bountiful, as Captain Planet faces off with Hoggish Greedly, Dr. Blight, and Looten Plunder, before an epic showdown with his nemesis, Captain Pollution. It might not be the stuff of Oscar nominations, but I’d put money on audiences flooding cinemas to see DiCaprio don the blue body paint and green mullet. I’ll say it now — you can count me in on that action.
But, just like the remarkable inaction we’ve seen in response to cries for help from climate change proponents (even the great Sir David Attenborough was forced to make a stirring plea to the UK parliament), perhaps the reason why we haven’t seen a Captain Planet reboot is not due to studio fears of a box office flop, but because of the all-too-real subject matter that it would face us to confront.
Superhero movies find continual success for their ability to allow audiences to escape from reality — fantasies of fighting crime as a billionaire vigilante; space pirates traversing the stars to ’80s pop hits; battles of impossible scale to determine the fate of the universe. We want the escapism of Thanos erasing 50% of all life with the snap of a finger, yet ignore the very real possibility of life’s total erasure outside the cinema doors. Perhaps the problem with Captain Planet is that he points the finger back at us. If the foe is humanity, who are we left to vicariously save the day for?
I’m not so naïve to think that a simple superhero movie will change the world; it’s clear that saving the environment will require work from all of us: you and I, NGOs, and governments. I’m not entirely sure what it’s going to take to mobilise millennials and the generations after us, but what I do know is that a film that pulls out all the stops — one that hypes up the race against time, and stresses that the battle against climate change is a real fight in need of real heroes like the Planeteers — will, at the very least, wake us up to the epic battle for our survival on this planet.
We decide if we get a sequel on Earth, or if we simply fade to black.
