“Endgame 2050” Review: A Missed Opportunity to Deliver the Climate Crisis Urgency Message

I’m not entirely sure anymore what exactly led to me watching Endgame 2050 last week. I probably was bored since I had the documentary queued since a while already. Most likely I was lacking focus and didn’t want to commit to another episode of Peaky Blinders which I recently started. Maybe I felt tired and wanted to avoid falling asleep during something I actually had committed to, which I eventually did.

It definitely was around the time I read in my favorite wannabe Millenial progressive mainstream rag that methane had started to escape in the Arctic.

But I absolutely don’t remember what exactly made me watch a documentary with Moby that day. Maybe that’s for the better as well.

For those not aware, the once well-known and popular musician Moby, born Richard Melville Hall, is a long-term vegan and (climate) activist. And the world is going through a climate crisis caused by global heating.

Queue Sofia Pineda Ochoa, a Guadalajaran physician turned activist.

And you have the beginning of the makings of a feature documentary about the climate crisis.

If all that sounds boring and long-winded so far, it is because Endgame 2050 is boring and long-winded. While the documentary has an interesting angle combining a dystopian look at 2050, when food and water are limited to citizens and the situation takes its mental toll on humans, the other — and larger — part of the documentary is boring wannabe TED talk without any charisma.

Obviously, many may share a similar bias towards vegan activists I have and there tend to be reasons for that. Often it is difficult to share and connect with that crowd because they seem to have forgotten the different shades of grey which exist in our universe. That isn’t to say they are wrong, per se, but dialogue can be difficult because their passion usually supersedes the possibility of constructive discourse.

And the parts in which Pineda Ochoa and Moby deliver the message and urgency the climate crisis require don’t feel very different, yet generally sound much more boring.

Unless you’ve been living under a rock in recent years, or are a flat-earth conspiracy theorist or fossil fuel lover, most will recognize the different topics such as mass extinction Endgame 2050 covers. While the documentary aims to deliver a degree of urgency, they don’t really cover anything the more progressive mainstream media — AKA the lamestream media in the terms of a soon former President of the USA — haven’t been regularly covering in last two years already.

As such the facts Endgame 2050 covers will ring a bell with most, and the backing of few scientists in the feature will have most nod. Whether this makes the docu “scientific” is open for debate, that mostly due to a felt lack of authority. Endgame 2050 isn’t a Sir David Attenborough feature or a National Geographic documentary. It is a seemingly rather low-budget feature and also feels as such.

While I would love to congratulate Pineda Ochoa and Moby for having the panache to make Endgame 2050 happen, their delivery lacks any panache. Yet, it does manage to come over as slight “propoganda” nevertheless. While original, the dystopian world of 2050 did create that effect, which Pineda Ochoa and Moby lacked in passion.

Pineda Ochoa nevertheless wants to make sure the viewer understands that the required change to solve the climate crisis and all that surrounds it, will be difficult and needs to come from many different angles.

“Other documentaries make it seem like, if you just change your lightbulb to an energy efficient lightbulb, you can just pat yourself on the back. They really don’t want to make people uncomfortable. I feel like the reality they present is always sugarcoated. So I guess the message that I wanted to get across is the severity of it.”
— Sofia Pineda Ochoa to Remezcla

Whether Endgame 2050 truly manages to convey that message isn’t fully clear to me. But that may be because I literally didn’t discover anything new in this documentary and also don’t believe that the reach of the feature is broad enough to bring the message to a wider audience. Despite being officially available for free on Youtube in full length.

I definitely didn’t think Endgame 2050 was compelling or engaging viewing. It surely won’t convince any flat-earthier that there’s an actual crisis ongoing. It even would not if that demographic could be convinced to broaden its horizons.

If despite all the above you still want to watch Endgame 2050 and missed the Youtube link, here it is once more because I’m that nice: click here. Maybe you need help falling asleep, it worked for me and I wasn’t looking for any assistance.

Posted with STEMGeeks