Movies to Watch with New Belgium’s Fat Tire: Torched Earth Beer
New Belgium’s special Earth Day beer tastes awful, sending a powerful message about the future of our planet. If you’re brave enough to go all in, here are some movies worth pairing with it.
The Beer: Red – Amber Ale / 5.3% ABV / New Belgium Brewing Co. – Fort Collins, CO
The Movies: Might want to save The Day After Tomorrow for another day — this beer calls for more realistic portrayals of a grim Earth-wrecked future.
You may have heard by now that Colorado’s New Belgium Brewing released a limited-run beer last month for Earth Day, a beer that intentionally tastes terrible. And it’s not because of the mere novelty — the brewers wanted to send a powerful message about how big companies need to make changes now in order to combat climate change and the effects of pollution.
Here’s how the brewers describe it:
“A beer made with smoke-tainted water, dandelions, and drought-resistant grains — some of the less-than-ideal ingredients that would be available and affordable to brewers in a climate-ravaged future without aggressive action now to confront the climate crisis. The resulting dark starchy liquid with smokey aromatics is not likely to win any awards, but does highlight the stakes of climate change for beer lovers everywhere.”
It’s worth noting that in addition to brewing this beer, the New Belgium company folks actually walk the walk. Last year, their Fat Tire flagship beer became the first-ever certified carbon neutral beer in the United States. They also announced plans to achieve net-zero emissions across their entire company by 2030, the year scientists warn is when significantly damaging climate change could be irreversible if major intervention isn’t taken. New Belgium is launching initiative asking other companies to do the same.
But back to the beer. What kind of movie would someone pair with Torched Earth’s wrecked flavors?
If you’re feeling bummed about climate change and are ready to learn more about what’s going on in the world:
The Age of Stupid / Futuristic Drama-Documentary / 2009 / Spanner Films – Dogwood Pictures
Set in a future where the Earth is wrecked from past humanity’s carelessness, one man looks back at old footage to understand how it happened. It’s a clever blend of fictional narrative and real documentary insight, and it smashes away all our present-day excuses.
2040 / Documentary / 2019 / Regen Pictures – Hulu
A German filmmaker starts thinking seriously about the future of the world and what it means for his young daughter. He travels around trying to figure out the solution by meeting with experts in a wide variety of fields.
An Inconvenient Truth / Presentation – Documentary / 2006 / Lawrence Bender Productions – Paramount Classics
It’d be tough not to include this one on here. Despite winning an Oscar for the movie, former Vice President Al Gore withstood a lot of criticism following the movie’s release that accused him of over-dramatizing climate change and doing it for personal attention. But these days, the movie plays more like a catalyst that started an important conversation nobody wanted to have.
But, it’s totally understandable if docs aren’t your thing. If you’d rather think about climate change with some creative fiction storytelling, here you go:
Beasts of the Southern Wild / Drama- Magical Realism Fantasy / 2012 / Cinereach – Fox Searchlight Pictures
If you don’t remember Beasts of the Southern Wild have a plot linked to climate change, then it’s time to go back and watch it again. In any case, the story of 6-year-old Hushpuppy in a remote Louisiana Delta community learning to find her way in a world nearing its end is worth a watch any time. It’s also just an utterly gorgeous film whose mere existence makes a statement for preserving the beauty on Earth.
WALL-E / Animation Family Feature – Masterpiece / 2008 / Pixar – Disney
The last robot, and presumably the last intelligent being, left on Earth spends his days cleaning up thousands of years of trash in a musty-colored, dried-up world. Humans meanwhile live billions of light years away on a space cruise ship, spending their days indulging in social media, fast food, and other forms of instant gratification. It’s still one of the most beautiful Pixar movies to date, and it somehow manages to inspire hope that mankind will one day turn itself around.
Snowpiercer / Action-Drama / 2013 / Moho Film – Opus Pictures
Ah, yes, the story of humanity’s survivors all living on a luxury train in a post-apocalyptic ice age future. Will the lowest class be able to make it to the front cars? It’s one wild ride, and it does kind of have you thinking about what the lengths different humans will go to in order to maintain the status quo or gain a better future.
No, I’m still not including The Day After Tomorrow. It’s just too dumb.
But no matter what movie you pair with Torched Earth — if you do have the stamina to try it, that is — it’s important not to lose sight of New Belgium’s message. Even so, you may want to have a back-up beer handy to finish the movie with.
