By David Young · July 15, 2024
Conflicts come in various types, on various levels, to highlight a theme to the right audience. Sometimes, it is a societal conflict or a protagonist’s conflict with others, even one in conflict with themselves. But the root of all conflict starts in the natural world: The birthplace of humanity is also where we learned to fight and work hard to stay alive. Whether it’s against the cold weather, a shark, or a nightmare weather scenario like Twisters (2024), the world has been out to kill us from day one. It’s only natural that human vs. nature stories become some of the most recognizable and poignant in our media today. The struggles we see between a person and their environment mirror the archetypal struggles within us—or at least, partly so.
Exploring stories like the ones below can go a long way in showing a side of humanity we don’t always see in the modern day: the side that faces nature head-on.
Screenplay by: William Broyles Jr.
In one way, this story is about a man’s struggle for hope and sanity amid loneliness—but in another, it’s Chuck Holland (Tom Hanks) becoming the castaway survivor of an ill-fated oceanic flight. In just as many strokes of the brush, this story paints a picture of someone who needs to believe he can make it home one day. After everything he does to try and save himself from death and isolation, it’s no wonder.
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Screenplay by: Nick Hornby
“Finding yourself” out in the wilderness means something different to everyone. It often happens when you’re ready to make a change or when you’ve already been through something drastic. After all, nature is a crucible that transforms a person when given the chance. The same is true for Cheryl Strayed (Reese Witherspoon), who feels at odds with her identity. Seeking a crucible of her own, she heads out to the famously long and difficult Pacific Crest Trail, with no experience and no one beside her.
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Screenplay by: Mark L. Smith
Left for dead by his hunting party, real-life fur trapper Hugh Glass (Leonardo DiCaprio) was forced to cross miles of snow-covered 19th-century wilderness. But he didn’t come back just for safety, for refuge from the wrath of Mother Nature. Going through his hairy experience on the wild American frontier, Glass spends that time nurturing a thirst for revenge against the man who tried to kill him for convenience. By the time he nears his destination, he has a choice: Succumb to that thirst or make it back to humanity by taming the animal he had to become in the cold.
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Screenplay by: Drew Goddard
Imagine being left for dead—or assumed dead, anyway—only to find yourself all alone and needing to survive out in the elements. Now, imagine that the element is the barren red rock of Mars, where you are the only human left standing. Your mission, should you choose to accept it, is to keep yourself alive by the skin of your teeth and good old human ingenuity—at least long enough for someone to notice you’re calling and make the interplanetary rescue mission you need. Mark Watney (Matt Damon) has to do exactly this in the eponymous adaptation of Andy Weir’s lauded sci-fi novel.
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Screenplay by: Simon Beaufoy and Danny Boyle
Do you still think you can go mountaineering on your own? After this movie, you won’t think like that anymore. In this film based on a true story, Aron Ralston (James Franco) finds himself getting trapped by a boulder, all by himself in a canyon in Utah. Stuck with a video camera and a lot of hallucinations, Aron slowly realizes he screwed up by not telling anyone where he went. As he tangles with the increasing stakes of a crushed limb and dehydration over five days, Aron meets the needs of his exhausted, weathered body however he can before the clock runs out and he can last no longer.
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Screenplay by: Peter Benchley, Carl Gottlieb, Howard Sackler, John Milius, and Robert Shaw
It’s almost enough of a monster movie to feel like a different kind of conflict but make no mistake. Jaws (1975) is about nature’s deadly steel trap of a maw. The sheer, brutal force of animal will against that of man is shown off in this movie, with execution so epic it’s earned the right to be called the very first Hollywood blockbuster. This shark menace is a larger and smarter threat than the people of Amity Island are used to, so police chief Martin Brody (Roy Schneider) groups up with some experts on the water to make a real move against marine terror.
Download the script!Read More: Screenwriting 101: When Summer Blockbusters Make You Think
Screenplay by: Roland Emmerich and Jeffrey Nachmanoff
Dark times are ahead of us. The world might end just as soon as we realize it’s in trouble. Or, we might find ourselves lucky, seeing tomorrow as a gift that buffers us against an eventual global catastrophe. If it were all to come crashing down in waves—all at once—there’s a movie that does that idea justice. The Day After Tomorrow (2004) gives us the apocalyptic version of humans against nature, with science-fiction explanations and gravitas backed by many documentaries in the modern day. Humanity’s last stand against the problem of now-inevitable climate change becomes the disaster-ridden backdrop of this film, and that’s what makes it work.
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Screenplay by: Sean Penn
This biopic covers the story of a young man’s decision to abscond from his family’s comfortable life and take the longest trip he’d ever take, driving and hitchhiking all across the continent until he reaches the rugged, romantic landscape of Alaska. As a story of disillusionment, part of the conflict for Chris McCandless (Emile Hirsch) is with himself and his expectations of life. His former life was not what it seemed, and every new place he chose turned out to be less perfect than he hoped for. Even when arriving in the Alaskan wilderness, it seems idyllic until the harsh conditions push him to the limits and, in McCandless’s case, prove the cruel hold that Mother Nature has over her domain.
Download the script!Read More: Real Drama: Scripts You Should Read If You’re Writing a Biopic
Screenplay by: Anthony Jaswinski
If ever a movie stood up to the challenge of proving how big a foe nature can become, The Shallows (2016) is one of them. Nancy Adam (Blake Lively) suffers a merciless shark attack, but she stands alone—200 yards from the safety of the shore. Injured and separated from other humans just enough to be cruelly tormented by their nearness, Nancy soon sees nature’s big advantage in this ancient conflict: It’s all around. The shark corners her, and she has no one who can hear or see her out there in the shallows. This horror movie proves the point that humans, when caught in the elements like Nancy, stand-alone with only their quick thinking to keep them from dying.
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Screenplay by: Michael Crichton and Anne-Marie Martin
There may be a lot of things that we can see coming now, but tornadoes have always been a bit of a wild card in meteorology. So it’s no surprise that a group of storm chasers led by Jo Harding (Helen Hunt) want to make strides in weather science—sussing out twisters before they ever start up. The thing is, their work has a ton of obstacles: from rival teams to bruised relationships, to needing a real tornado to test their methods. But what is nature if not an obstacle to be conquered in the name of progress? Dangerous progress, that is.
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Screenplay by: David Magee
The story of Pi (Suraj Sharma) follows the catastrophic death of his family and his survival on a lifeboat in the middle of the ocean. But he isn’t just tangoing with the sun and the waves on his long journey afloat—he has company in the form of a hungry Bengal tiger named Richard Parker. In the way that nature has been shown as an obstacle, it’s also its own entity—a character in its own right. As Pi and Richard Parker come to terms with their predicament and needs, the conflict between them becomes one of trust as well as survival. After all, it’s only with that trust that they can ever hope to safely reach dry land.
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Screenplay by: James Dickey and John Boorman
Most people would start the argument that this movie says more about the cruelty of man than it does about nature. But being in the backwater wilds of remote Georgia, there’s certainly a little of both for the company of men that venture there. Caught between vicious locals and rocky rapids, it soon becomes clear that these four visitors may not escape the place intact.
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Screenplay by: Jay Presson Allen
People can become animals, and so the cycle goes: If nature doesn’t kill you, it might conquer you and make you something else entirely. In the classic novel by William Golding, this is what happens to the boys who wind up marooned together. For the 1990 adaptation, these same schoolboys, touched by isolation, become caricatures of ideology. Soon, they mount their divided causes to the point where war and the horror of human nature become just as prevalent as the natural oppression of the island all around them.
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No matter the place or time frame, nature is that external force that both keeps us alive and tests our will. Without the genius of modern invention, things like storms and summer heat are enough to finish off plenty of people—and that conflict is so ingrained in us that it never fully leaves our consciousness. Maybe that’s why these stories speak to us, and why our ideas of horror include the effects that nature has on a person.
Whatever the case, they’re powerful stories for a reason, and anyone would do well to learn from them in turn. Especially if you’re going swimming or hiking alone. Or, perhaps, just don’t do that. Mother Nature doesn’t have to win so easily.
Read More: When Nature Calls: Survival Movies on the Big Screen
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