An Inconvenient Sequel: Truth To Power Just Isn't All That Compelling

We've had a lot of sequels this summer, many of them to films that haven't had a sequel in a little while. It's been six years since the last Pirates Of The Caribbean movie for instance while nine years have passed since our last Mummy movie and it's been a whole two decades since the last proper Alien movie. All that considered, An Inconvenient Sequel: Truth To Power, while being a small-in-scale documentary, feels right at home with these bigger blockbuster follow-up titles since it too is also a successor to a movie from quite a few years ago (the original Inconvenient Truth was released in 2006). Also something it shares with many other blockbuster sequels from this past summer; it ain't as good as its predecessor.


An Inconvenient Sequel: Truth To Power starts out in 2014, a whole eight years since An Inconvenient Truth sparked a whole new level of awareness on the topic of climate change as well as an entire new wave of people denying the existence of this climate-based phenomenon. In the eight year interim between the two movies, Gore has spent his time still showing off presentations related to the horrors of global warming to people all across the planet, though the movie kicks off with him preparing for something larger in scale as he gets himself ready for a global summit in Paris, France where all the world leaders will unite to talk about how they can work together to stop the effects of climate change.

Much of the movie follows Gore as he prepares for this summit and tries to coerce leaders from countries like India to come aboard on the assignment. Interspersed with these preparations are various sections of a presentation Gore gave on the effects global warming has on our society as well as smaller self-contained vignettes like a news interview Gore attends, various trips to areas and local individuals impacted by floods brought on by global warming and an entertaining meeting with the political officials of Georgetown, Texas, a city that's put a heavy emphasis on clear and renewable energy.

That segment where Al Gore visits an ultra-conservative city official of Georgetown, Texas who's super passionate about reducing his cities use of dangerous toxins, is probably the best part of the movie, it's just so interesting to see a smaller-scale location be so determined to help the environment and the presence of some hearty chuckles don't hurt either. That's probably the most lively part of An Inconvenient Sequel: Truth To Power, which lacks the concentrated nature of its predecessor. Watching Al Gore hop around from place to place as an ambassador for clean energy has its share of interesting moments but far too often the movie just feels more scattered than enlightening.

Once it becomes clear that the rush to figure out how to get India onboard with the Paris Accords is gonna be the primary plot driver for the second and third acts, it becomes clear this isn't quite the kind of conflict riveting documentary cinema is played on, especially since it feels like the grievances the Indiana government has with the climate change measures don't get enough screentime to get fleshed out properly, making their quarrels with it feel nebulous and ill-defined in the context of this documentary. Time spent with Gore at a seminar is more interesting for sure, especially when Gore gets fired up at the lack of political movement on climate change procedures in Washington, D.C., but such segments take up too little of the overall runtime.

In my estimation, trading out the first movies director, Davis Guggenheim, for directors Bonni Cohen and Jon Shenk was a poor move since the sequel really misses the compact and propulsive nature found when Guggenheim was calling the shots in the original Inconvenient Truth, though, truth be told, the problems here may go much deeper than just the choice of directors. A topical epilogue focusing on how Donald Trump is looking to cut down on efforts to crack down on renewable energy sources and global warming research has more impact than the rest of the film, suggesting a more narrowly focused motion picture that had something evocative to say rather than just chronicling the day-to-day activities of Al Gore during events larger than himself. An Inconvenient Sequel: Truth To Power is mostly just a watchable and unexceptional movie but coming off such an excellent predecessor, one can't help but be disappointing that the final result isn't something more interesting, especially given that tantalizing epilogue.