This blog piece was written by one of our students, Tishitha. The opinions expressed herein do not reflect those of Civitas other than respect for the value of open dialogue.
Late as always, I finally got around to watching Don’t Look Up. The constant clips of Jennifer Lawrence in an almost mullet and Timothee Chalamet as a skater on my timeline finally convinced me, as did the movie’s star-studded cast. And while Don’t Look Up is a very interesting movie, it’s not all it’s made out to be.
Don’t Look Up follows a pair of scientists, Kate Dibiasky (Jennifer Lawrence) and Dr. Randall Mindy (Leonardo DiCaprio), attempting to warn an indifferent public and a manipulative presidential staff that a comet is about to crash into the Earth, causing a mass extinction event that would wipe out the planet. The film serves as a thinly veiled metaphor for the state of American politics today, and it does so very well. And, of course, its star-studded cast performed extremely well. The film was enjoyable to watch, especially with all the cameos from famous individuals. The jokes hit exactly as they meant to, and the rather bleak ending was pulled off perfectly, creating a sense of unease, and the scene right after picked up the humor again. Overall, it was a very enjoyable movie to watch, and I definitely recommend it. Although, I am still confused as to why Jonah Hill’s character got left behind — and how on earth did he manage to survive?
Unfortunately, these factors barely outweigh the flaws of this film. Don’t Look Up is clearly meant to be a political commentary, addressing the issues that surround America today. We can see the political divide, the general apathy towards climate change, and the distrust towards experts play out in this fictitious world. Down to useless Presidential rallies and pop star involvement in serious political situations, our world is reflected in this movie. But that’s it. The film does not offer any commentary beyond displaying our shortcomings. It is essentially pointless in regards to the purpose it was created for. The movie is clearly pandered towards a more left-leaning audience, and tells them information that they are already aware of. It draws no new conclusions or offers any solution. The story simply ends in destruction, showing its audience what will happen if climate change isn’t taken seriously. This would be a good moral if scientists had not been telling us the same thing for decades.
Furthermore, there’s very little interesting narrative. Like I said before, every groundbreaking realization made is one that already exists. Beyond that, the character development is not super compelling. For example, the President gets away with everything she did, there’s no justice. Of course, the frustration is supposed to be an element of this movie, but it got to the point where I was not compelled to finish the movie. The same goes for the second to last scene, which showed all the billionaires and faux nobility landing on a new planet, likely to restart civilization (this is where the President gets her bit of justice, in that she gets eaten by a large bird-like creature). They get no punishment, they get to escape the mess they created. Once again, I understand how this ties into the plot and the frustration the audience is supposed to feel, but it just goes back to the main issue of this film — there’s no real moral. Furthermore, every issue addressed in this movie comes from a strictly western, if not just American, point of view. It almost feels like the filmmakers forgot about the rest of the world entirely, barely remembering to add in a reference to China and Russia at the end of the movie.
At its core, Don’t Look Up is satire without a solution. It’s informed people about the dangers of climate change or the pandemic or whatever crisis is affecting America at the moment, compared it to an extinction level comet to show people how bad the real-life crisis is, and added clever little references for the audience to laugh at, but what are they supposed to do with the message? The audience is left with a movie that says the same thing scientists have been yelling for decades, “you are going to die if you don’t fix this,” but it doesn’t tell them how to fix it.
