Don’t Look Up: A Mirror Into the Future
Note: The following article contains spoilers for the movie ‘Don’t Look Up’.
Don’t Look Up was one of the most highly anticipated movies of 2021 consisting of many well-acclaimed actors like Leonardo Di Caprio, Jennifer Lawrence, Meryl Streep, Timothee Chalamet and more. This dark comedy was written as a satirical representation and reflection of where society is now and where we might be headed in the future. This article is a critical analysis of this currently Oscar-nominated film, and some of the messages it attempts to convey about our society today.
Film Synopsis
Astronomy PhD candidate Kate Dibiasky discovers a new comet which she and her professor, Dr. Randall Mindy, later finds out is headed directly towards Earth. If the comet makes impact, it will lead to mass extinction. The two low-level astronomers, having had their warnings not taken seriously by the President, go on a giant media tour to warn mankind of the approaching comet en route to destroy planet Earth.
Messages of the film
1. The incompetency, irresponsibility and greediness of governments and large corporations will lead to our downfall
One of the most relevant social parallels that the movie draws is how the people in power, referring to the American government as this is an American-centric movie, approach impending issues that scientists are certain will lead to catastrophe, like a large meteor headed towards the Earth, or climate change.
After the threat had been confirmed, the two astronomers were immediately flown into the White House to meet with the president. President Orlean, having been briefed about the catastrophic threat that is to reach Earth very soon, not only arrived late, but ignored the scientists. Instead, she chose to celebrate a co-worker’s birthday, discuss politics about a scandal their candidate was in, and leave the two astronomers waiting for hours till the late night only to inform them to come back the next day. The laxed, inefficient and irresponsible behavior displayed by the President reflects the attitude Donald Trump had towards, for example, the warnings he had received about the impending Covid pandemic, which led to the situation becoming worse than it could have been, and thus the killing of thousands of lives.
Any further doubts about whether the president and her staff are corrupted and selfish can be cleared by these few pointers. One, the president only confirms the threat of the comet after being caught in a sex scandal with her Supreme Court nominee, diverting the attention from her and improving her approval rating by announcing a project to strike down the comet using nuclear weapons. Did she immediately address and turn her attention towards this international threat after being informed that urgent action was required? No. Did she use it as a trump card once her political career was in hot waters? Yes.
Two, the nuclear mission to destroy the comet successfully launches, but the president abruptly aborts the mission half-way when a billionaire CEO of a tech company called BASH, who also happens to be one of her top donors, discovers that the comet contains trillions of dollars worth of rare earth elements. The White House, seeing this as a “miraculous, astounding opportunity” to get richer, agrees to commercially exploit the comet by fragmenting it and recovering it from the ocean using new technology from BASH that has not been peer-reviewed by scientists. The other members of the emergency council and Dr Randall Mindy were not consulted before the president made the decision. They decided to risk the lives of every single person on the planet at the last minute, with technology unconfirmed to work, for the sake of profit.
Unsurprisingly, the technology fails and the intact comet hits the earth, and almost everyone, excluding the few extremely rich and wealthy people that can afford to escape in a space pod, dies. I wish I was joking, but if you watched the movie, you know I’m not. If you watch the news, you know that governments and large corporations continuing to make decisions that harm the people and the planet for the sake of profit and greed isn’t exactly fictitious either.
One real life example that relates to this message, and the issue of climate change in general, is COP26. COP26 is the most recent annual UN climate change conference as of date, the conference deemed to be “the world’s best last chance” at getting the climate emergency under control. Unfortunately, the conference was mostly deemed a failure as the world’s largest contributors to greenhouse gas emissions and the world’s richest economies failed to make commitments to keep global warming to 1.5°C, which will result in irrecoverably catastrophic consequences such as sea level rise and more intense and frequent natural disasters. Even the president of COP26, Alok Sharma, was fighting back tears as he apologized for how the conference turned out, after a last-minute intervention from India and China weakened the effort to put a stop to the use of coal power. Failure to meet climate objectives and implement the necessary changes and policies to stop us from going past 1.5°C like scientists warned will lead to humanity’s downfall if nothing is done.
Even at the end of the story, when all the few powerful and wealthy people fly away in a spaceship, the president forgets her own son, leaving him on Earth to fend for himself, reflecting that the president truly, only cares about herself.
2. Society only cares about the superficial issues, ignoring glaring ones that threaten our survival in favour of more riveting, relatively unimportant matters.
While waiting for the supposedly urgent meeting with the president, the scientists saw articles and social media posts about celebrity break ups and about their political candidate being unqualified — but nothing about their recent discoveries. This scene tries to convey that people only care about “superficial” issues like celebrity drama and are ignorant of the bigger, more important issues.
A real life example supporting this statement would be there being more news coverage on the feud between Kanye West and Pete Davidson rather than climate change, an issue which will certainly lead to the death of our species if nothing is done. The reason why this is the way it is is likely because scandalous, celebrity-related news and drama are more interesting to viewers, compared to reading about topics like climate change. Thus, people are more likely to click on titles regarding those topics, and spend more time watching and reading about them. It’s what sells. The more traffic, viewership and watch time a post has, the more revenue media firms earn, encouraging the profit-motivated firms to pump out such content.
However, it is also important to point out that perhaps it is not that society does not care about vital issues, but rather that they cannot afford to, either because they already have their hands full dealing with their own problems or because they cannot mentally afford to worry about something that is relatively out of their control on a larger scale. After all, worrying about something out of their hands and more in the hands of corporations and governments would be detrimental to their mental wellbeing in the long run.
3. It is not just what you say, but also how you say it
After the astronomers discovered the asteroid, they informed the head of defense, who told them that she serves at the discretion of the president and to keep the information confidential. However, when Kate, the PhD candidate, breaks confidentiality and tells her boyfriend about what’s going on, he accidentally steps into the streets and almost gets killed by the car. This response is one reason the government wanted to keep this information confidential, to prevent widespread panic — apart from remaining in political power, of course.
Information must be presented in a way that is palatable in order to be well-received by the viewers. When the two astronomers went on a popular news show to leak the news to the public, Dr Randall Mindy, who received media training, was a lot more well-accepted, as he toned down the serious news to make it more digestible. However, Kate served the news as it was — a devastating, stressful piece of information, which was far less exciting and a lot harder for the viewers to swallow.
In this case, the movie seems to convey that one should “say the right thing in the wrong way and you will not be taken seriously, but say the wrong or right thing in the right way, and with the right amount of looks, charisma and authority, you might just be able to get away with it.”
Furthermore, the movie criticizes American media, which is known to dramatize its content in order to gain higher viewership and watch time for profit. American news often seems more like a reality TV show than real life, functioning more as a source of entertainment and shock value rather than serious news. Like Dr Randall Mindy said, not everything needs to sound clever, charming or likable all the time.
Sometimes we need to be able to just say things as they are and not lace every word with sugar. Yes, people prefer entertaining, light-hearted content and often watch TV as a form of escapism from the stresses of everyday life, but like Kate says, “maybe the destruction of the planet isn’t supposed to be fun”. The movie seems to support the narrative that when the American media focuses too much on watch time and less on sharing real, raw truths, American news reporting loses the heart and soul of journalism in providing a reliable source of information and sharing the truth.
The movie also criticizes some people’s use of social media, such as internet trolls, and how instead of noting down what Kate was trying to say, they made fun of her appearance and turned her reasonable frustration into jokes. We can observe such online practices in real life as of date, in how some people online make insensitive jokes about the conflict between Russia and Ukraine, sparking anger on some parts of the Internet.
4. Ignorance doesn’t choose us, we choose ignorance
Don’t Look Up is disliked by many critics, scoring a 55% on Rotten Tomatoes. The movie has been criticized for being more message and no movie, a brash, hard to swallow and unpleasant film to watch. While I do think that there are other reasons as well as to why the movie wasn’t warmly received, I think one of the main reasons exactly aligns with one of the messages the movie was trying to send — people don’t want to be told or reminded that we’re going to die.
The president and the chief of staff continuously downplayed the severity of the threat even after the scientists repeatedly clarified with them that it is a life-ending event, saying in the movie “You can’t tell people that they’re 100% going to die.” No one wants to hear about that because it will likely cause a majority of people to panic and get distressed if told such a message.
However, just like climate change, it is the truth. People downplay the effects of climate change, and don’t talk about it because it’s unpleasant and stressful to think about, but it’s the hard pill we aren’t willing to swallow. It’s not that the president and her chief of staff are incapable of understanding the gravity of the situation. On the inside, we know that it’s going to kill us and destroy our planet; we just don’t want to acknowledge it, yet, because it’s easier not to.
We live in an “ignorance is bliss” world because it’s easier that way. Every time we buy single-use items, throw out recyclable items or leave unused lights on, we increase the carbon footprint that fast-passes us to the impending doom of climate change. We’re so used to thinking “Hey, if other people do it, what’s the harm of one more”, and not considering the consequences of our actions that it’s become second nature. This movie was designed to be a wake up call for us to stop that, so we don’t just blissfully continue hurting ourselves and our planet until it directly and drastically affects us.
5. Corrupt governments lead to government distrust, a distrust of intellectual authority, and the rise of harmful misinformation
After astronomy professor Dr Randall Mindy stresses that this is an apocalyptic event after hearing the president and her chief of staff claim that they have had plenty the-world-is-ending meetings, the president comforts him by telling him that she “hears him” and that she’s “taking it very seriously, straight to the heart”, but actually blew them off. One interpretation of this is how some politicians make promises to people. talking about all the things they’re going to do when they’re elected, but in reality it’s all talk with no action.
Dr Randall Mindy eventually turns on the White House and leaves the administration. When the comet finally becomes visible in the sky, he and Dibiasky reconcile and launch a campaign called “Just Look Up” to convince the public that the danger is real, and call upon other countries to start their own efforts to intercept it. In response, the president launches her own “Don’t Look Up” campaign, conveying to her citizens and the world to pretend that the comet isn’t real, that they tell you to look up, that the issue exists, because they want you to be afraid, which is often times the justification used by climate change deniers and anti-vaxxers when dismissing scientific evidence.
When the president first announced the news about the comet, some citizens said they didn’t want the comet to hit Earth at all, but what’s more interesting is that 23% of citizens believed that there was no comet, that the government was lying to them and it was just another scam to scare them into submission as the government hides their secret, unlawful activities. When you put it that way, after seeing all that the president and her White House have done, would you say that that is far from the truth? Considering that afterwards, the president launched a campaign telling citizens to just pretend the problem doesn’t exist, under the guise of creating jobs that will really only make the rich people richer, is there really absolutely no reason for citizens to distrust the government?
It’s the existence of corrupt, greedy governments, who lack transparency and who value gold more than blood, that creates the distrust of governments and authority evident in public sentiment today. Unfortunately, because this distrust leaks into other aspects of media, it has contributed to the rise of society’s skepticism towards and or dismissal of scientific evidence, giving way to the rise of harmful misinformation.
6. People can change
As stated above, Dr Randall Mindy was the chief science advisor of the White House, helping to spread pro-comet, job-creating propaganda to appease the public, at the disagreement of both Kate and Dr Oglethorpe. However, when he tried to raise the fact that the science behind BASH’s comet-mining technology was not proven, BASH’s CEO threatened him with the data his companies’ algorithm had on him, that his algorithm predicted that Dr Randall Mindy would die an insignificant death, alone. That moment gave the astronomy professor the big wake-up call he needed, where he started sharing the truth as it is and left the administration. He changes his ways. In the end, Dr Randall Mindy spends his last moments with his family, his wife, who forgave him for cheating on her in the face of death, and his friends Kate, Dr Oglethorpe and Yule, while enjoying a nice, lovely meal together, proving BASH’s algorithm wrong.
I think this last message is significant as it conveys that we can change. Things are bad now, but we can change things. It’s worth it to make the effort and it’s worth it to try. You might think at the back of your head that your actions as an individual have no effect on the planet on a larger scale, but they do. If you choose to change, choose to make a conscious effort to be more environmentally friendly everyday, you are becoming a better person and making the environment a better place.
Don’t Look Up was not a meek, “happily-ever-after” movie. In the end, everyone unfortunately dies and even the rich people are eaten by the new, bird-like inhabitants of the new alien planet they land on, but I believe that the movie tries to convey that, worse comes to worse, even if the world still ends, at least we’ll be better at the end of it.
Humanity is in a funhouse with a ceiling made of mirrors, but the mirrors have shattered and shards of glass are threatening to fall on us at any moment. With the shards above you, prepared to impale your body like spears, while the warnings of scientists that ring like an alarm are silenced by loudspeakers, the government and the corporations, booming and blasting the rhetoric “don’t look up”, to stay ignorant and to pay for the consequences of their greed and inaction, are you still going to keep your head down?
Or are you going to look up?
[Written by: Ruby Seet. Edited by: Siow Chien Wen.]