Some part of us, at any given moment, “secretly” hopes for the end. Not necessarily an end to ourselves, but an end to all of “this.” The madness, the chaos, the perpetual politicization of everything to an nth degree ever since the dawn of 24/7 news networks. The only way that can really happen, of course, is through some cataclysmic event of the variety that ended up wiping out the dinosaurs in one fell swoop. In Adam McKay’s latest “tongue-in-cheek” (but totally true-to-life) movie to explore the satirical side of American government (and the corporations that run it), Don’t Look Up, what once might have been deemed “cartoonish” in the 2015 era when he first started taking a more political slant (via The Big Short) is merely an accurate reflection of the current dystopian hellscape. One in which it would be totally within the realm of possibility for the last dolt on Earth to look into his phone and say, “What’s up y’all? I’m the last man on Earth. Shit’s all fucked up. Don’t forget to like and subscribe.”
In some sense, McKay takes up the mantle for Idiocracy, the 2006 Mike Judge film with a premise that seemed to come true much sooner than five hundred years after the fact, when Joe Bauers (Luke Wilson), among the “most average” of men, is released from his “suspension chamber” (something that also comes into play in Don’t Look Up). No, instead it only seems to have taken ten years from Idiocracy’s release for that title to really apply to the American public…when Donald Trump was allowed into office. McKay instead gives us a more “progressive” president in that she’s a female…version of Trump (so, Marjorie Taylor Greene) who also happens to smoke—not vape. But even President Janie Orlean (Meryl Streep, killing it as usual) is capable of forming more coherent sentences than the Orange One ever could. In addition to making more strategic political maneuvers. That’s why she can’t be bothered with news of a comet between five and ten kilometers wide heading directly toward Earth. Despite astronomer Dr. Randall Mindy (Leonardo DiCaprio) and astronomy grad student Kate Dibiasky (Jennifer Lawrence) informing her that the math doesn’t lie, who has time for an “extinction-level event” when the midterm elections are coming up and she’s got a huge scandal on her hands regarding her Supreme Court appointee being some kind of softcore porn star?
Naturally, Randall and Kate had assumed that in doing their “good Samaritan” act and informing the “higher powers,” they would be told they were crazy. Their data would somehow be discredited. Which is why when Dr. Teddy Oglethorpe (Rob Morgan), the head of NASA Planetary Defense for fifteen years, escalates their finding to the so-called highest level and asks them to come with him to the White House, Randall demands frantically, “Kate this isn’t real, right? This is just some sort of alternate reality, right?” This is the logic that many people seem to have been using for the past two years as they keep telling themselves everything is “fine,” “normal” even. Until their white blood cells are attacked by COVID. But, just like the pandemic, this comet is very real, no matter how the media and the government will try to spin it.
At the White House, Kate, Randall and Teddy make the mistake of assuming their news will be a top-level priority to President Orlean and her Ivanka-like son, Jason (Jonah Hill), who also happens to be Chief of Staff. But no, instead, they’re made to wait for seven hours outside the Oval Office, allowing time to establish the running joke throughout Don’t Look Up: Kate’s continued examination of why General Themes (Paul Guilfoyle) would try to charge her for the snacks he brings them knowing she would find out they were free at some point. Before then, he comes at the trio with a few bags of chips and some waters, insisting, “They charge an arm and a leg for this stuff, but ten apiece oughta do it.” As she examines it with Yule (Timothée Chalamet), the “revolutionary”-looking type who takes a romantic shine to her later on, she finally decides, “Maybe he just gets off on the power, you know. Like any kind of power. It’s like he knew eventually that I was gonna find out that the snacks were free. You know what I mean? So it was just like a power play.” Yule confirms, “Yeah, guys are weird.” A real understatement if ever there was one.
And a prime such example of that “weirdness” is tech billionaire Peter Isherwell (Mark Rylance), who enters the fray of it all as we’re eerily introduced to his latest Zuckerbergian technology: a phone that can detect and convey your emotions for you—because it’s “Life without the stress of living.” The kind of “logic” that has brought us to this point of near extinction in the first place. Men like Isherwell, who control most of what transpires on this planet, are immune to warnings of “grave situations.” It’s sort of like when the orgasm is so good and you’re in the midst of getting caught having sex by one of your parents so you just keep going until you reach “complete satisfaction” because, fuck it, you’re already in trouble anyway. That’s the metaphor for billionaires trying to achieve their orgasm up until the last possible moment of being caught as the source of all evil by the public. As Randall and Kate find out, trying to talk to the White House about the gravity of the situation is on par with trying to impart the gravity of the situation regarding climate change to corporations and the masses. Rather than truly processing the reality, suggestions like, “Can we just call it a potentially significant event?” are offered. Kate angrily replies, “But it isn’t potentially going to happen. It is going to happen.” Just like everything else we’ve been warned about regarding global warming if we don’t drastically alter the way we live immediately. On a side note, it’s also easy to imagine, “Can we just call it a potentially significant event?” being thrown out as a PR solution for corona in its early stages in the U.S.
McKay is deliberate in commencing Don’t Look Up with a line from humorist Jack Handey, specifically, “I want to die peacefully in my sleep like my grandfather, not screaming in terror like his passengers.” This is the very sort of aphorism that gets to the heart of how the people in charge not only have no idea what they’re doing, but are so often the least affected by the things their “judgment” inflicts on others.
McKay interweaves his usual sardonic tone throughout Don’t Look Up (as well as various scenes from nature meant to show us the beauty of life and how we’re spoiling it), starting with poking fun at the existence of the Planetary Defense Coordination Office. Kate asks, “Is that a real place?” Mainly because it sounds like something out of a Cold War-era spy movie. But then, everything the U.S. does appears to still be out of a Cold War-era spy movie, with a spoofing slant.
When Teddy clearly warns, “This comet is what we call a planet-killer,” it continues to go over like a lead weight. And that reaction from the White House is the same one the public is going to give. For they, too, are distracted with more “important” things. Like the breakup of Riley Bina (Ariana Grande) and DJ Chello (Kid Cudi—or Scott Mescudi, if you prefer). Grande, in fact, was all too game to provide a song for the soundtrack she sings as Riley called, “Just Look Up.” This is the counter-mantra to the right-wing’s catchphrase, “Don’t Look Up.” Meaning that, if you don’t, you won’t see what’s in front of your face, therefore denial is all the more effortless. Yes, it ties back in quite nicely to the anti-vaxxer (not to mention climate change denier) set and their own ways and means of not “looking up” a.k.a. pulling their head out of their ass throughout the ongoing pandemic.
Staring at the comet when he sees it enter Earth’s atmosphere for the first time, Randall remarks, “It’s horrific and it’s beautiful at the same time.” The same could be said about the prospect of humanity’s destruction. Sure, it’s “scary” for individuals to come face to face with their own insignificance in the grand scheme, but isn’t it at least some form of comfort to relish the possibility that all this suffering and inanity might actually end? That, at last, we can stop worrying about paying for things, which is what the essence of existence has become anyway. What the suits of the government and corporations have long banked on it remaining to uphold their own power.
Like another apocalypse movie, Seeking a Friend for the End of the World (which wields an asteroid instead of a comet), Don’t Look Up also spotlights the idea of how foolish many will realize they were when presented with an end times scenario. That the “priorities” and obsessions they had were ultimately the least important aspects of life they could’ve homed in on. Randall puts a “don’t know what you’ve got till it’s gone” spin on it when he tells his family, along with Kate, Yule and Teddy, “We really did have everything, didn’t we?” Meaning, of course, we as a civilization. And yet, all we have done is fuck it up, squander it, terrorize it. Mutate it irrevocably into a system where the many suffer so the few can profit. In short, we (but most especially the richies) deserve whatever fresh hell might come next.
