Don't look up - 2021

It was a good film, but not as funny as they showed in the trailer. It was satirical, yes, but also bitter. It does not have a happy ending, and it did leave me with a rather sour taste… not unexpected, though, so I was rather prepared. Still, I was glad to watch it once, but no more than that.

It shows… well, pretty much our real world, let’s admit that. Politicians who care only about their image, social media who monitor and control our society, people who listen to politician’s lies and social medias and willingly let them influence what they think (this is more and more common, the raising number of ‘influencer’ on the internet shows how people are happy to have others tell them what to think, what to wear, what to buy).

It shows how easy it is to manipulate the truth - although this isn’t all that much different from how it was before social media invaded our lives. Most people believe everything they hear on television, but now that is also complicated by how everyone can tell their own through social media and thus making things even more confusing.

The title is significant because at some point in the movie people could actually see the comet with their own eyes, so the ‘good guys’ told people to just look up. To defeat that, the president made speeches about how the people are being manipulated and in order to avoid that they simply have to NOT look up, launching her own slogan of “Don’t look up”, which a lot of people did. Not look up, I mean, until it was so near they could not avoid it. 

PLOT in details now:

Kate finds a comet yet unknown and the staff celebrates it until her professor, Dr Mindy, makes some calculations and it turns out that the comet is very big and is heading straight for Earth. So big it will wipe out human kind. They try immediately to warn someone. After some difficulty they manage to contact Dr Oglethorpe who checks their data and agrees with them that it is indeed a deadly serious situation. Literally.

They contact the White House, and they are left waiting for hours and hours, because despite their credentials and the fact that they are accompanied by a NASA guy, Oglethorpe, the President and her chief of staff (her son Jason, an idiot who thinks he’s everything because he has a powerful parent, the world knows the kind all too well) do not believe it. 

At this point, Oglethorpe suggests going public with it. They’re not allowed, but they do it anyway. They talk about it at a talk show, but the two hosts are interested only in a bit of show, not in anything serious, and treat the matter like a joke. Kate is so scared and incredulous and overwhelmed that she screams that they (we) are all going to die, but instead of talking her seriously now the hosts refuse to invite her back and she’s the victim of online mockery. Even her boyfriend at this point leaves her, even if he almost had a heart attack when she told him the truth beforehand. 

When there is a scandal (the President sending her nude pictures to someone about to be elected or something) she wants to gain back the favour of the public by showing that she cares and that she will save the world, and they make a plan. She makes speeches reassuring everyone that they will destroy the comet with nuclear weapons.

The plan goes on, to great relief of the two astronomers, and the launch is successful, but it is stopped very soon because a super-mega-rich man, who makes phones that monitor people, that buy things on their behalf and do other things by themselves (personally I hate things that do too much automatically, it should be my choice!) comes in and talks to her. Because of what he said, she stops the plan and calls everything back. It turns out that that comet is full of rich elements, like seriously rich, billions and billions of dollars in materials, and he wants to get to it. He wants to break it into tiny pieces that will fall into the oceans and that he will later retrieve (still, the comet was really big, so it would be either many pieces not really small like pebbles but quite larger, and that would cause no problems for humans? Really? Not for the rich ones, of course, but for the others?) So they change to a new plan, explaining that they could make so much money, the whole world would be richer… yeah right, how could anyone believe that? They only want to make themselves rich, not the rest of the people, surely not the ‘common people’. And yet, just like in the real world, many people believe it. When Kate goes back home, disgusted by the whole thing, her own parents won’t open the door to her, saying that they are in favor of the many jobs this new plan will provide and therefore do not share in her side.

Meanwhile Mindy has almost bought into it, they give him a position and he even makes commercials on how good it will be for everyone… and of course he starts an affair with Brie, the tv-show host.The media go crazy with the whole thing, some believe like Kate that they will all die, some believe that the new project will improve their lives with jobs and all, and others who say it’s all fake news and the comet is not real.

Kate works at the counter in some kind of shops, but when she sees that a group of boys has stole some stuff, she doesn’t care (she can’t find it in herself to care about anything really, because she knows everyone’s gonna die), and they recognise her from the tv-show and she starts hanging out with them and even starts a relationship with one of them, because as she eloquently puts it, Why not?

Dr Mindy finds his wife in his room when he enters with Brie. His wife is a bit angry, sure, but she’s more hurt and very much disappointed, as she should be. (Under normal circumstances I’d be much harsher against him, but it’s a damn awful situation where he’s probably still worried they will all die, so let’s leave it at that).

Dr Mindy is quite alarmed when he learns that all the big brains that should have been at the heart of the new project are no more a part of it, and is frustrated that nobody wants to ask any question, that nobody is taking the matter as seriously as they should, and he starts yelling at Brie’s tv-show. Of course the white house send him away, and he goes back home. On the road, he happens to look up and can see the comet arriving. Kate saw it too, and they talk on the phone and plan to meet. 

They try again to alert the world using the internet and the slogan “just look up”.They hope that some other Country will try their own operation and succeed. If I got it right, China and Russia were about to try their own launch but it blew up (there’s no word of sabotage, that’s not a detail that matters at this point in the movie, but I still suspect it…)

Dr Mindy, Kate, Oglethorpe, everyone is now desperate because their last, their only chance is to hope that the rich guy’s plan will work.

The president’s side replied to their campaign with their own: “don’t look up”, don’t do what they want you to do, don’t let them manipulate you… to me it seems that it is always best to look with your own eyes if you can, but of course here many people followed this.

When it’s time to break apart the comet, things don’t go as planned, not at all. Earth is doomed. Wait, no, humans are doomed, that’s different.

The president and a circle of rich people and the ones they bring along have a shuttle prepared that will keep them asleep until it will find another planet like Earth. For some mysterious reason she offers Mindy to go with them and bring one with him, be it Brie or his wife - there was no reason really, only a cinematographic one, so that Mindy can learn of this plan, show how he is totally not surprised and yet he choses to stay back, because he’s at home with his family, with Oglethorpe and with Kate and her new boyfriend. The president hadn’t even noticed that she had run away without her son…

The comet hits and everyone dies. 22 thousand years later, the spaceship finally finds a planet similar to Earth and lands. They all wake up and get out, and it’s all so pretty and colourful, but as the president walks near an animal that sort of looked like an ostrich or something only alien, the animal attacks her and eats her, while all around the people keep looking around and if nothing had happened, and other animals of the same species get closer.

After the credit we see that Jason is still alive, and tries to call his mom and use his phone, probably the only two things he knows how to do.

Still, at this point one might wonder if someone, somewhere, survived as well. Possible, very possible. Not our characters, they died, but someone else.

Cast

Dr Mindy- Leonardo di Caprio

Kate- Jennifer Lawrence

President- Meryl Streep

Oglethorpe- Rob Morgan

Brie- Cate Blanchett

Jason- Jonah Hill

TV-show host- Tyler Perry

Kate’s new boyfriend- Timothée Chalamet

also:

—Paul Guilfoyle is a general that takes them to the white house and makes them pay when he brings them free snacks. Kate is very annoyed by that. As she should be.

—Ariana Grande is a singer and her break up and subsequent engagement to another celebrity catches everyone’s attention much more than the news of the comet. In the movie she sings a lovely song, lol, I liked it a lot, at least they got her on their side. I think she’s an amazing singer, really really amazing, but I also often think that she doesn’t have the right songs.

—Ron Perlman is an old military man who was supposed to be the hero of the first plan to blow up the comet. They call him old-fashioned, I’d call him something else, but it doesn’t matter here. Unfortunately too many people have their heads full of bullshit.

I read somewhere that the movie was written because of climate-change-fear… which is quite relevant. I know people that say it’s not true whenever the temperature gets so cold everything freezes over, unbelievable but I heard it myself. Also, that kind of news never seem to be as important as football or other stuff… there would be so many things to say here, but the movie’s ended, so…. bye.