If You Hated 'Don’t Look Up', Read This

What made the movie a true work of genius isn’t just what was in the movie, but how some viewers reacted to it.

by Bob Cesca

WASHINGTON, DC – Sometimes a movie comes along that’s so important, it doesn’t really matter whether you liked it, hated it, or fell in love with it. It transcends personal preference and becomes a thing we need to experience, if only to immerse ourselves in the message. Fortunately, in the case of Adam McKay’s Don’t Look Up, I was both knocked out by the message, while, yes, loving the movie in and of itself.

This is all to say there are plenty of viewers on my side of the political aisle who hated it. More broadly, it’s only clocking in with a 55 percent on Rotten Tomatoes, which isn’t great. But it doesn’t matter. Don’t Look Up is a movie that needs to be seen, if only to shake us out of our climate crisis torpor for two hours.

The movie is set in present day America, but illustrated as a fictional, satirical version of our politics and pop culture. Think the era COVID, mixed with the rise of authoritarianism, mixed with the in-progress climate crisis, all fed through the meat-grinder of cable news and social media. 

A Michigan State doctoral candidate, Kate Dibiasky (Jennifer Lawrence), discovers a 10 kilometer comet heading toward Earth, and after a few calculations she determined that the object will smash into our planet, destroying all life. Lawrence is joined by her astronomy professor, Dr. Randall Mindy (Leonardo DiCaprio), and by Dr. Teddy Oglethorpe (Rob Morgan), the head of the Planetary Defense Coordination Office – a federal agency that exists in real life.

But when our heroes alert the White House that the world is going to end, they’re confronted by a Trump-like commander-in-chief, President Janie Orlean (Meryl Streep) who initially refuses to take the threat seriously. At one point, the president suggests downgrading the likelihood of planetary doom from 99.9 percent to 70 percent. She decides to study the problem until she determines she can politicize it for electoral advantage in the forthcoming midterms. 

Just as a space mission is launched to intercept and deflect the comet, the whole thing is called off when a weirdo tech billionaire named Peter Isherwell (Mark Rylance in a scene-stealing, show-stopping performance), decides he’d rather have a crack at it himself. We later learn that the comet contains a wealth of rare metals, so Isherwell devises a plan to break up the comet, but to allow the pieces to land on Earth so he can harvest the loot.

I won’t spoil any more of the plot, but the details aren’t nearly as captivating as how the message of the movie is illustrated. It turns out, with a planet-killing comet on the way, the world gets distracted by political grandstanding and meme culture – all portrayed with striking familiarity. For example, at one point, a movement of comet deniers emerges. Sound familiar? But when Dr. Mindy finally sees the comet in the night sky, he points to it and yells at passers-by that it’s real, and that everyone should just look up because… there it is. “Just look up” quickly becomes a virtue signaling meme all over social media, prompting the movie’s version of Fox News to launch a campaign to not look up, or, “Don’t look up!” Hence the title of the film.

What made the movie a true work of genius isn’t just what was in the movie, but how some viewers reacted to it. You might’ve noticed that progressive pundit David Sirota received a co-story-by graphic during the opening credits, meaning that he added something to the initial idea, while the screenplay was entirely written by McKay. No, I’m not a Sirota fan. At all. However, I noticed a number of people rejecting the movie before it even started due to Sirota’s involvement, successfully illustrating the point of the movie – that we too often get caught up in minor, unimportant details while missing the bigger point of what’s happening around us. It’s another layer in the meta-thesis of the film, the satire transcending from on-screen to off.

Another example of not getting it comes from a film critic with ABC in Australia, who wrote about the movie: “McKay's contempt for pop culture is frequently tiresome; he just doesn't know how to let people enjoy things -- even if it is their own destruction.” Yes, why won’t Adam McKay let us enjoy our bullshit memes while the planet is becoming increasingly uninhabitable due to our own greed and entitlement?

For me, the catharsis of seeing both Lawrence and DiCaprio screaming into the camera, “We’re all going to die!” was worth the price of admission. I’ve been similarly screaming about the impending rise of fascist idiocracy here, and sometimes I feel a little Howard Beale-ish with it. It’s a lonely task, some days. But Don’t Look Up made me feel as though I’m not the only one who’s seeing the slow-moving steamroller on course to pancake our democratic republic.

Again, I’m not insisting that you like the movie. But an appreciation for what it’s saying is in order. We just learned this week that the Thwaites glacier in Antarctica is about to give way, allowing the West Antarctic ice sheet to crumble into the ocean, potentially raising sea levels by 10 feet. But I’d wager the news didn’t get nearly as much traffic on social media as the news of Marjorie Taylor Greene’s removal from Twitter and, subsequently, few will bother taking personal action to reduce our carbon footprint.

Don’t Look Up is supposed to make us squirm a little. It’s supposed to mortify us. It’s supposed to shame us for not taking existential threats seriously enough. You, me, all of us. And I seriously hope enough of us took the message to heart and are prepared to make some changes. That doesn’t mean rejecting our pursuit of happiness, our right to have fun, but it means that when it’s time for adult swim, we get our war faces on and achieve some big things.

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Not Having Cancer Is Expensive

It took three months and a lot of money to find out I didn't have cancer. I was lucky. A lot of people aren't.

by Justin Rosario

For the last three months, I have been living under the specter of cancer. After receiving a possible diagnosis of Muir-Torre/Lynch syndrome, a genetic disorder that greatly increases my chances of developing cancer, it has been a constant source of stress and fear. I only briefly touched on all of this when I wrote about all of the ugly family drama my personal October Surprise inadvertently unleashed. 

The good news is that I do not currently have cancer. The better news is that I do not, in fact, have Muir-Torre/Lynch syndrome. The unexpected news is that I have no predisposition towards any of the typical cancers. I went from possibly staring at a life of cancer around every corner to, in my doctor’s words, “The best possible results.” Hell of a way to start the new year.

Now that I am through the other side of not knowing, I have been able to take a moment to reflect on everything that I have experienced.

Not having cancer is expensive

The day I got the call from my dermatologist informing me about my possible diagnosis, I called my regular doctor and made an appointment to get more information and figure out my next steps. He gave me a list of specialists to see. A Urologist, a Gastroenterologist, an Oncologist, a Colorectal surgeon, and the radiology department.

MT/Lynch syndrome is a mismatch of chromosomes with the result that certain kinds of cancer became far more prevalent. Colon cancer being the most likely, followed by other cancers in the gastrointestinal tract (mostly from the stomach and down) as well as the bladder and urethra. For women, endometrial cancer is also a significant risk but as I lack a uterus, I decided to skip visiting a Gynecologist….

This is an excerpt from today’s Members Only piece. You can continue reading for free by getting a three month free trial here.