Annette Davidson/Staff Reporter
Adam McKay’s, Don’t Look Up is a layered movie starring Leonardo DiCaprio, based on two scientists trying to warn the world about an asteroid big enough to wipeout humanity in the span of only six months. After going back and forth, President Jane Orlean, announces a project to strike and divert the comet using nuclear weapons. The mission successfully discharges but gets aborted mid-launch after discovering the comet consists of rare elements worth trillions of dollars.
Don’t Look Up Is a huge onion, you need to peel the layers and each layer has an irresistible combination of sarcasm, humour, and hideous reality.
This film perfectly portrays a lot of what could happen in our society, if something of this magnitude really happened. The metaphors were a bit on the nose, but it had to be said; it’s ironic to the climate crisis and critique of our current obsession with media, influence and how technology dictates our views. The worst part is comparing the characters with the people of our country. You laugh at the beginning and then you realise that its pure reality.
It’s a weirdly unsettling film.
The parallels it has to our current reality is terrifyingly accurate, but instead of an apocalyptic comet we have our global pandemic, COVID-19. Just like in the film, we have conspiracy theorists, Covid deniers, wealthier people using the virus to become richer, governments taking action too late because it didn’t benefit them, and people blindly following and agreeing with no facts but “opinions” in order to maintain their political stance.
When you really look at it. The question left in the back of our minds is, do we deserve to even be here? Do we do enough in life to really say to ourselves: why are we arguing who loves who, and who has more than another? Corruption is a big element, and as humanity follows, it constantly wants that next big thing. That would be called an addiction, to an extension high purity, like social media, morning news, even talk shows to gossip what’s going on in the world. It’s truly funny when you put it that way.
Humanity is an addict either in wanting truth, or false and never in between.