Don’t Look Up (Netflix)

[Cornettoninja]

I watched this last night and can’t stop mulling it over.

It’s received mixed reviews but I loved it. Apparently it was written before the pandemic and was originally an allegory about global warming but they made edits based on recent times during the pandemic. Some of it hits quite close to home tbh.

I think with the post-credits sequence, it's worth remembering that Elon Musk does have a plan to save humanity by colonising Mars.

The post-credits sequence suggests that that could very well also not be our way out, particularly if the people sent there are there because they are rich or powerful. It struck me that the people getting off the ship were all pretty old (as well as white) and would not be reproducing.

It also reminded me of Douglas Adams' planet populated by telephone sanitisers and how useless they were.

@MsTSwift

We often find the Guardian reviews to be totally wrong. They lauded The Royal Tenanbaums for example which we then saw at the cinema and was the shittest film Dh and I have ever seen. Likewise an Officer and a spy so boring I felt like crying. They also slammed Annie which we thought was fab - easy to sneer if you’re a trendy guardian beardy man if you have two little little girls it’s great. Likewise with this film totally disagreed with the Guardian reviews again. They should give the job to me definitely 😁

I loved the new Annie too. Absolutely agree that why is it always white middle age men writing reviews about kids films?!

That’s the thing though isn’t it @noblegiraffe, even if galactic colonisation is the answer to saving the human race that probably doesn’t include the likes of you and me, most of us will go down with the planet.

And yes, I noticed the profile of those stumbling off the lifeboat ship - I can only presume they had some sort of test tube/egg and sperm bank too although none of them struck me as particularly maternal!

@Newgirls

Leo’s sons age - I assumed he’d been with his wife since very young. To show it was a first love type of marriage.

Same I figured he was early 50's and had been with his wife since "college" so they would have been late teens getting together and married/ children very early 20's. Which isn't uncommon in the US.

The Social Media Mogul character was very accurate I thought, the social awkwardness, the power of information and money being persuasive and highlighted the issue of party donors in the US political system. Pay to get your way.

I found it a very accurate and depressing view of how the world is now. Idiots who think they know better than scientists and do their ‘own research’. Vapid people obsessed with social media and memes. Trump esq president with idiotic child given way too much power. At least Trump is out but the first two still very much evident both for covid and climate change. It doesn’t bode well for humanity in the future!

Just RTFT here and also a bit depressing so few posters got what they movie was about! We are doomed!!!

@Inabitoftime I know right, explains a lot

@Inabitoftime

Just RTFT here and also a bit depressing so few posters got what they movie was about! We are doomed!!!

Haha me too. People even posting that they didn't like the movie because they fell asleep... well then you didn't watch it did you, doh!

Just finished it right now. Feel really odd. Think I need a bath. Strangely disturbing, depressing. Hopeless. It's oblivion.

@Fritilleries that’ll be the existential terror - distract yourself with some of the better stuff our species have come up with.

We watched it before bed and neither of us could sleep after, we had to watch something else as we were too unsettled to read anything.

We thought it was really well made and made us very uncomfortable, not preachy at all. Just an important message expertly put across.

This is an interesting article about why the film has received such mixed responses.

www.google.com/amp/s/www.forbes.com/sites/davidrvetter/2021/12/28/why-sneering-critics-dislike-netflixs-dont-look-up-but-climate-scientists-love-it/amp/

Medievalist - thanks for posting the link.
My favourite quote

...But in their dismissals of Don’t Look Up as “shrill,” “bombastic” and “misguided,” sneering mainstream critics are apparently unaware of their resemblance to the characters being satirized in the source material...

I think they are well aware of the resemblance, hence the bad reviews.

I watched this and thought it was really well done. A bit too close to home for how the world would react if they were faced with this sort of threat. Like when coronavirus was about to hit and everyone was saying “well I’m not worried at all, all the worried people are just hysterical lunatics”

Good article thanks for posting.

Are all reviewers white men?!

In the first 5 minutes or so, I turned to my husband and said, "My God, this comet-end-of-the-world-disaster-American-heroes trope has been done to death, hasn't it? How is this film going to do it differently?"

It was brilliant.

1. The allegory of climate change - the genre of the film is literally satire. It's an obvious and bleak look in the mirror.

1. Mark Rylance having played Flop in Bing always delights me in other roles. He's a fabulous actor. All of the cast were brilliant, in fact.

1. Jonah Hill carrying that Birkin handbag throughout was hilarious.

1. Only comment is I wish they'd just cut to black and had a period of silence after the prayer and meal scene. I think that would have been more impactful and a braver directorial choice.

1. I laughed throughout but now I feel empty and sad.

Did anyone else think Jonah Hill was a perfect caricature of Eric Trump!?

I keep coming back to this thread to read the newest responses.

I can't think when the last time was that a film generated such discussion and debate. I wish more films were like this, I really do.

Oh and fuck The Guardian. Their reviews are consistently the opposite of my own.

Watching this as a climate scientist must be exceptionally painful https://www.theguardian.com/commentisfree/2021/dec/29/climate-scientist-dont-look-up-madness?CMP=ShareiOSAppp_Other

@Stellaris22

Watching this as a climate scientist must be exceptionally painful [[https://www.theguardian.com/commentisfree/2021/dec/29/climate-scientist-dont-look-up-madness?CMP=Share]]iOSAppp_Other

From the article:

"this isn’t a film about how humanity would respond to a planet-killing comet; it’s a film about how humanity is responding to planet-killing climate breakdown... There may only be five years left before humanity expends the remaining “carbon budget” to stay under 1.5C of global heating at today’s emissions rates... there may only be five years before the Amazon rainforest and a large Antarctic ice sheet pass irreversible tipping points"

This is the 'comet'. Five years!

@Inabitoftime

Just RTFT here and also a bit depressing so few posters got what they movie was about! We are doomed!!!

I think if people aren't getting what it was really about then that is more the fault of the film than the people.

Take away the subjective climate change 'context' and view it entirely objectively. Is it still a good film?

Its got some hard hitting actors but the plot and storytelling is (in my opinion) actually slightly weak if you take away the political aspect.

Take away the subjective climate change 'context' and view it entirely objectively. Is it still a good film?

Just my opinion but I think even if you view it objectively - ignore the climate change aspect and instead consider it in the context of how a government might behave if warned of impending collision with a comet, the plot is still very much believable.

@Scrowy
It’s a good point
Actually in terms of the narrative I’d only give it a 7 out of 10. Mostly good but overlong and some parts, especially the Ariana grande bits, didn’t fit in that well.

But a 10 out of 10 for proving a political pint and also for provoking thought and (hopefully healthy and impactful) debate

But if you take away the main context of any film it's going to seem a weaker plot. Climate change was at the heart of the film; to view it without that aspect is entirely missing the point. It's like saying Watership Down is a story about rabbits.