It’s not how you’d exit after seeing a new comedy from McKay. But I remember emerging in a real bummer mood. So David-how did you react when you first saw it?ĭavid Sims: I saw this film fairly early, a few months before it came out, because I interviewed Adam McKay. There have been reviews, counter-reviews, and defenses. The release has almost become a parody of discourse itself. So today we’re here to break down the movie, but also talk about the state of satire-and the question of whether our culture has become too depressing, too absurd, too lamentable to satirize. And then the pandemic happened, and a comedy about even the most obvious of threats failing to stir collective action became suddenly newly relevant. The movie’s director, Adam McKay, said he was inspired to write the movie by his burgeoning terror about the climate crisis. DiCaprio and Lawrence’s characters implore people on social media to just look up, while Meryl Streep’s President Janey Orlean tells her followers: Don’t Look Up. But people aren’t eager to hear the message, and the planet-killing comet becomes another culture-war football as it nears Earth. Lastly, they appeal to the business leaders hoping to profit from the big ball of minerals headed our way. The premise is dramatic but straightforward: Two astronomers, played by Leonardo DiCaprio and Jennifer Lawrence, discover a comet will hit Earth in six months. Here’s a bit of plot by way of recap, if you haven’t seen it or just want a refresher. Sophie Gilbert: Today we are here to talk about Don’t Look Up, the disaster satire from Adam McKay that came out on Netflix last month. The following transcript has been edited for length and clarity. Subscribe to The Review: Apple Podcasts | Spotify | Stitcher | Pocket Casts Staff writers Sophie Gilbert, David Sims, and Spencer Kornhaber discuss the movie and the current state of satire on the Atlantic culture podcast The Review. How close is its story to our own? And can its message make a difference? But the narrow-minded leaders of Don’t Look Up are unable to act against even the most obvious of existential threats. But after the script was done, production shut down for the pandemic and he watched the follies of a real-life disaster surpass his fictional one.ĬOVID-19, climate change, and a planet-killing comet are very different crises. As McKay told David Sims, he wrote the story about a planet-killing comet (and our society’s inability to act collectively to stop it) as a climate-change metaphor. That challenge was evident in the making of Don’t Look Up. Has political satire lost its power? Or has reality become so absurd that it’s now beyond parody? Such a delicate balance has made the star-studded Netflix film a polarizing movie.Ĭritics, audiences, and activists have both savaged and praised the movie, and the backlash has highlighted the difficulty of conveying an urgent message with comedy. Adam McKay’s disaster satire Don’t Look Up is many things at once: a parable of our distracted society, a primal scream of a warning, and a broad comedy from the writer/director of Anchorman.
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