Adam McKay’s Don’t Look Up runs 138 minutes and carries a tagline that tells you exactly what it thinks it is: “Based on truly possible events.” The film follows two Michigan State University astronomers who find a comet, calculate that it will hit Earth in about six months, and then spend the rest of the movie learning that nobody with power cares.
Those astronomers are doctoral candidate Kate Dibiasky and her adviser Dr. Randall Mindy. McKay uses the comet as an allegory for climate change. The film also goes after social, political, corporate, celebrity and media indifference, and it draws a parallel to how the public treated science during the COVID-19 pandemic. That is a lot of targets. Don’t Look Up hits most of them with a hammer.
Trailer, via Netflix.
Kate Dibiasky Finds the Comet
The plot is a straight line. Dibiasky discovers a previously unknown comet. Mindy calculates the collision and the extinction-level size. Dr. Teddy Oglethorpe, head of the Planetary Defense Coordination Office, verifies their findings and accompanies them to present their findings to the White House. President Janie Orlean and her son Jason, who is also her Chief of Staff, greet them with apathy.
So the scientists leak the news to The Daily Rip, a morning show hosted by Jack Bremmer and Brie Evantee. The hosts treat the end of the world as a segment. Dibiasky loses her temper and rants on air. Public reaction is muted. The NASA Director, a top donor to Orlean with no background in astronomy, downplays the whole thing.
That is the engine of the film, and it runs on one joke: the gap between what is true and what people will agree to hear.
The Orlean White House and the Aborted Mission
Orlean only moves when her own scandals force her. When her sexual relations with her Supreme Court nominee make headlines, she tries to divert public attention to the threat of the comet, announcing a project to use nuclear weapons to strike and divert the comet. The mission successfully launches, but Orlean abruptly aborts it.
Why? Peter Isherwell, the billionaire CEO of BASH Cellular and another top donor, discovers that the comet contains trillions of dollars’ worth of rare-earth elements.
The White House agrees to commercially exploit the comet by fragmenting and recovering it from the ocean, using technology proposed by BASH in a scheme that has not undergone peer review. Orlean sidelines Dibiasky and Oglethorpe while hiring Mindy as National Science Advisor.
Dibiasky attempts to mobilize public opposition to the scheme but gives up under threat from the administration. That is the film’s real subject, and it is the part that works.
The Cast Is Enormous and Uneven
The ensemble is the selling point and the problem. Leonardo DiCaprio plays Dr. Randall Mindy, an astronomy professor at MSU. Jennifer Lawrence plays Kate Dibiasky. Meryl Streep plays President Janie Orlean. Cate Blanchett and Tyler Perry play the Daily Rip co-hosts Brie Evantee and Jack Bremmer. Jonah Hill plays Jason Orlean. Mark Rylance plays Peter Isherwell. Rob Morgan plays Dr. Teddy Oglethorpe.
Then there is everyone else. Timothée Chalamet plays Yule, a young shoplifter Kate befriends. Ron Perlman plays Colonel Benedict Drask, a war veteran and Presidential Medal of Freedom recipient sent up with the initial launch to divert the comet. Ariana Grande plays Riley Bina, an international pop star.
Kid Cudi, credited as Scott Mescudi, plays DJ Chello, an international rapper who becomes Riley’s fiancé on The Daily Rip. Himesh Patel plays Phillip Kaj, a journalist at Autopsy and Kate’s boyfriend. Melanie Lynskey plays June Mindy, Randall’s wife. Michael Chiklis plays Dan Pawketty, host of the conservative Patriot News Network. Tomer Sisley plays Adul Grelio, senior editor at the New York Herald. Paul Guilfoyle plays Lieutenant General Stuart Themes, the Pentagon liaison. Robert Joy plays Congressman Tenant.
The bench is long, and in this paper’s view the film uses almost none of it well.
Where the Satire Lands and Where It Doesn’t
The best material is structural. A comet is a clean metaphor because the science is not in dispute. Mindy and Dibiasky have the numbers. Oglethorpe verifies them. The threat is real and the clock is running. Every delay after that is a choice, not a mystery.
The film’s sharpest move is making the obstruction boring. Orlean does not deny the comet. She schedules it. She announces a nuclear mission, launches it, then cancels it for money. The scheme that replaces it has not undergone peer review. Nobody in the room cares. That is a specific and recognizable failure mode, and Don’t Look Up gets it right.
The weaker material is the comedy. The Daily Rip segments, the pop-star romance, the BASH product language — these are broad, and broad is not the same as sharp. A satire about a distracted world cannot afford to be the most distracted thing in the room.
Cast Against Function
| Performer | Character | Function in the plot |
|---|---|---|
| Jennifer Lawrence | Kate Dibiasky | Finds the comet; loses her temper on air |
| Leonardo DiCaprio | Dr. Randall Mindy | Calculates the impact; later becomes National Science Advisor |
| Rob Morgan | Dr. Teddy Oglethorpe | Verifies the findings; pushes the leak to The Daily Rip |
| Meryl Streep | President Janie Orlean | Aborts the diversion mission for commercial reasons |
| Jonah Hill | Jason Orlean | Chief of Staff; son of the President |
| Mark Rylance | Peter Isherwell | BASH Cellular CEO; proposes the un-peer-reviewed recovery scheme |
| Cate Blanchett | Brie Evantee | Co-host of The Daily Rip |
| Tyler Perry | Jack Bremmer | Co-host of The Daily Rip |
| Timothée Chalamet | Yule | Young shoplifter Kate befriends |
| Ron Perlman | Colonel Benedict Drask | Sent up with the initial launch to divert the comet |
| Ariana Grande | Riley Bina | Pop star; engaged to DJ Chello on air |
| Kid Cudi (Scott Mescudi) | DJ Chello | Rapper; becomes Riley’s fiancé on The Daily Rip |
In this paper’s reading, the characters with the least screen time do the most work. Morgan’s Oglethorpe is the only adult in the room. Rylance’s Isherwell is the only villain who understands what he is doing.
How Don’t Look Up Was Made
The production history matters because it explains the film’s shape. Produced by McKay’s Hyperobject Industries and Bluegrass Films, Don’t Look Up was announced in November 2019. It was originally set for a theatrical release by Paramount Pictures. The distribution rights were acquired by Netflix several months later.
Jennifer Lawrence became the first member of the cast to join. DiCaprio signed on after his discussions with McKay on adjustments to the script. The rest of the cast was added through 2020. Filming was initially set to begin in April 2020 in Massachusetts, but it was delayed by the pandemic. It eventually began in November 2020 and wrapped in February 2021.
| Date | Event |
|---|---|
| November 2019 | Film announced |
| 2020 | The rest of the cast was added through 2020 |
| April 2020 | Original filming start in Massachusetts, delayed by the pandemic |
| November 2020 | Filming begins |
| February 2021 | Filming wraps |
| December 10, 2021 | Limited theatrical release begins |
McKay wrote the film from a story he co-wrote with David Sirota. McKay also co-produced and directed. The runtime is 138 minutes, and it feels every one of them in the second act.
The Problem With the Ending
Don’t Look Up is a comedy, a science fiction film, and a drama at once, and it is least convincing as the last two. The comedy is loud. The science fiction is a delivery system for the metaphor. The drama — the part where Dibiasky gives up, where Mindy takes the job, where the administration threatens its own scientists — is where the film should be at its best, and it keeps cutting away to a joke.
The film’s defenders will say the tonal mess is the point. A world that cannot hold a serious thought deserves a movie that cannot hold a tone. That is a clever argument and it is not good enough. Satire has to be more disciplined than its target, not less.
What the film does have is a thesis, and the thesis is correct. The comet is not the problem. The problem is a media ecosystem that treats extinction as content, a political class that treats science as a donor-relations issue, and a billionaire who sees a rock full of rare-earth elements and does the math.
The film satirizes social, political, corporate, celebrity, and media indifference, in particular to the climate crisis, and it parallels societal responses to science during the COVID-19 pandemic.
The execution does not hold. Streep is fun and weightless. Rylance is genuinely unsettling. DiCaprio and Lawrence are doing real work in a film that keeps asking them to stand next to a pop star. The satire is not subtle and it is not wrong, and those two things are not the same as being good.
Don’t Look Up is a film that knows exactly what is broken and cannot stop pointing at it long enough to say anything else. The tagline promises “truly possible events.” The film delivers a truly possible world and a truly uneven movie about it.
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