In late 2021, Adam McKay released Don’t Look Up; a satirical, Oscar-nominated film which follows two astronomers, Dr. Randall Mindy (Leonardo DeCaprio) and Ph. D. student Kate Dibiasky (Jennifer Lawrence). After discovering a comet hurtling towards Earth, these two make it their mission to let the world know that it is only a matter of months before Earth is destroyed. 

After watching a movie a few times, one would think a person would lose interest. I have watched this film twice and am already planning for a third. Yes, it is that good. It doesn’t take long to realize Don’t Look Up is no different than the world we live in today. Scientists bringing global warming up to the government or big CEOs and being rejected is the main message behind the film. With a scandalous president, corrupt CEOs leading the world and citizens blindly following one side or the other, Don’t Look Up encapsulates all of our societal issues with a comedic twist in a two-hour-and-25-minute film. 

With Mindy and Dibiasky’s discovery of the comet, the next step was to let the world know of their demise. Along with Dr. Oglethorpe (Rob Morgan), Dibiasky and Mindy Make their way straight to the White House. Speaking to President Orlean (Meryl Steep) and Chief of Staff Jason Orlean (Jonah Hill) proved to be pointless. The President and Chief of Staff couldn’t care less about the comet since they had more important things to do, such as trying to fix their image for re-election or teaming up with tech billionaire CEO Peter Isherwell (Mark Rylance) to try and extract rare-earth materials from the comet. We see this type of corruption within our real world when presidential nominees push out an agenda that appeals to the masses, rather than addressing real issues.

Realizing the government simply doesn’t care, Dr. Randall and Kate try “The Daily Rip,” a morning show hosted by Brie Evantee (Cate Blanchett) and Jack Bremmer (Tyler Perry). The results were even worse than anticipated. Kate was ridiculed for trying to scare everyone and Dr. Randall was sensationalized because of his looks.

After this, the astronomers momentarily lose motivation to save the world and seperate. This unexpected separation was a great move by McKay as it shows that people can still make time for ordinary hardships even with a global catastrophe on the way. 

On the surface, it seems like McKay made just another doomsday film with an asteroid wiping out the planet, but in fact we are facing our doomsday event as well, with global warming and climate change as the cause. In the film we see Randall Mindy run into a hard time trying to tell the world about the asteroid and after getting dismissed by a big-name media company ,The International New York Herald, says,”How is it criminal if we just tell people, like the public, you know, what we saw and tell them the truth?” Quite likely, many scientists ask themselves a similar question today. So, what do we not know?

Watch in theaters now or stream it with a Netflix subscription.