The new film "Don't Look Up" is only four minutes into the movie, and it's when Randall Mindy makes his first mistake.
A small group of colleagues are gathered in the observatory to hear from Mindy that he is leading a team trying to figure out the position and pathway of the newly discovered object.
Kate Dibiasky, a comet discoverer, asks why the distances keep getting smaller and smaller in the calculations. A 0.0 is written on the board by Mindy. Does he tell his friends the truth?
He asked Dibiasky to stay behind to figure out what to do next. Their secret that the comet is about to destroy our planet in a few months lands them in the Oval Office of the White House, with problems their previous lives never prepared them for.
There are some good videos for you. It was created with a sketch.
How many threatening asteroids are there? It is complicated.
You can watch the entire film on December 10 and December 24. McKay films often get raunchy and use strong language. It's rated R.
Adam McKay, the director of "The Big Short" and "Vice", has said that the fictional comet Dibiasky is meant to be a discussion on how the topic of climate change is manipulated. Even though scientists are committed to the data, they can get hurt by the results.
You can see that Dibiasky and Mindy are prepared for how a public will react to devastating news, but they are not. After their first appearance on a huge TV talk show, the astronomer's trajectory quickly spirals out of control from already difficult lives; Dibiasky is just about to defend her lengthy thesis, while the astronomer is on numerous medications to manage long-standing anxiety from his job.
Making things worse, the U.S. president is more concerned with a sex scandal than with the end of the world. She ignores the advice of NASA's Planetary Defense Coordination Office, which she jokes with viewers in a fourth-wall-breaking graphic that the unlikely name is real.
Kate Dibiasky portrays the perils of her PhD in the movie "Don't Look Up." Credit:Netflix
McKay says that Orlean's interpretation of presidential politics is similar to all administrations of the past 50 years. "Don't Look Up" is a slogan that Orlean leads later in the film.
Private interests start to get involved. Peter Isherwell is the CEO of a media company. Isherwell is supposed to be an amalgamation of space CEOs such as Jeff Bezos of Blue Origin and Elon Musk of SpaceX, who both had beginnings in the tech boom of the early 2000s.
This summary only covers a portion of the celebrity appearances, which will keep viewers saying "That's so-and-so!" almost every five minutes. Space fans will love the performance of "Dune" star Timothée Chalamet, who plays a skateboarding kid with a soft side for learning about new things.
"Don't Look Up" is a film about a skateboarding kid. Credit:Netflix
McKay's care in trying to say something new about how everyone would react to a disaster is appreciated. We didn't get a lot of debate about the fact of a comet hitting Earth because of films such as 1998's "Armageddon". Older films focused on the best way to destroy a comet, or run from it.
McKay has been making political thrillers quickly, and viewers of "The Campaign" and "Vice" will probably see a lot of parallels in "Don't Look Up." It's a slow burn, like those earlier satires. It's hard to pick out a film direction because "Don't Look Up" focuses on world-building so much in the first two-thirds. It's a commentary on how bad news gets manipulated and how private figures are thrust into the public eye. It's smart, funny, but hard to connect with any emotion until late in the film.
During the disinformation campaign and a stadium-sized rally, my attention was focused on a performance from a floating Riley Bina. Grande is trying to show the need to listen to the truth through art. I wonder if that theme came too late in the film for most of us to stick around.
Sharing difficult science can be isolating, as seen in the movie "Don't Look Up." Credit:Netflix
Waiting around will give you a lot of Easter eggs, including an epic speech that echoes the " Mad as Hell" monolog from the 1976's "Network", an enraged character harmlessly using a weapon for something hilarious and unexpected, and stunning views of the comet sweeping.
I was impressed with the commitment to comet science, between discussions of what an ephemeris means and the depiction of the comet core experiences. McKay listened closely to Amy Mainzer, a renowned asteroid researcher and professor at the University of Arizona.
"Don't Look Up" is a love letter to science and the people who defend it, and a commentary on how climate change can become weaponized and politicized to serve interests outside of the public need. Will a wide audience like the subtle arguments? We hope that the star power will draw them in for this critical, yet funny commentary on the interests of media, the politicians and big tech when it comes to dealing with difficult scientific matters.
Follow Elizabeth on social media. Follow us on social media.
