In "Don't... [+] Look Up", there are several actors, including Leonardo DiCaprio, Jonah Hill, and Oscar-winners.
Niko Tavernise is a streamer.
Don't Look Up is a movie that is not subtle. The satire is about the incapability of our political and media classes to respond to a world-ending disaster. Adam McKay and David Sirota repeatedly and angrily skewer the structures that prevent our society from taking climate change seriously. It is being very funny.
You would be forgiven for thinking that a comedy about a real-world crisis would be popular with movie critics. You would be wrong. At the time of writing, Don't Look Up had a mixed score on the site.
Why?
Don't Look Up makes for uncomfortable viewing and is one of the main themes of the criticism. The film is described by David Fear in Rolling Stone as "blunt", "shrill" and "self-conscious and unrelaxed". The director, Adam McKay, doesn't know how to let people enjoy things even if it's their own destruction, according to ABC News Australia'sluke Goodsell. It is fine to make movies about the climate crisis if you do it in a way that will please the viewer. You must not use the phrase "bombastic, shake-you-by-the-shoulders direction".
Critics are worried that the film is making fun of people, and that they might be among the targets.
Tim Brayton of Alternate Ending says that McKay is confident that he is much smarter than you are. "Yelling 'Look at all the dumb-dumbs' cannot be the basis for successful satire," cries a pearl-clutching Fletcher Powell. The director takes a "smug, self-satisfied approach" that proves insufficient at addressing the legitimate plights at the core of the picture, says Screen International.
The film has hurt some feelings, but it is not clear which characters these offended writers are identifying with, or which audiences they are offended on behalf of. The critics feel like they are being condescending. Maybe they think they would be better at climate communication than the filmmakers. Matthew Lucas says that the film is a bad attempt to address a very real planetary crisis. Don't Look Up is guilty of having an air of superiority that would drive away any partisans who still need to be won over.
David Vetter has more on how Facebook and other companies lied about climate change.
Climate scientists were the subject of the film Don't Look Up, and the community in which they are based received the film poorly. Don't Look Up does a perfect job of channeling climate experts' tired frustration at being ignored.
For decades, researchers have been warning the political and media establishment that climate change is a civilization-threatening phenomenon that can overturn every constant that underpins our way of life. The political and media establishment has refused to take on board the magnitude of the threat, claiming that only people who are qualified to fully comprehend the issue are capable of doing so.
Climate and environmental researchers have heaped praise on Don't Look Up since it was released. Mann wrote in the Boston Globe that McKay's film succeeds not because it's funny and entertaining, but because it's serious sociopolitical commentary posing as comedy.
Ayana Elizabeth Johnson, co- creator of the How to Save a Planet podcast, said she had never felt so seen as watching Leonardo DiCaprio and Jen Lawrence play scientists warning of a looming apocalypse. I was wincing, anxious, nervous and nearly shouted at the screen. Listen to the scientists!
The government ignores a scientist in every disaster movie, according to Peter Gleick, winner of the Carl Sagan Prize for Science Popularization. You threaten all of us when you ignore the warnings of science.
David Ho, an oceanographer and climate scientist, found the movie to be very relevant to the issues of science and academia.
Julia K. Steinberger, a professor in social ecology and ecological economics, wondered how many media and political figures recognized themselves in #DontLookUp and would go on being self aware cheerleaders of the apocalypse.
Researchers and academics feel that Don't Look Up is an ideal send-up of the status quo. Climate activists have praised the approach, with prominent Otomi-Toltec climate activist Xiye Bastida saying: "#DontLookUp makes activists feel seen in a world where it feels like no one is paying attention to an existential threat."
Climate sceptic Alex Steffen noted on his social media that some of the critic's responses seem like hot takes written by culture workers from an alternate universe in which the planet Earth was not in the early days of its most recent evolution.
The idea that those trying to inform the public about how to understand and respond to catastrophic threats have some special responsibility not to offend those who regard being informed as offensive is not only anti-democracy, it is batshit crazy.
There are other criticisms of Don't Look Up that don't include the pile-ons highlighted here. Film and film criticism have useful roles in reflecting and shaping cultural and societal attitudes, and all art should be subject to critical appraisal. Don't Look Up is not the perfect movie, if such a thing exists, it can feel chaotic and slapdash at times, and not every joke finds its target. It's perfectly valid to question the usefulness of a comet as a metaphor for climate change.
The mainstream critics of Don't Look Up were unaware of their resemblance to the characters being satirized in the source material. The aspiring cultural gatekeepers are engaging in the very form of reality illiteracy so savagely lampooned by the climate crisis because they failed to recognize its remarkably deft summation of the various idiocies being revealed by the climate crisis.
It is all so meta.
