The Tragic Lesson of Don’t Look Up

[Kamaji]

The Tragic Lesson of Don’t Look Up

What if the world ended in an election year?

By:  Edward D. Chang

January 15, 2022

It was the zeitgeist.

In 1998, during the last great disaster-film craze, two blockbusters about extraterrestrial objects striking Earth and triggering extinction, Armageddon and Deep Impact, were released within a few months of each other. Stylistically different, the two films shared a common theme: For all our faults, humanity will always fight for its survival. And, though many will perish, we’ll ultimately prevail thanks to our courage.

Don’t Look Up, released in 2021 and distributed via Netflix, is the first big-money film since then that explores the topic of extinction-level impact, and it takes the polar opposite tack: Even in the face of guaranteed demise, humanity will find a reason to destroy itself. It’s a bleak, cynical message, but audiences must wonder: Is this who we are? Besides being tremendously entertaining, the themes in Don’t Look Up could very well represent the zeitgeist of today.

More Deep Impact than Armageddon, Hollywood’s return to the planet-killing-object genre focuses less on the act of averting disaster and more on human drama. A scientist and a Ph.D. student, portrayed respectively by the impossible-to-typecast Leonardo DiCaprio and Jennifer Lawrence, discover a comet big enough to destroy all life on Earth with an impact date just over six months away. What follows is a half-year of futile attempts to mobilize state and society to wake up and fight for survival, only to discover the demoralizing truth: People just don’t care all that much.

A satirical but thoughtful film, the question of “What if the world ended in an election year?” is answered in absurdly comedic fashion. Yet, there’s a tinge of realism to it all. As Eric Weinstein noted, everything, including the economy and politics, has become “kayfabe,” pro-wrestling lingo for portraying fake things as real. Private or public, everything has become about maintaining deception, since living by truth is far too burdensome and potentially destabilizing. In the movie, no one—neither the White House, the media, nor the public—is willing to be inconvenienced by the worst news imaginable. Elections, good times, and profits are at stake, and we’re just too high on our own supply to realize none of it matters if we’re due to be wiped out in six months. The adage about good times creating weakness rings true here.

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Source:  https://www.theamericanconservative.com/articles/the-tragic-lesson-of-dont-look-up/

[Kamaji]

So, anyways, after reading this article, I decided to have a go at watching Don't Look Up, and boy was that a waste of a good 45 minutes (I fast-forwarded through more than half of it).

It is not a thoughtful film and, as such, is not intelligently written enough to count as satire - not in the sense that Jonathan Swift could write satire.

It was dumb, but also not dumb enough in the right ways to be camp.

It was simply a poorly written, but technically reasonably executed, second-rate movie that I would heartily recommend everyone avoid.

[Free Vulcan]

So, anyways, after reading this article, I decided to have a go at watching Don't Look Up, and boy was that a waste of a good 45 minutes (I fast-forwarded through more than half of it).

It is not a thoughtful film and, as such, is not intelligently written enough to count as satire - not in the sense that Jonathan Swift could write satire.

It was dumb, but also not dumb enough in the right ways to be camp.

It was simply a poorly written, but technically reasonably executed, second-rate movie that I would heartily recommend everyone avoid.

That seems to be most movies today. Could have been great, but just thoroughly botched.

Personally I think Hollywood has become so woke that they can't rise above some cheese hack govt propaganda film. They only preach bully sermons anymore, and seem incapable of crafting a decently structured movie.

[Kamaji]

That seems to be most movies today. Could have been great, but just thoroughly botched.

Personally I think Hollywood has become so woke that they can't rise above some cheese hack govt propaganda film. They only preach bully sermons anymore, and seem incapable of crafting a decently structured movie.

Don't Look Up is worse than most.

[jmyrlefuller]

It doesn't even appeal to me. It just reeks of Hollywood elites looking down on their audience as a bunch of stupid, selfish rubes.

I mean, that's the hubris of all this: every damn disaster movie always assumes we have the power to stop disaster. If the past two years has shown us anything, it's that we can't. Every single strategy has failed. There isn't one country on this planet that has been spared.

And perhaps that's the one part of all this that Don't Look Up—like the post-nuclear On the Beach did 60 years ago— does get right. But like true left-wingers, they can't accept that. Instead, they assign blame, pointing fingers at anyone who isn't in lockstep with them for their unworkable plan failing, when it was always doomed to begin with.

We humans are not as powerful as we think we are.

[Fishrrman]

For the last few months, my weekend movie viewing has been almost all "disaster films".
But this looks like one I'll skip.

Ones I've watched:
The Road
Threads
No Blade of Grass
Deluge (1933)
I am Legend (2007 version with alternate ending)
World Without End (1956)
The Stand (1994)
Miracle Mile (1988)
The Last Man On Earth (1964)
Outbreak (1995)
A Boy And His Dog (1974)
The Omega Man (1971)
Doomsday (2008)
28 Days Later
28 Weeks Later
Children of Men (2006)
Equilibrium (2002)
The Postman (1997)
Reign of Fire (2002)
The Quiet Earth (1985)
Carriers (2009)
City of Ember (2008)
Knowing (2009)
10 Cloverfield Lane (2016)
Diverge (2016)
Mad Max (1979)
The Road Warrior (1981)
Mad Mac 3 Beyond Thunderdome (1985)
The Book of Eli (2010)
The Last Survivors (2014)

[Smokin Joe]

For the last few months, my weekend movie viewing has been almost all "disaster films".
But this looks like one I'll skip.

Ones I've watched:
The Road
Threads
No Blade of Grass
Deluge (1933)
I am Legend (2007 version with alternate ending)
World Without End (1956)
The Stand (1994)
Miracle Mile (1988)
The Last Man On Earth (1964)
Outbreak (1995)
A Boy And His Dog (1974)
The Omega Man (1971)
Doomsday (2008)
28 Days Later
28 Weeks Later
Children of Men (2006)
Equilibrium (2002)
The Postman (1997)
Reign of Fire (2002)
The Quiet Earth (1985)
Carriers (2009)
City of Ember (2008)
Knowing (2009)
10 Cloverfield Lane (2016)
Diverge (2016)
Mad Max (1979)
The Road Warrior (1981)
Mad Mac 3 Beyond Thunderdome (1985)
The Book of Eli (2010)
The Last Survivors (2014)

I think I have only missed 5 of those (unless I saw them and didn't recall the title). I'll have to check those out.

[Smokin Joe]

It doesn't even appeal to me. It just reeks of Hollywood elites looking down on their audience as a bunch of stupid, selfish rubes.

I mean, that's the hubris of all this: every damn disaster movie always assumes we have the power to stop disaster. If the past two years has shown us anything, it's that we can't. Every single strategy has failed. There isn't one country on this planet that has been spared.

And perhaps that's the one part of all this that Don't Look Up—like the post-nuclear On the Beach did 60 years ago— does get right. But like true left-wingers, they can't accept that. Instead, they assign blame, pointing fingers at anyone who isn't in lockstep with them for their unworkable plan failing, when it was always doomed to begin with.

We humans are not as powerful as we think we are.

Why I laugh at all the people who think that after 4.6 Billion years, they can stop climate change, and more that they know this is the place to stop it..