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Don’t Look Up:

An Accolade to Present Day

Victor Serrano I Creatives

Don’t we all just love when we experience something that we relate to, may that feeling be good or bad. Such is the case with Adam McKay’s satirical sci-fi film, Don’t Look Up. On paper, Don’t Look Up looks like your typical end-of-the-world movie where the conflict revolves around how to beat an extinction-level threat looming over all life on Earth. What makes this different is that the conflict in this movie revolves around humanity, where we are the cause of our own demise. The conflict and the horrifying message it relays to us is something that is really relevant and currently happening in our present time. A warning that shows us the consequence if we continue treading on the path we’re currently walking on to.

While the film’s primary source of conflict is a comet hurtling its way towards Earth, it is not the primary focus of what the movie wants to show us. In the movie, Professor Randall Mindy (Leonardo DiCaprio) and Kate Dibiasky (Jennifer Lawrence) faced countless criticisms and their efforts downplayed by the public for simply speaking the truth. Society always tends to automatically believe in their own little truths when challenged by facts that make us uncomfortable, scared, and anxious. Distrust between the scientific community and the public is what this film highlights, and how one day that distrust can cause the end of all life on our planet. Governments not acting unless they have something to gain is also one of the main focuses of the film, same goes to the giant corporations. In the movie, US President Janie Orlean (Meryl Streep) used the comet threat to garner approval for the upcoming elections. She didn’t care about the comet at first and planned to sweep it under the rug until a scandal was leaked and affected her public image. BASH, a billion-tech company in the movie, sacrificed humanity by stopping NASA’s plan to deflect the asteroid and offered instead to exploit the comet for its rich minerals. The safety of the people was a sacrifice that these people were willing to make to make more money. Sounds familiar? That’s exactly what is happening right now. During the early days of the pandemic, many people didn’t believe that it was happening, hell, we even made memes about it. Experts who expressed their concerns to the public got ridiculed and called liars. Governments and businesses profited and made this pandemic a business.

The rich got richer, and the poor got poorer as the day went by. Don’t Look Up may not be about this pandemic, but it’s horrifying to think that it portrayed our current society that we live in today. Because of the changes happening in our society lately, our people with creative minds have a desire to spread awareness and call for action to bad things that we are all experiencing lately through movies such as this.

It is imperative that we open our minds, widen our eyes, and expand our ears to issues and crises that our world is currently facing.

The movie did a great job on showing what will happen if we don’t change the way our society approaches dilemmas.

And what I love the most about the movie is that it doesn’t beat around the bush on what it is supposed to be about. It doesn’t need deep thinking nor critical insights to fully get what it says. It bears it naked; it wants you to see it wholly for what it is. And that’s why, Don’t Look Up is the perfect representation of what society is today.