“Don’t Look Up” Review: Even with all the top stars, this blockbuster is still overdone

Netflix has once again proved that it is good to have money. As long as enough stars are invited, any CP can come together.

Leonardo DiCaprio has an affair with Cate Blanchett, Timothée Chalamet and Jennifer Lawrence have an affair.

The above passages are from the same movie.

Netflix’s finale of this year’s fried, here comes – “Don’t Look Up”.

Related Post: Comedy Disaster ‘Don’t Look Up’: The Ironic Power of Dark Humor.

The biggest gimmick of this movie, of course, is the per capita “Oscar winner” starring lineup: Leonardo DiCaprio, three “Oscar Best Actress”, Jennifer Lawrence, Meryl Streep, Cate Blanchett.

Supporting roles include Timothée Chalamet, “Captain America” ​​Chris Evans, Ariana Grande, “Oscar Best Supporting Actor” Mark Rylance…

Such a luxurious lineup, how is the reputation?

Very interesting.

Whether it’s American media or video platforms, “Don’t Look Up” is polarizing.

Some people praised “Don’t Look Up” as the funniest comedy movie of 2021, while others complained that the movie was full of self-righteous arrogance.

The conclusion is that the pros and cons of “Don’t Look Up” are equally obvious.

I’ll sum it up in one sentence: “Don’t Look Up” is such a spoof that it’s become a runaway farce.

An astronomy professor (Leonardo DiCaprio) and his graduate student (Jennifer Lawrence) observe an astronomical spectacle – a comet will hit Earth in six months’ time.

If nothing is done, the planet is doomed.

This is a slightly hacky opening.

Usually the development of the plot is how to resolve the crisis, or how to escape the earth.

But “Don’t Look Up” is the opposite. The comet is just a cover, and the plot quickly turns to a political comedy.

How a “doomsday” news will change everyone’s life. It alludes to a series of farces in American society since the outbreak of the epidemic.

Including the Trump administration’s incompetence in epidemic prevention, the presidential election, congressional chaos, and the widening gap between the rich and the poor under the epidemic.

Related Post: Disaster satirical comedy “Don’t Look Up” breaks Netflix record in the first week of viewing time.

What happened next can be summed up in the following steps.

In the first step, the president presses top search queries.

The situation is serious, and professors and graduate students rushed to Washington to report to the President of the United States (Meryl Streep).

However, the president took into account that the midterm elections are still three weeks away. If this news comes out, people will panic, and it is bound to lose the support of Congress.

So the decision the president made was: wait and see.

In fact, the president didn’t take it to heart at all. Because she receives a lot of “doomsday” speeches every year: droughts, famines, plagues, nuclear leaks, economic collapse, the hole in the ozone layer…

She has long been surprised.

In the second step, everyone is entertained to death.

After being ignored by the president, professors and graduate students decided to go on a TV show.

This is a morning talk show. It’s not a serious science program, but an entertainment program that focuses on gossip.

In the show, no matter how terrifying they described “the comet hitting the earth”, the two hosts always had a relaxed expression.

The rigor of science has been dissolved to nothing, and it has even been regarded as a joke. The graduate students went into a frenzy at the show and left angrily.

After the show aired, no one cared about what they called “the comet hit the earth”. The focus of public opinion was at the moment when the graduate student yelled.

Because of her exaggerated expression at that time, it was made into an emoji package, which was widely circulated.

The NASA administrator also poured cold water on it at this time, which she thought sounded too crazy.

In fact, she knew the truth, but as a supporter of the president, she did not hesitate to trample the dignity of science for the sake of the mid-term elections.

In the third step, the president used the comet to cover her own scandal.

Seeing that the popularity of the “comet hitting the earth” has been completely suppressed.

But a shocking scandal about the president suddenly broke out on the Internet, which caused the president’s poll approval rating to drop by several percentage points.

Because of the scandal, the president temporarily changed his mind.

He decided to listen to the professor’s advice and take immediate steps to avoid the comet strike and save all mankind.

Of course, the purpose of her doing this was not to find out in her conscience, she just wanted to pull Comet out to “block the gun” for herself.

Divert the focus of public opinion and don’t continue to focus on her scandal.

The president chose to issue a statement in the middle of the night to make it look more like an emergency. She announced that she would use the space shuttle to load a nuclear bomb to blast the comet out of its original orbit.

In order to further demonstrate the determination of the U.S. government to care for all mankind, the president also designated a veteran to be the scapegoat, and let the NASA administrator who had previously “refuted the rumors” resign.

The professor was also brought under the banner of the president. He made frequent appearances in major programs to exaggerate the positive significance of this matter.

Sure enough, it is necessary to do a full set of dramas.

In this way, under the dual intervention of public opinion and the government, the president successfully reversed the situation. She won the midterm elections by a wide margin.

At the same time, this has also triggered domestic turmoil in the United States, leading to multiple stock market meltdowns.

In the fourth step, stakeholders remove top search queries.

They saw the much-anticipated “launch day”. Even if this matter concerns the fate of all mankind, there are still people who dismiss it.

They also launched the topic of “launch challenge” online, and many people were injured and hospitalized.

Fortunately, the launch process went smoothly, and the professor estimated that the probability of success of the mission was as high as 81%.

However, just when everyone was excited, an accident happened. All the space shuttles and satellites that were launched turned around and returned in mid-air.

This works too!?

It turned out that the CEO of a technology company (Mark Rylance) discovered the commercial value of this comet – it is rich in rare earth elements, at least trillions of dollars.

So he presented the president with a wild idea: He would develop a special launcher that would attach to the comet and blow it up. Let the fragments fall precisely to the sea, and then send a ship to salvage.

The CEO is the mega-financier behind the presidential campaign. The president did not want to offend him and followed his advice.

After the launch was terminated, a new round of large-scale riots was triggered again in the United States.

As a result, the CEO’s rare earth recycling plan failed.

But humans have not prepared Plan B for themselves.

The final outcome is a happy one: the earth is over, and everyone is dead.

Because of this ending, “Don’t Look Up” has been called a true “family movie”.

Many people interpret the comet as a new coronavirus. The incompetence of the U.S. government has led to its proliferation around the world.

This is like the scene where the Earth is reduced to ruins at the end of the film.

Related Post: Check out the three highlights of Leonardo DiCaprio’s new movie “Don’t Look Up”, it can make you laugh from start to finish.

In fact, such metaphors abound in “Don’t Look Up” . Because the director and writer of the film is, Adam McKay.

He’s probably the most passionate director of political satire comedy today. Several of his previous works are of this type.

He was the lead writer of “Saturday Night Live”, “The Big Short” reflecting on the collapse of the US financial system, and “Vice” showing the public’s crisis of trust in the US government.

“Don’t Look Up” is even more extreme. It captures the alienation of information by the news media and social networks, the manipulation of public opinion by the powerful and the government, and the extreme emotions aroused by the public under the influence of the two.

Originally, Adam McKay just wanted to make a film reflecting on global climate change. The comet in the film originally referred to the “climate crisis”.

But a month after filming began, the epidemic broke out. A lot of what happened in reality gave Adam McKay a new shock.

In an interview, he talked about a moment “more bizarre than the script”: then US President Trump said that drinking bleach could kill the new crown virus.

This incident made Adam McKay completely determined to change the script.

He texted the producers: “Reality is so crazy, well, let’s make the movie a little more crazy.”

As a result, we can see in “Don’t Look Up” that the movie is a highly dramatic satire of many things that happen in reality.

The film used the talk show to criticize the three major cable news outlets in the United States: FOX, CNN and MSNBC.

They are often reduced to the mouthpieces of political parties and do not take on the role of the news media well.

The American president played by Meryl Streep basically combines the shortcomings of several American presidents – Reagan’s inconsistency, Bush Jr.’s moral incompatibility, Obama’s sophistication, and Trump’s arrogance.

And the CEO who controls the US government through money is a combination of Elon Musk and Jeff Bezos.

The two have two major space companies, SpaceX and Blue Origin, respectively.

Even the comet that flew towards Earth corresponds to the real “4660 Nereus” asteroid.

Scientists around the world have been tracking the asteroid since 1982. It enters Earth’s orbit about once every ten years and is classified as a “near-Earth object”.

The purpose of the observation is precisely because it contains rare metals worth about 4.71 billion US dollars.

Of course, compared to the above, the biggest irony of “Don’t Look Up” is the unprecedented division in the United States before and after the presidential election.

As the date of the comet’s impact on Earth approaches, the comet is getting closer and closer to Earth. So close that as long as you look up, you can see it in the sky. Even those who advocate conspiracy theories have to rethink.

But even if the truth can be seen just by looking up, some people still choose to turn a blind eye for their own interests.

They may be politicians running for election, rich people coveting rare metals, poor people who see the jobs that comets might bring, or radicals who simply want to stand out.

Because of a comet, the entire United States was torn into two camps. It’s black and white.

Those who are willing to believe it, their slogan is “Just Look Up”, while the other part of the people, their slogan is “Don’t Look Up”.

They even sparked massive clashes.

“Don’t Look Up” captures the bipartisan situation in America in an almost hysterical state.

The film also underscores the scary aspect of diode thinking, which can easily become a political tool so that no one cares about the truth.

And such a state does not only exist between people. Under the epidemic, it has become a portrayal of this era.

When the real events that are metaphors in the movie are interpreted one by one.

It is not difficult for the audience to find the flaws in the film. Its biggest flaw is that it requires interpretation.

If it is said that referring to politics in a movie is “entraining private goods”, then the movie “Don’t Look Up” is a movie inserted in the private goods.

In other words, Adam McKay’s intention to use the film to satirize reality is so obvious that the film is led by reality.

He repackaged the big and small news that happened in the United States in the past two years into a movie. The film would be meaningless if it were stripped of reality.

This opportunistic and desperate approach is inevitably offensive. If that’s the case, then why do you need a movie?

Wouldn’t it be better to just watch the news reports?

But there must be some people who are interested in the political events mentioned in the movie. And they get excited by these metaphors, as if there is some kind of telepathy with the director.

In addition, another major problem with this film is that the irony and teasing throughout the film is, in the final analysis, a kind of self-healing.

The ending of the destruction of the earth seems to be vigilant against the world. In fact, it is a kind of arrogance of “everyone is drunk and I wake up alone”.

What the director conveyed is a kind of “ostrich thought”-human beings are stupid and are not worth saving, so let’s destroy them all.

However, whether it is the climate crisis or the global fight against the epidemic. In fact, some people do make their own efforts.

The ending of “Don’t Look Up” is tantamount to ignoring and obliterating the dedication of this part of the world.

It boils down to one word: lazy.

In the first half of the movie, the joke was big, and the satirical comedy effect was achieved, but the ending couldn’t come back.

After all, it’s easier to ask questions than to answer.

Between dark humor and apocalyptic narrative, the film doesn’t find a balance.

Director Adam McKay described the look and feel of “Don’t Look Up” this way: “My goal is to take the audience through the entire amusement park and finally to the junkyard.”

He has a clear understanding of the movie: “Don’t Look Up” is good or bad, it doesn’t matter, what matters is that the movie must cause controversy.

Isn’t the purpose of making a movie like this just in line with the ironic phenomenon in the movie?

So, as absurd as the phenomenon “Don’t Look Up” satirizes in the movie, the movie is as absurd.