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MOVIE REVIEW
The Movie ‘Don’t Look Up’ Is a Scary Satirization of Our Fractured Responses to COVID
The movie’s characters are as complicated and asinine as earth’s real life inhabitants
A comet is hurtling toward a catastrophic collision with earth, and a scientist and a Ph.d student discover it. They undertake the mission of warning the nation and the world.
If this movie went the way of most alien invasion movies, or ones where comets or asteroids are going to hit and destroy earth, the leaders and people of the world would unite to stop it. There would be a story arc where cooperation was a struggle, but eventually everyone on the planet would join in a concerted effort to save humankind and all other species on earth. Ultimately, the movies’ stars save the planet itself.
I wrote a thought experiment recently, where I queried if the virus variant, Omicron, were an alien invader, would earth’s leaders and inhabitants unite then to fight it. I assumed that, as in the movie Independence Day, all people of earth would rally behind the president of the U.S. and Will Smith to save our planet.
According to the recent Netflix release, Don’t Look Up, my thought experiment conclusion is wrong.
