Don't Look Up 2021 is Melancholia, but a comedy

  Blender Dumbass
October 16, 2025

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A lot of people see the 2021 Adam McKay film Don't Look Up as something that fails to communicate the message of climate change well enough. McKay stated that the movie was written specifically to point people at the absurdity of the "climate crisis". And yet the film's allegorical comet / asteroid doomsday plot seems to fail at giving it justice. For once an asteroid that is about to destroy the planet is nobody's fault. While the climate change is somebody's fault. But if you look at the movie relatively to other disaster flicks of the same type ( like Armageddon and Melancholia ) you see something rather interesting.

The film feels a lot like watching a lighter, more comedic version of the second half of Lars Von Trier's Melancholia. In Don't Look Up a comet is about to hit earth. In Melancholia it is a rouge planet. But in both films, we are met with characters that take the situation very differently. We have those that believe that the entity will pass the Earth safely and that there is nothing to worry about. And we have those that freak out about it, and ultimately, which end up being right about freaking out about it. Spoiler Alert, in both films, the entity ends up crashing into the Earth killing everybody on the planet. And the movie is about observing how humans fail to do anything about it. And ultimately how they cope with the death that comes for them.

What is different is that Melancholia is serious and depressing, while Don't Loop Up is depressing, while being funny about it. And also Don't Look Up is very political about the whole ordeal. In Melancholia the main argument is happening between a husband and wife. In Don't Look Up the whole political system is examined. And even some things unrelated to the climate change ( or things like science ) are also examined.

McKay in his glorious wisdom assembled an ensemble cast. We have Leonardo DiCaprio, Jennifer Lawrence, Timothée Chalamet, Jonah Hill, Cate Blanchett, Meryl Streep, Ariana Grande, Ron Perlman, Mark Rylance... and the list just goes on and on and on.

This is a technique McKay developed for his other political film, The Big Short from 2015. The idea is, he is going to make an unapologetically political movie, and use the names of the actors to draw people in to see it. But there is a yet another development that McKay did for The Big Short which he repeats here on Don't Look Up.

Before McKay was making political comedies he was making regular comedies, like the 2006 film Talladega Nights which I'm unable to watch. The film appears to be a spoof comedy about racing, but something about the jokes in it is so utterly cringe that I am unable to sit through the movie. Yet, I stupidly enjoyed both The Big Short and Don't Look Up. Obviously McKay adds politics, which makes the whole cringe thing suddenly amazing. But he also starts shooting completely differently. On Talladega Nights he uses regular mid 2000s way of shooting comedies. There is nothing particularly interesting about it cinematically. Suddenly on The Big Short he frees the camera a bit. The film becomes more spontaneous. It becomes more about capturing the scene, rather than manufacturing one. Which is, by the way, a very similar technique to how Lars Von Trier shoots his movies.

Obviously there is a difference with the thematic approach. While the camera work for both directors appears to be similar, they edit the films completely differently ( to some extent ). Both may use interesting images, like documentary footage, in the editing to communicate a point. Von Trier later in his career started doing it more. But I'm not talking that. Von Trier is trying to make you feel things. While McKay wants you to understand things. And laugh at those things you understand while doing so.

So we have a few scientists ( DiCaprio and Lawrence ) who discover a comet the size of mount Everest that is headed towards Earth. They do some math and quickly realize that it will hit Earth in 6 months. They get super serious and by the next morning they are already in the White House where the president of the United States played by Meryl Streep is too busy to see them because she needs to do other things today. Yes, the movie has a female president. And no, she isn't liberal. She is actually conservative, for some reason.

The first half of the film, our main characters struggle to even make people pay attention to their finding. Like, some dumb drama about some celebrities breaking up appears to be way more important to everybody than a comet that is about to kill everybody on the planet.

That is when the movie introduces our tech-billionaire villain character Peter Isherwell played by Mark Rylance. The same Mark Rylance that played the BFG in Spielberg's The BFG and a different tech CEO in Spielberg's Ready Player One.

He comes to the stage to brag about his AI that undermines everybody's privacy with 3 children, who hold his new phones. The 3 children are needed to make the speech sound a bit more epic. There is a sentence which is broken apart into 4 parts, some that he says, and some that each of the children is saying. Yet during that presentation one of the girls seems to be trying to say something extra, which is very interesting.

This Peter character ignores the girl ( played by Meara Mahoney ) twice. Once during the presentation when she is trying to say something, but is ultimately being shut down by him. And then second time after the presentation is over, when she is successful at uttering her words. But not successful at making him care about it even a little bit. What words? Well she says "I love you, Peter".

This could be read in a multitudes of ways. In one way, she could be a fan of Peter's devices ( like there are Apple fanboys in real life ). But also she could be actually in love with him as a person. Kind of like the girl in the movie My Girl. This weird inclusion ( which seems to be absolutely pointless ) made me think about something. The character of the CEO and the presentation speech really reminded me of a similar scene from Ready Player One where the same Mark Rylance is doing kind of the same thing. Yet in the Spielberg's film the CEO is the good guy. There is a separate, second CEO, of a different company, that is the bad guy.

It is possible that McKay cast Rylance to draw the parallel somehow. But then the question is why? The little girl in love with Rylance's character could be another clue. I discussed in my review of The BFG a potential theory that could make this little thing a direct reference to Rylance character in The BFG. And both Ready Player One and The BFG are also Steven Spielberg movies.

Also in the same year as Ready Player One Spielberg released another movie, with Meryl Streep in it called The Post. Which is a very politically charged film. Maybe the casting of Meryl Streep here in Don't Look Up! also could be related to this theory I'm starting to come up with here. So let me reach into my butt-hole to grab it out and present the theory to you. Keep in mind, I'm a bull. And that makes the theory that I take out of my ass... that's right... bullshit.

Steven Spielberg is known to make political movies in his career. He made classics like Minority Report and Schindler's List. And he also made a bunch of other political films, like Lincoln and The Post and many others. Maybe McKay is being cocky and tries to prove the world that his new technique of making political cinema is much better than anything Spielberg ever did. He draws parallels to Spielberg work, to say: Hey look. Remember Steven Spielberg? I'm better than him when making political films!

Is that true though? I don't know. The films are good. And the logic behind the execution ( combined with the rhetoric ) is kind of amazing. But is it better at conveying the points than say the same Minority Report? Or even Ready Player One? Based on the box office numbers, no. He fumbled. The first attempt The Big Short did okay at the box office. Which is probably what gave McKay the balls to mess around with Spielberg. But Spielberg is on another level.

The movie constantly brings up the concept of media training which kind of refers to a way to talk on camera which doesn't alienate people. It seems like McKay doesn't really like this concept at all. His way of making political movies is kind of specifically outrageous. And his fix ( to use celebrities ) doesn't really help much. While Spielberg does blog-busters which are secretly political movies, most of the time. Minority Report tripled its budged. And Ready Player One was a moderate hit, making more than half a billion dollars. Which means a lot of people saw those films. And that means a lot of people were exposed to the ideas in those films. While not a lot of people saw ( or will want to see ) Don't Look Up!.

Which is kind of a yet another thing that makes McKay kind of like Lars Von Trier. Von Trier isn't making much either. I guess you have to be Spielberg or James Cameron ( with his Avatar films ) to get people into their sits for something unrelated to politics. And that gives you the ability to shove politics into those people's faces. But you have to do it somehow, without them noticing it much. It shouldn't be preachy. It should be well crafted. So that the audience, looking at the film, will starts forming the idea, you want them to get, themselves.

Von Trier doesn't give a damn about what audiences feel. He kind of even wants them to feel like shit. So he doesn't make much money. And McKay trying the same technique, isn't going to do much better either, just because he shoved a laundry list of A-list celebrities into his movie.

Happy Hacking!!!

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  Kevin C 🎬 c:0


@blenderdumbass Just because the asteroid is nobody's fault, that does mean people shouldn't do something about it. The metaphor is spot on.I thought the movie was glorious!

... replies ( 1 )

  Blender Dumbass c:1



@kcarr2015@mstdn.social I was going to talk about it. But I was writing this review tired. So I forgot to tie it up nicely. There is the whole Peter CEO person wanting to mine the comet plot, which kind of is trying to address the same issues of fault. But I suppose I was more interested in the Steven Spielberg theory.

Reply

  Blender Dumbass c:1

... c:0

  Kevin C 🎬 c:0


@blenderdumbass Just because the asteroid is nobody's fault, that does mean people shouldn't do something about it. The metaphor is spot on.I thought the movie was glorious!

@kcarr2015@mstdn.social I was going to talk about it. But I was writing this review tired. So I forgot to tie it up nicely. There is the whole Peter CEO person wanting to mine the comet plot, which kind of is trying to address the same issues of fault. But I suppose I was more interested in the Steven Spielberg theory.

Reply