Film Introduction

When a catastrophic comet threatens Earth, a theme often depicted in disaster movies, how do people respond in the real world? Director Adam McKay addresses his response in “Don’t Look Up” (2021) by depicting a scenario where humans fail to save themselves due to the concentration of power and knowledge in the hands of a privileged few who seek to profit from the comet, rather than the masses.

Starting his career in the NBC sketch comedy show Saturday Night Live, the director Adam Mckay is good at incorporating comedy elements in film as satire, such as his first feature film “Anchorman: The Legend of Ron Burgundy” (2004) where he showed concerns and anxieties about media early in his career and even intensified in “Don’t Look Up”. The story starts with the discovery of the “killer comet” by astronaut Dr Randall Mindy (cast by Leonardo De Caprio) and his PhD student Kate Dibiasky (cast by Jennifer Lawerence), who try to deliver the emergent message to the public through government and media but failed to be reported seriously to the mass. 

Mckay utilized the killer comet to present an allegory of climate change. He described the genre of this film as “a blend of broad comedy with elements of disaster films and horror films” (Aurthur and Aurthur 2021). Comedy as the film genre can act as an erosion not only to the ironic status quo, but also to the traditional three-act narrative structure in Hollywood (known as setup, confrontation, and resolution). The director said he intentionally “took away the guaranteed happy ending” and created a blend of the coexistence of ridiculousness, absurdity and comedy in the surreal present through this film.