The cruel irony of this welcome movie should be apparent to Tusk regulars. A satirical blockbuster uses an impending comet impact as a plot device to communicate a deeper message to all humanity that no one listens to scientists who…warn us of climate change. The director reveals his narrative subtext in many interviews, and calls it here, “…the most thinly disguised metaphor in the history of metaphors.”
Don’t Look Up seems a misuse of artistic resources. From the Tusk’s perspective, anthropogenic climate change suffers from no lack of attention and deep concern. But the demonstrated threat of comets making earth a bad place in recent times (or more accurately comet ‘fragments,’ as in last year’s masterpiece Greenland) is nearly absent from the global mindspace.
Good gosh, earth’s leaders met in person last month on CO2 — it’s on the agenda. Space based threats by comparison are discussed, at best, as a fascinatingly unlikely example of shared global peril and, at worst, mocked in movies.
(For the record, I believe humans affect the climate. But our global conversation on the topic seems to the Tusk like a couple arguing over the radio station — while their car is on the train tracks. The “peer threat” to carbon dioxide — cosmic impact — suffers from ignorance because it is hard to blame a Democrat or Republican for an incoming space object.)
In any case, the film does look really, really good, and it is apparently the most expensive production in NetFlix history.
Grudgingly, the attention to the comet threat is welcome anytime here at the Tusk, even if satire in pursuit of lesser agendas is not ideal.