‘Don’t Look Up’ is apocalyptic science fiction, but it’s also biting satire.
Creative Commons image.
I had heard about Don’t Look Up (Netflix, 2 h 18 m) the new apocalyptic science fiction film, but I didn’t watch it until The Rag Blog’s trusty editor, Thorne Dreyer, invited me to watch it and review it. I’m a glutton for punishment, especially if it involves watching movies at home on the screen of my computer, which admittedly isn’t the same as watching on a giant screen in a theater.
One day when it’s safer than it is now, I’ll take myself to my local multiplex, buy popcorn, hunker down in my seat and enjoy the colorful images. Like 2001, a Space Odyssey, Dr. Strangelove and Blade Runner, Don’t Look Up demands to be viewed on a giant screen. But if the only way you can see it is at home, do that. Don’t wait for ideal conditions.
We don’t know for sure what the future has in store for us and for our dear battered planet Earth, though if we’ve been listening to Greta Thunberg, the Swedish teenager, who has been urging action on climate change, the prognosis is bad. In Don’t Look Up, the politicians and the talking heads don’t listen, at least not initially, to the scientists (two astronomers) who warn about a comet that’s headed toward Earth and that, they say, will cause the kind of disaster only seen so far in science fiction movies.
