Future generations are going to think this era was a joke. Here our generation had invented the greatest tools of communication in the history of mankind and we used them primarily to spread misinformation. Cue the mother of all headslaps. In 2016, the dominant political party in the most powerful nation in the world rallied, used all the tools at its disposal without regards to any moral or ethical standard, and took power in all three branches of government. Faced with the challenging and immediate tasks that come with overindustrialization, overpopulation, and unrelenting consumption, this party addressed NONE of them. It didn’t even acknowledge them, instead focusing on petty non-issues, xenophobia, and consolidation of power in the hands of fewer and fewer. It lied relentlessly … about everything. It spent the vast majority of its political capital on propaganda, ensuring it would win political battles in the future regardless of platform or opposition.
And this is where we are. It’s now 2022; the huge issues remain unsolved and the lesser political party –having won back the presidency and the house by sheer volume of numbers – is spending all of its political capital trying figure out how to undo the damage done in the previous four years.
We will never get to global warming. We will never even try.
Future generations are going to look at us the same way we look at the captain of the Titanic, and I don’t blame them. And when they question us, we’re going to offer something lame like, “we didn’t know.” But the fact is we did know. And we have the richest, most powerful nation in the history of nations, so we damn well could have done something positive about every single real problem we have. And yet, instead of answering our monumental, obvious, and immediately dangerous national/international issues like inequality, health care, global warming, energy, consumption, and unhappiness, we chose to fight amongst ourselves instead. For we are, by and large, a stupid, stupid lot.
Which brings me to today’s film, a brilliant political satire entitled Don’t Look Up.
Grad student Kate Dibiasky (Jennifer Lawrence) discovers a comet, woo! Yay, you. She shows it to her prof, Dr. Randall 
Mindy (Leonardo DiCaprio). And she and her team decide to figure out where this thing is headed. Earth. It’s headed for Earth. And it’s going to strike Earth six months from now and destroy all life as we know it.
Ok, so we’ve just hit upon the plot of both Armageddon and Deep Impact. It’s a little embarrassing that Don’t Look Up mentions neither film, but the intent here is not to study the “what’s gonna happen?” plot so much as “how do people react?” For as writer/director Adam McKay so slyly observes we are no longer a nation that rallies behind a common good … or even common sense for that matter. We are a people who see our immediate problem as identifying the enemy (the people who are most likely to oppose your position) and making sure that enemy is properly “owned.” Nothing else matters.
We live in an age, you see, in which knowing the truth is not enough; and telling the truth is not enough, either. Nor is addressing real problems. What’s important is that you’re able to control the conversation, truth be damned. To this end, Dr. Mindy and PhD candidate Dibiasky encounter two major hurdles: The President – a Trump-like buffoon expertly played by Meryl Streep, and two vapid talk-show gossip-hounds played tongue-in-cheek by Tyler Perry and Cate Blanchett. In both cases, the pair of wolf-criers learn what scientists have known for decades: it no longer matters if you’re right if you can’t get people to listen … and people no longer want to listen to truth. Ever.
Securing the Chief of Staff -her son (Jonah Hill)- and her personal eccentric billionaire (Mark Rylant) in her corner, the portrayal of President Janie Orlean absolutely skewers Trump, expertly demonstrating the myopic, influence-peddling, dense, expertise-eschewing, vain, lustful, intolerant, nepotistic, and self-serving nature of his personality, actions, and administration. It’s funny how you can nail a portrait of Trump and still come up at least five to ten major negatives shy of the full picture. For all Don’t Look Up had Trump down flat, it still didn’t show his pettiness, his gluttony, his fragility, his Dunning-Kruger-ness, his reliance on fools, his complete lack of humility in any form, and his naked corruption. I’m sure there are several more ugly character traits I haven’t yet considered, but I really wish to stop thinking about that grotesque manchild.
In a movie of keen insight and fantastic characters, my favorite is Peter Isherwell (Rylant) as the spectrum-challenged moneylord who calls the shots at the White House. But it really is had to pick a 
favorite moment of this satire – is the part where the President immediately discounts 99.97% certainty to 70% for political reasons? Is it the part where Jack Bremmer (Perry) glibly ignores the life-ending part of the warning and asks if the planet-destroying meteor will land on his ex-wife’s house? Was it when a retired general charged White House guests for free snacks? Is it the part where Jason Orlean (Hill) scoffs at the doctorate of one who teaches at Michigan State? Is it the part where Ariana Grande sings to a packed arena, “[G]et your head out of your ass/Listen to the goddamn qualified scientists,” or is it simply the part where a planet-destroying meteor gets treated as a political football instead of a serious threat?
Most of us –quite foolishly- believe that the truth will win out. HAHAHAHAHAHAHA. Tell me, is Trump in jail yet? Cuz we’ve had nothing but truth about that guy and –unlike Hillary- his crimes aren’t imagined (and one-hundred-fold larger, comparatively, if you’re gonna play the false equivalence card). This is only a film for people who can look objectively at the hole we’ve dug for ourselves as a nation, as a civilization, as a species.
Don’t Look Up – a spot-on metaphor for our deliberate cultural head-in-the-sand approach to scientific observation- is the most spot-on reflection of the United States this century. At our current point in time, this is exactly who we are: we have the power to solve almost any problem we can imagine, but we don’t. Why? Power, prejudice, and idiocy. In a world where we can access the accumulation of human knowledge or the answer to any question in seconds, we choose to value higher the unscientific opinions of a lying asshole in a red hat. Why? Power, prejudice, and idiocy. Even if the red hat guy dies tomorrow, I don’t see it changing, do you?
This is the best film of 2021, hands down. I don’t think there’s anything else even close.
`Here’s development that won’t enthrall..
The Earth will be destroyed. That’s all.
Yeah, life is gonna end
Could be worse, my friend
When it happens, you could be watching Moonfall
Rated R, 138 Minutes
Director: Adam McKay
Writer: Adam McKay
Genre: The balled of modern Chicken Little
Type of being most likely to enjoy this film: Frustrated truth-tellers
Type of being least likely to enjoy this film: Trumpistas
