Don’t Look Up launched on Netflix in 2021 and was instantly a sensation. It felt more than relevant for the time back then, yet even more so than ever before in the year of 2025.

A clever high concept take on films such as Deep Impact and Armageddon (both from 1998), an all-star cast leads the satirical fun and shenanigans. It’s almost like a caper film, yet has a disturbing set of themes around it regarding disinformation, political ineptitude, and all sorts of other stuff.

We like it! The film is fun and, by heck, did it trigger a lot of people off.

There’s One Massive Bloody Comet in Don’t Look Up

This was written and directed by Adam McKay. The film begins with Kate Dibiasky (Jennifer Lawrence), an MSU doctoral candidate in astronomy, discovering a new comet. She calls her professor, Dr. Randall Mindy (Leonardo DiCaprio), and the astronomy teams celebrates the find.

However, Dr. Mindy performs some advanced calculations and realises the massive comet is going to hit Earth. It’s going to be an extinction level event.

Civilization has six months to do something about it.

After verifying the finding with NASA, Dr. Mindy and Dibiasky head to the White House to provide a report to Madam President (Meryl Streep). Up until this point, Don’t Look Up follows a fairly standard Armageddon type narrative of, “OMG, massive thing smart scientists have discovered, we gotta do something!”

Once they meet the president, though, everything unravels. They have a difficult time getting the president to take the situation seriously

The comparisons to what we’re seeing now are alarming. Jonah Hill’s swaggeringly arrogant White House Chief of Staff tells Dibiasky, “Thanks for dressing up!” When she’s in casual dress in the Oval Office.

Gosh, can’t think of anything that’s happened like that in real life recently.

To top it off, there’s a mentally unstable billionaire called Peter Isherwell (played by Mark Rylance in high-pitched voice form) who’s really not on planet Earth. This bloke goes around ranting bollocks.

After that meeting, things get worse. What should be a simple thing to understand something becomes a confusing mess of misinformation, denial, and lies. Naturally, that’s led many to compare the plot to our real life climate crisis situation (and feels heavily pertinent, to be honest).

The president won’t take the situation seriously, so the astronomers go to the media. But the media don’t seem to understand what’s going on and/or are more interested in viable ratings news items.

That’s Cate Blanchett, by the way, looking very different. She put in fake teeth and donned a wig to play Brie Evantee, a co-host of the show The Daily Rip.

Blanchett is fantastic in this, really having fun with a kind of lovable but morally bankrupt news reporter.

She ends up having an affair with Dr. Mindy, who also loses track of his attempts to save humanity. That’s following encouragement to dress nicely and trim his beard, after which everyone realises he’s super good looking and thrust into the limelight.

There are many peaks in the film that follow, not least with Colonel Benedict Drask (Ron Perlman). A war veteran turned astronaut who leads a flight to destroy the comet.

The mission ends up a disaster and the colonel, in very amusing and idiotic fashion, sacrifices himself pointlessly whilst believing it to be some grand gesture of bravery. All of which amplifies the inherent absurdity of the film’s narrative—a huge sect of humans refusing to accept reality.

With endless lashings of black humour, after a four year gap we still found the film very enjoyable. It’s a 4/5 type deal, not quite a classic but enough peaks to impress with its lampooning of modern life.

One downside is it’s (arguably) overlong at 138 minutes. At a punchy 90 minutes it may have overcome some of the more negative feedback. Plus, that ending felt tacked on to slightly spoil what should have been the real ending (i.e. everyone wiped out).

Although it can be a bit heavy-handed with its message, it’s a fun film that doesn’t take itself too seriously (most of the time).

In fact, it’s the type of film a certain sect of people claim you can’t make anymore because everyone gets offended (apparently). And then that exact type of individual got offended by this film as it’s “woke” (or something). Perhaps… that was the goal of Adam McKay all along.

Anyway, it holds up well all these years later (four *ahem*), Cate Blanchett pretty much steals the show, is fantastic at its various peaks, but worryingly prevalent to 2025 and beyond. To the point where everything within Don’t Look Up appears to be playing out now, in real-time, minus a certain billionaire having a high-pitched voice.

If anything, the film is now no longer a satire.

It hits so close to home it’s humour is still funny, but unsettling to the extent it’s a documentary of 2025 onward. Well worth watching if you want to revel in the moment of it all, pelted along as it is by a superb cast.

The Production of Don’t Look Up

The film only had a limited and brief theatrical release before becoming a Netflix exclusive. It became a sensation and was the second-most viewed film on the platform within a month of launch.

It was nominated for four Oscars, too, including Best Picture (but didn’t win any).

Director and writer of the project, Adam McKay, has stated the script came from the general inaction towards the climate change crisis.

“This movie came from my burgeoning terror about the climate crisis and the fact that we live in a society that tends to place it as the fourth or fifth news story, or in some cases even deny that it’s happening, and how horrifying that is, but at the same time preposterously funny.”

Gallows humour, then, but some film critics found the film too pleased with itself. Its accuracy at portraying modern human life, as we’ve mentioned, feels worryingly accurate rather than exemplified.

Last week, we saw one of Andrew Tate’s promotional videos spread across Twitter where he’s seated, topless, lifting weights, vaping, and pretending to work (i.e. earn money).

It’s the sort of baffling display that’d fit easily into Don’t Look Up.

Naturally, the discussion points regarding the video were those pointing out the guy is a grifter, followed by his army of sycophants who believe him to be the sexist messiah they’ve been dreaming of. That is Don’t Look Up.

Anyway, and perhaps ironically (given the hysteria and conspiracy theories that abounded with it), the film was shot around the COVID-19 pandemic in 2020. Principal photography took  place in Boston, Massachusetts.

McKay has worked on other major satires before (Saturday Night Live, Anchorman, The Big Short), and so didn’t have to worry about bringing in a talented cast. Other than with DiCaprio.

It took five months to get him signed up, with script changes made to accommodate his suggestions so that his Dr. Mindy character was more fleshed out.

Despite all of the above, Don’t Look Up proved enormously divisive. We don’t really get the “smug” claim, it’s just the black comedy riffing away. All good fun, but we do have to take it more seriously than back in 2021. Bugger.