Don’t Look Up Script Analysis: When Satire Becomes a Documentary
Critics gave it mixed or average reviews. Audiences were mostly swayed. The Academy gave it nominations for Best Picture and Best Original Screenplay. Just goes to show, you can’t please everyone.
Don’t Look Up, the 2021 satire written and directed by Adam McKay (with a story he co-created with David Sirota), is about two astronomers who attempt to warn humanity about an approaching comet that will destroy life on earth. The comet itself is a not-at-all subtle allegory for climate change and the film is a satire of political and societal indifference to the climate crisis. While some critics panned it for being smug, others can’t help but look at the news and wonder how absurdist it really was.
OPENING IMAGE
The film opens on a whistling tea kettle (symbolism?). Kate Dibiasky (Jennifer Lawrence) makes herself a cuppa, raps under her breath, and discovers a comet that hasn’t been this close to the sun since long before human civilization. Unfortunately, by page three, it’s clear that the comet isn’t just close to the sun — it’s on a crash course with planet earth.
SET UP
Kate and Professor Randall Mindy (Leonard DiCaprio) begin their long (and…spoiler alert…fruitless) journey of warning the world of what is to come: “a direct hit of earth in six months and fourteen days.” From a phone call with NASA to a direct flight to Washington D.C., Kate and Randall leave their world of academia and science and head to the nation’s capital.
INCITING INCIDENT
“Are we really about to tell the President of the United States that we have just over six months before mankind and pretty much all life on planet earth are completely destroyed?” asks Kate outside the Oval Office before vomiting in a wastebasket.
After laying out the stakes very clearly, the unseriousness of the response to this discovery begins. Kate and Randall find themselves waiting hours to even see the president (Meryl Streep), from a random office birthday party to an Air Force general charging them for free snacks before bouncing to go “quell the natives” in Okinawa. Finally a white house staffer, who will be revealed later to be POTUS’ son Jason (Jonah Hill), comes out and blows them off for the night.
It feels like if Randall and Kate can just get this meeting and alert the proper authorities, that the best minds of earth can come together and save the planet…but this ain’t Hulu’s Paradise, this is a dark comedy.
DEBATE
The President of the United States’ response might have seemed unbelievable in 2012, but in 2025, it’s not far-reaching to suspect that POTUS might blow off the responsibilities of the office in order to stay in power. When going to the proper authorities fails, what do you do? Leak it to the press.
Kate and Randall learn that they will need a lawyer if they go public because they’ll be violating the president’s orders. Randall nearly has a panic attack before appearing on television. But finally The Daily Rip brings them on for their science segment — right after Ariana Grande’s Riley Bina blows up the internet by asking for her ex-boyfriend to take her back.
Needless to say, the talk show is not ready to take the announcement seriously.
BREAK INTO TWO
The response to Kate and Randall’s television appearance are mostly related to memes regarding Kate’s sanity. NASA publicly responds by debunking their science. But when President Orlean is caught texting nudes, she tries to distract the public from her sex scandal by announcing a mobilization to save the planet. Unfortunately, it’s not a mission devised by scientists or experts — it’s the kind of mission you’d expect to be dreamt up in a Signal chat.
FUN AND GAMES
The stock market rises, President Orlean’s popularity skyrockets, Randall goes on Sesame Street and returns to The Daily Rip — and then bangs the host of The Daily Rip, and it looks like the mission is a go.
After a rapturous launch with mission success projected at 81%, bystanders watch the rocket ship abandon course and head back to earth. Turns out, the comet is chock full of some of the most valuable minerals in the world — the ones used to make cell phones and computers. President Orlean decided to abort the mission in order to mine the comet for $140 trillion worth of minerals and assets.
Meanwhile, Kate and Dr. Oglethorpe (Rob Morgan) provide some comedic relief from a storage room where they are locked up.
BAD TO WORSE
So the White House agrees to a tech-mogul’s non peer-reviewed plan to exploit the comet in order to jack up a cell phone company’s stock. Kate decides to tell the truth directly to the people, hoping that the might of numbers will make right.
BREAK INTO THREE
The government and media machines begin downplaying the comet and the impending apocalypse leaving many people doubting whether there even is a comet at all but soon people can actually see the comet in the sky with their own eyes. Surely now that people can see the truth for themselves, they will demand action from their government?
Instead, President Orlean creates a propaganda campaign called “Don’t Look Up” to keep the masses in check (and it works). China, India, and Russia attempt their own joint deflection mission but their launch fails before it even takes off. All that is left is the tech mogul’s plan to break the comet into controllable pieces and fly them safely to earth for mining.
There’s a side plot in here where Randall’s wife finds out about his affair and Kate starts hanging out with Timothée Chalamet’s Yule. Both storylines feel sort of flat and maybe they are meant to. Randall and Kate are the only two people in the world acting like nothing really matters anymore, because they know that in the long run, nothing does.
FINALE
Finally, it’s time for the mining mission. There is literally no time for anything else to save earth. Life as we know it is in the hands of a rich guy who is not an engineer. Dr. Oglethorpe, Kate, Yule, Randall, and his (now reconciled) wife meet for dinner as the mining mission proceeds — and fails. As Orlean and her tech buddy receive word from China that the comet remains intact, they sneak out Air Force One to connect with a ship with state of the art technology that will allow them to find the nearest earth-like planet.
In the final moments of their lives, Kate, Randall, and the people they care about dine together, share what they are grateful for, and pray. Everyone else in the world receives the news in their own way: parties, drunken hookups, firing weapons, or sharing more hair-brained topics on mainstream news.
CLOSING IMAGE
As the comet draws nearer, McKay shows a montage of life on earth, from people gathering, to babies, to polar bears, a bumblebee, whales, and finally impact raining fire on our planet as animals flee and an indigenous person performs a solo ceremony.
Of course, Don’t Look Up at its heart is a comedy, so we get an after credits sequence of debris in the orbit of earth (“Your diet is over!”) and the exodus of President Orlean’s ship before showing a scene 22,740 years later. Landing pods arrive on a lush planet and a bunch of naked people including Orlean (with a nice low back tattoo – great touch) and her tech mogul gaping at their beautiful new home before she is mauled by a Bronteroc.
A second post-credit scene depicts Jason crawling out of burning rubble and posting a selfie of himself as the last man on earth.
WHAT MADE IT POP
Look, I’m with the scientists who liked this film. Peter Kalmus told The Guardian, “Don’t Look Up is satire, but speaking as a climate scientist doing everything I can to wake people up and avoid planetary destruction, it’s also the most accurate film about society’s terrifying non-response to climate breakdown I’ve seen.”
It goes along with the 2024 Doctor Who episode “Dot and Bubble” where citizens are being killed by terrifying monsters, a prospect that is so terrifying to face head on so characters just return to their social media bubbles and dissociate.
Don’t Look Up took its plotlines from the most inane headlines, media practices, and political figures of our day. It’s an unnerving depiction of screaming in a crowded room and having no one look up.
