I was warned by some current and former colleagues in the oil and gas industry last week that the new Netflix
NFLX
film “Don’t Look Up” is supposed to be a clever and relevant commentary on society’s ongoing failure to respond to climate change, one that even somehow attacks the oil and gas industry. The basic plot of the movie – not giving anything away here that the film’s trailers don’t clearly show – is that a scientist played by Leonardo DiCaprio and a PhD candidate played by Jennifer Lawrence – discover a huge comet headed right for planet Earth and can’t get a corrupt president to properly respond to the crisis.
That, my colleagues said, is supposed to somehow be the same thing as global society’s slow progress in getting to net-zero by 2050, or whatever the most prevalent current target happens to be now. Right there, you’ve kind of lost me, but ok, let’s play along.
First, let’s concede that the cast of this movie is fantastic, filled with some of the greatest actors of their respective generations: DiCaprio is like Denzel Washington or Gene Hackman or Robert Duvall, a truly great actor who never fails to deliver. Same with Ms. Lawrence, a true pro who takes her craft seriously. And Meryl Streep as the (predictably Republican) President? Actors don’t come any greater or more accomplished than that.
But, a great cast doesn’t necessarily help to facilitate the conveyance of relevant social commentary, does it? Take the casting of DiCaprio in the lead role as the prime example of this. DiCaprio is indeed a high-profile activist on climate change, but his personal hypocrisy on the issue is well known across society.
As an example, Mr. DiCaprio owns a personal private yacht that would fill the entire interior of the Dallas Cowboys’ AT&T Stadium. It is more than 400 feet long, and reportedly costs more than $300,000 just to refuel at current prices. That fuel is all carbon-based. It has its own helipad to land DiCaprio’s personal helicopter and those of his friends. Those choppers all use carbon-based fuels, as does DiCaprio’s famous private jet.
Not that I begrudge him any of that or the rest of his massive carbon-footprint lifestyle, mind you – he’s fully earned all that money and gets to spend it how he wants. But it undeniably diminishes his ability to remain credible on the subject, even though he no doubt engages in all the various rubrics and schemes available to “offset” his carbon creation. Despite his amazing acting skills, it also makes him a kind of odd choice for this role.
Streep’s character also misses the mark, if the goal is really social relevancy. It has always been sort of a rule in Hollywood that, if you’re going to portray a presidential character in a negative light, that president must be a Republican. Given recent history, a truly edgy film looking to be really relevant to current society would have chosen instead to portray the first woman president as a Democrat, wouldn’t it? Remember Hillary Clinton in 2016? Kamala Harris, our first female vice president, currently just a heartbeat away?
But let’s be honest about it: Hollywood culture is overwhelmingly liberal/Democrat in nature, and this film’s producers and writers obviously weren’t going to buck that culture, which is predictable, but tiresome nonetheless. Without giving any plot away, let’s just say that Streep’s character is not just a standard-issue Republican who hangs photos of past Republican presidents like Teddy Roosevelt, Ronald Reagan and Abe Lincoln in her Oval Office: She’s the kind who hangs a portrait of Richard Nixon above the Resolute Desk. Plus, she smokes. Ugh.
That’s really all you need to know about that.
Then there’s the film’s real bad guy – or the worst of the collection of bad guys – a Big Tech magnate styled as one of the world’s wealthiest billionaires, who just also happens to be one of the corrupt president’s biggest donors and hangs out in the White House all day as a result. How is any of that relevant to our current society?
Oh, sure, the billionaire class in America used to be more Republican, at least back in the 20th century. But what CEO/Founder of any of our current Big Tech companies can be accurately described as a Republican? Mark Zuckerberg? Jeff Bezos? Bill Gates? Jack Dorsey? Sundar Pichai? Any of them?
In order to be socially edgy; in order to provide allegorical commentary to a current crisis facing our society, shouldn’t a film include lead characters who actually reflect those we currently see in our society? Instead of endeavoring to provide that, “Don’t Look Up” appears to be stuck in 1992.
Shortly after I first started contributing at Forbes.com in 2012, the oil and gas industry became concerned about the fact that another great generational actor, Matt Damon, was starring in a film called “Promised Land.” Set in the Marcellus Shale region, the movie – which also starred another outstanding actor, John Krasinski – was designed to portray the natural gas industry there in a bad light. So, industry trade associations and communications firms and company communications and public relations pros mobilized and devised messages to correct or offset those the film conveyed.
But then, “Promised Land” was released and a) wasn’t nearly as uniformly negative towards the industry as everyone had feared, and b) completely tanked at the box office, mainly because it was just a really lousy movie in general, one of the few stinkers Damon has ever filmed. As an effort to damage the industry and its reputation, it turned out to be a big nothing-burger. The industry’s concerns about the film turned out to have been wildly overblown.
I think the same can be said for “Don’t Look Up,” but for different reasons. This is not a bad movie at all – in fact, my wife and I both found it pretty entertaining as a farcical comedy. The acting is fantastic, naturally, the writing is only decent, but it does provide some very entertaining moments. Not the best movie I’ve seen in years, but not even remotely close to the worst.
But this film completely fails as an allegory to anything, climate change or otherwise, and that is solely because the writers and producers lacked the courage to buck Hollywood’s prevailing culture and make a film that could have been truly edgy and relevant. One friend said, after seeing it, that it is likely that the current cancel culture permeating Hollywood and the rest of our society might mean that making such a film is not even possible anymore.
If so, I feel like that’s a sad loss for us all.
Anyway, if you want to spend two hours viewing a well-acted, entertaining farcical comedy, then I highly recommend “Don’t Look Up.” But if you’re looking for edgy, socially-relevant allegory fare, you should probably look anywhere but up.
