Don’t Look Up; The Bad Guys Are Getting Away!

Today's movies stand out for being different, evoking feelings you don't usually experience and making you think in a new way. Films rarely contradict commonly held beliefs or values. Don’t Look Up, a Netflix film starring Leonardo DiCaprio and Jennifer Lawrence, along with Timothy Chalamet, Meryl Streep, and Cate Blanchett, shows two low-level astronomers finding a planet-killing comet heading toward earth. This finding leaves them with little time to tell the world, and the film shows the battle with media that exposes and plays at the ignorance of modern-day society in the face of the climate crisis. In two clips, the audience can analyze the mise-en-scene, which includes the set choices and designs and shows us two very different outcomes for characters. In the 2021 movie Don’t Look Up, the mise-en-scene choices convey meaning that challenges the commonly held belief that good people get rewarded, and bad people get punished.

Throughout this comedy, the audience can see the reality of the world ending setting in the first clip, as many of the characters sit down for their last meal and rejoice in each other's company, telling stories. The mise-en-scene, which refers to the positioning of actors, the set or locale, the props filling that set or locale, the set's lighting, and the composition of the shot, shows the unfortunate truth of the film: The world had failed to stop its own end. While the table started to shake and the lights started to flicker, the characters shared their most precious memories. The mood was set with the scene, a small quaint dining room table, family style dinner, and the character's costumes connect to a middle-class family, as if eating on a regular night. The set organization showed the characters' endearing relationship in their struggle and failure to save the world. 

Throughout the movie, the director uses humor and satire to convey the madness and idiocy of the world, but in this clip, they had to move into a more profound, real scene. Director Adam McKay said, “The big difficulty with this sequence was that there’s a tonal shift going on — you’re coming out of this almost farcical comedy, and reality is starting to emerge” (Hazelton). The tone was made clear by the manipulation and organization of the set. The mise-en-scene choices made on the set, specifically the set design and props, are exactly what each character reacts to as the reality of their death sets in. The characters talk through their final conversation as the table beneath them shakes hysterically, the liquid in their cups spilling out, the silverware clinking.

At the end of this clip, the director makes an interesting decision to slow the film down in ultra-slow motion as the end of the world reaches their home. Sitting around the table, the characters freeze as the walls start imploding, window glass shatters, and their lives end. The mise-en-scene and depth of space, which is the distance between people, props, and scenery, were very close in relation to one another and the camera. They were all equally spaced around this table, signaling to the audience that they were ready to die together. Watching these characters die across from each other was a shocking twist and end, something you rarely see, and was a very different ending to a typical end-of-world movie. This movie “isn’t about ordinary people who discover inside them the heroism to save the ones they love. It’s about ordinary people who know what’s coming and ultimately aren’t heroes at all. They make a couple of futile attempts to do something, which amount to nothing. And then they die, because that’s what will happen, if we aren’t up to the task ahead of us” (Piper). In movies like 2012 or Greenland, the film is an escape from reality, and the audience can feel safe that the characters will likely be alive at the end. Whether they are sailing on an arc like 2012 or coming out of a bunker in Greenland, we believe that the characters can survive the end of the world. This movie spins us away from the usual ending and gives us a reality check. People today would spend so much time debating whether or not an asteroid is coming and making something like an apparent crisis, a political fiasco. This movie is an intentional play on how our society would react in this situation, and the ending intends to show the consequences. The set of the house imploding was a strong and emotional scene that the audience could walk away thinking deeper about, and it debunks the commonly held belief that the good guys get rewarded. 

In a different clip, after the asteroid has struck the world, there is a fast forward of 22,740 years, when the people that escaped on a spaceship, mainly the US government and corporate business owners, land on a “second earth.” The characters are organized into chambers on the spacecraft labeled by their positions and companies. Inter Bank, Texcon Oil, and Vendel Lobbying were some of the labels on the chambers, and they opened one by one, revealing a naked human. They exit their spacecraft and explore the new planet. The set is vibrant and colorful, and the mise-en-scene, specifically the positioning of actors and the locale itself, shows the audience the very few that were able to escape death and be greeted with a healthy new world, which seems to be thriving in nature. The actors were completely naked, which shows us the new normal these people will have to face, and most of the bodies are old, which shows that the youth were not valued enough to be considered and shows the selfishness that went into the process of leaving earth. The depth of space, which shows a lot of space between each character as they wander, signals to the audience that these are not families, they are not caring about each other, and that they came to this new place simply to survive, not because they needed to, but because they could buy that survival. 

This clip is almost frustrating to the viewer to see that the people who did not believe the scientists and mocked the end of the world were the ones to survive it. That frustration stems from the film challenging the common belief that bad people get punished, and that good people get rewarded. In a Huffington Post article, Derek Rydall writes about why good things happen to bad people. He explains, “It's a common misunderstanding to believe that "human goodness" leads to the experience of human good. In fact, that's not always -- or even often -- the case”(Rydall). With maturity, there comes to be an understanding that the world does not operate on good deeds. Don’t Look Up was one of the few films that reflect the true nature of our society, challenging the commonly held beliefs that we as humans are taught at a young age. 

Movies can have a substantial impact on our beliefs. Christopher Neff calls this the Jaw Effect, characterized by the movie Jaws, which made people believe that shark attacks are intentional and can be stopped if sharks are hunted (Neff). The world reacted to this movie and felt they needed to take action before attacks set up in the film happen on their own beaches. A more profound meaning and message can be pulled out in the movie Don't Look Up. There is a climate crisis, and if the world does not listen, they are starting their own ticking, timed, and irreversible bomb.

Similarly, we can also understand how most films today are grounded in beliefs we already hold, like good people getting rewarded and bad people getting punished. They are continuously reinforced through genres like romance, horror, thriller, comedy, mystery, etc. The two clips analyzed make the movie controversial, which can be seen in the ratings of the film and the very much mixed reviews. Not many people want to be strayed from their beliefs, and they want to see happy endings and the villains getting punished. 

Don’t Look Up was a new and honest reflection of how society today treats science and trusted experts and how media is the essence of what we think is important and what we view as insignificant. The two clips analyzed show how vital the mise-en-scene is in conveying meaning to the audience, how the set is organized, how the props are manipulated, and how the actors are arranged and dressed. From being around a table waiting for the end of the world to reach your doorstep to exiting a space shuttle in a new world, the choices made in front of the camera in these clips challenged the expectations of most films: That those deserving of a good ending receive it. Analyzing these clips made it interesting to see how the mise-en-scene choices influenced how the audience interprets and internalizes the message. This movie was heavy in message, and coming out at the height of the pandemic had a tremendous effect on how people view society and media in the face of scientific news.

Works Cited

Hazelton, J. (2022, February 15). Adam McKay goes in-depth on four important 'don't look up' scenes. Screen Daily. Retrieved March 23, 2023, from https://www.screendaily.com/features/adam-mckay-goes-in-depth-on-four-important-dont-look-up-scenes/5167575.article 

Neff, C. (2014, December 6). The jaws effect: How movie narratives are used to influence policy responses to shark bites in Western Australia. Taylor & Francis. Retrieved March 23, 2023, from https://www.tandfonline.com/doi/full/10.1080/10361146.2014.989385?scroll=top&needAccess=true&role=tab 

Piper, K. (2022, January 8). The most interesting thing don't look up has to say about the apocalypse. Vox. Retrieved March 23, 2023, from https://www.vox.com/future-perfect/2022/1/8/22872066/dont-look-up-mckay-dicaprio-existential-risk-apocalypse 

Rydall, D. (2012, January 21). Why good things happen to bad people. HuffPost. Retrieved March 23, 2023, from https://www.huffpost.com/entry/good-things-happen-to-bad-people_b_1084205