BEFORE: I'm finally getting around to this one, which was the big hit of awards season, JUST about 12 months ago. Sure, I fast-tracked "Weird: The Al Yankovic Story" to the top of my list, and Marvel movies also get to board in Zone 1 around here, but for most other films, if I get to watch it within a year of release, that's an accomplishment. Yes, this film was nominated for Best Picture of 2021, but ten films were, and after watching this one, I'll only have seen half of them. I have three more on my DVR: "Belfast", "Licorice Pizza" and "Nightmare Alley". If I can get to those early next year ("Belfast" seems like a shoo-in for St. Patrick's Day) then that will just leave "Drive My Car" and "CODA", the Best Picture winner. Maybe I should start out the year with "CODA", since I started this year with "Nomadland" and the year before with "Parasite", but we'll see. That would mean pulling the old "Sign up for Apple+ TV, watch the film, quit Apple+ TV" scam, which I've already pulled twice.
I can't help but wonder if I missed the viewing window on this one, though, I haven't heard anybody talk about it in months. I think nearly everybody watched it that same week on Netflix, and I just couldn't, thanks to my stupid system. C'est la vie. Sarah Silverman carries over from "The Bob's Burgers Movie"
THE PLOT: Two low-level astronomers must go on a giant media tour to warn humankind of an approaching comet that will destroy planet Earth.
AFTER: Well, the cat's out of the bag, naturally, because by now everybody knows that this film isn't REALLY about a comet headed for Earth - and really, Thank God, because that's been done in "Armageddon", "Deep Impact" and most recently "Greenland" (asteroid, comet, whatever...) and didn't need to be rehashed. No, the comet here is a giant metaphor for climate change (formerly called global warming, but again, whatever) and they really sort of tipped their hand with the heavy-handed symbolism, because of all the people in this film who refuse to do anything about the comet, because it's a similarly invisible problem that most people would prefer to not have to wrap their brains around.
But maybe I AM watching this film at the right time, because since this film came out, another group of people have emerged who similarly don't want to acknowledge facts, or science, and have come up with their own methods of dealing-with-by-not-dealing-with, that's right, I'm talking about "election deniers". Honestly, it's bad enough that there are people out there in the Heartland of America who believe that the 2020 election was stolen, not because they have evidence of this, but just because SOMEONE ELSE told them that it was. And so they exist in some imaginary alt-universe scenario where Trump is still their president, and JFK Jr. is still alive and just waiting for the right moment to come back and endorse Trump, provided that he chooses Bigfoot as his running mate. Hey, it could happen. Also, liberals are drinking the blood of frightened babies and the economy will get better as soon as more tax cuts for the rich are legislated.
These groups of people seem to be, to a certain degree, cut from the same cloth. Climate change deniers, election deniers, and sure, let's throw Flat-earthers in there as well. They have so much in common, in that no matter how much scientific evidence you show them, they prefer the lie, because it somehow comforts them. Or they WANT to see the conspiracy that they imagine is all around them, because it, I don't know, gives them a focus or something. These groups of people make compulsive gamblers look really smart, because someone DOES win the lottery almost every time, even though any one person has only a one-in 292 million change of winning Powerball, that's not zero. Hope springs eternal.
The destruction of Earth's environment, however, is inevitable, UNLESS we take action. That's the point here, if we do nothing to improve the situation, like reduce greenhouse gases or stop dumping plastic in the ocean, we're certainly headed for disaster, or at least a world without seafood. But each individual can't SEE that happening, so it's easy to pretend that it's not. We have to trust the scientist who are tracking average temperatures and noticing the trends, and realize that the time to fix the roof is BEFORE it starts raining, because once it does, it's too late. Oh, also, we're all going to die, if not collectively then individually, but absolutely nobody wants to think about that on a daily basis, so I'll admit, we can't spend every day thinking about our own deaths, because then we'd never get out of bed and get stuff done. It's there at the end, just waiting for you, and while I'm not in favor of dieting and exercise as a rule, I also try to avoid any behaviors that might cut my time short. If you want to take up jogging or eat a bunch of whole-grain cereals, I'll support your decision, but then you never know if a car will hit you while you're out on a run, or you're going to choke on your granola. Just saying.
If you're not in the know about the metaphor here, then what's your take on the film? Can you just watch it as a parody of "Armageddon" and other disaster movies? Does it just seem like a farce based on current events, like the tech billionaire character who also has a fleet of rockets at his disposal? I guess he's supposed to be some kind of Jeff Bezos or Elon Musk spoof, but he made his money through smart phones, so throw a little Steve Jobs into the mix? This guy also has the President's ear, so when he learns that the comet heading toward Earth is composed of rare metals that are worth a few trillion, that's the argument for aborting the mission that would knock the comet off course. Instead, the new plan is to blow it up much CLOSER to the planet, and then harvest the fragments for their elemental make-up. Gee, what could POSSIBLY go wrong?
Of course, some notable things have happened since this film was released - for one thing, NASA sent a missile into space to change the course of an asteroid. You know, just in case we determine in the future that there's a need to do this exact thing. And it worked, they managed to move the asteroid that wasn't heading toward Earth at all, AND they managed to NOT ironically set it hurtling toward Earth, which would have been massively counter-productive, and probably kept the agency from getting more funding in the future. Also, that might have killed us all. I don't want to undersell this, because getting any kind of rocket out into space and hitting an object, or landing something on the moon or another planet is extremely complex. The stuff in outer space is always moving around, so you have to aim the rocket at the place where the moon or that planet is going to be, not where it is now. How do they do that, especially since we humans on Earth are always moving, too, the Earth spins and also revolves around the sun, and the moon is spinning and revolving around the Earth, and together the whole solar system is moving around the galaxy, circling this giant black hole perhaps, and then the whole galaxy is floating around in the universe, so there's no solid point out there, no frame of reference. How astronomers keep from going mad is beyond my comprehension.
Also, President Biden made sure that the U.S. rejoined the Paris accords, and so maybe, just maybe, we've got a shot at stopping the rate of climate change, and then maybe we can discuss ways of reversing it. That's the good news, that we're not all going to die en masse in the next 10 years, we might make it to 2050 or 2070 if we can re-double our efforts. However, reaching the eight billion mark in population isn't going to make things any easier, so I think any real discussion about combating climate change also needs to include efforts to promote zero population growth. Umm, pro-lifers, you're not really helping here, so could you please look at the big picture and get with the program?
The film points out other things that are keeping us from focusing on the planet's problems - like our fascination with celebrities and scandals. It's food for thought, for sure, and we're all guilty of it, myself included. What am I doing to save the planet on a daily basis, when my main concern each day is just to try and clear my DVR or watch the next movie in line? I try to be a good person, and I don't own a car, so there's that, but on a concrete level, a day-to-day basis, my actions are probably only slightly less harmful overall than the next person's. I've got to live with that guilt now, but as I said, I'm trying. I'm not going to quit my job and go tie myself to a tree to save the rainforest, or join a protest against coal and oil companies, that feels like a lot of work and aggravation that I don't need. But apathy is the silent killer, right?
But if you take any hot-button issue from over the last few years, climate change or racial injustice, or illegal immigration, and examine our country's lack of progress, that's when I start to lose hope again. Remember the last administration's immigration issues? Trump's promise to build a wall? As a country, we couldn't even determine what TYPE of wall to build, let alone how big or how long or where exactly it needed to be. And then when they DID build a wall, it was only a very short section of wall, and then they found out that the foundation that was raising money to build the wall was corrupt as hell, and half the money ended up in Steve Bannon's pocket. Yeah, so, if that happened with the wall, I don't really have much faith in the effort to fight climate change, especially if half of the politicians and citizens continue to deny that there's a problem that needs to be solved.
Look, I hope we go down swinging, I really do. But any action taking requires a concerted effort, and getting everybody on the same page, and really, that's the difficult part, especially when there's not ONE issue on the books that everybody agrees with. As Lincoln said, "A house divided against itself cannot stand", and essentially that's what the U.S. is, a divided house, a 50-50 split on every single issue, and that's what keeps anything from getting done. The midterm elections figure prominently in this film, and though I didn't plan it this way, the news of the last week, the results of the 2022 midterms, only highlight my point here. So maybe I watched the film at the perfect moment, after all. Who's to say?
Also starring Leonardo DiCaprio (last seen in "Spielberg"), Jennifer Lawrence (last seen in "Like Crazy"), Meryl Streep (last seen in "Becoming Mike Nichols"), Cate Blanchett (last seen in "Roadrunner: A Film About Anthony Bourdain"), Rob Morgan (last seen in "The Unforgivable"), Jonah Hill (last seen in "Can We Take a Joke"), Mark Rylance (last seen in "The Gunman"), Tyler Perry (last seen in "Vice" (2018)), Timothée Chalamet (last seen in "A Rainy Day in New York"), Ron Perlman (last seen in "Monster Hunter"), Ariana Grande, Scott "Kid Cudi" Mescudi (last seen in "Bill & Ted Face the Music"), Himesh Patel (last seen in "Yesterday"), Melanie Lynskey (last seen in "Shattered Glass"), Michael Chiklis (last seen in "Hubie Halloween"), Tomer Sisley (last seen in "We're the Millers"), Paul Guilfoyle (last seen in "Spotlight"), Robert Joy (last seen in "The Goldfinch"), Jack Alberts, Ting, Lance A. Williams (last seen in "The Equalizer 2"), Tamara Hickey (ditto), Shimali de Silva, Hettienne Park (last seen in "Private Life"), Erik Parillo, Robert Radochia, Conor Sweeney, Ross Partridge (last seen in "The High Note"), Staci Roberts-Steele (also last seen in "Vice" (2018)), Chris Everett (last seen in "I Care a Lot") Annette Miller (last seen in "The Company Men"), Allyn Burrows (ditto), Stephen Thorne, Georgia Lyman (last seen in "Infinitely Polar Bear"), Patricia Dehaney, Ben Sidell, Omar Moustafa Ghonim, Meghan Leathers, Ashleigh Banfield (last seen in "Fahrenheit 11/9"), Richard Snee, Jon Glaser (last heard in "Wine Country"), Odis Spencer, Alvin Keith, Kevin Craig West (last seen in "The Place Beyond the Pines"), Alison Weller, Rob Levesque (last seen in "Ava"), Dee Nelson, Beau Allen, Tori Davis Lawlor, Jonathan Kobs (last seen in "Instant Family"), Ishaan Khattar, Brian Anastasio (also last seen in "Hubie Halloween"), Billy Concha (last seen in "Love, Weddings & Other Disasters"), Edward Fletcher (last seen in "The Trial of the Chicago 7"), with a cameo from Chris Evans (last heard in "Lightyear") and the voice of Liev Schreiber (last seen in "Human Capital")
RATING: 6 out of 10 Xanax tablets
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