Leonardo DiCaprio’s longstanding ardour for climate change, which even introduced him to NASA a couple of years again, is now on display screen in a brand new film.
The Oscar-winning actor (“The Revenant”, “Inception”) is the lead for the solid of “Don’t Look Up” (Netflix, Dec. 10), a darkish satire a couple of lethal comet heading for Earth. Director Adam McKay (“The Big Short”) has stated the comet is supposed to evoke how the worldwide warming disaster is being politicized by anyone with the prospect to do one thing about it.
DiCaprio’s advocacy for shielding the local weather contains producing a number of movies (akin to “Before the Flood”). It additionally introduced him to the current United Nations Climate Change Conference (COP26) in November, and NASA’s Goddard Space Flight Center in 2016 .
In the brand new movie, DiCaprio portrays astronomer Randall Mindy, mentor and colleague to comet discoverer and Ph.D. candidate Kate Dibiasky (Jennifer Lawrence, “X-Men: Apocalypse”, “The Hunger Games.”) As the movie reveals, Dibiasky and Mindy should struggle everybody from the U.S. president to the navy to get their message heard.
“I was just thankful to play a character who was solely based on so many of the people that I’ve met from the scientific community, in particular climate scientists,” DiCaprio stated throughout a livestreamed press convention Sunday (Dec. 4.)
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“They’re trying to communicate the urgency of this issue, and feeling like they’re subjected to the last page on the newspaper,” DiCaprio continued, and stated he loves the persona of the 2 characters: his makes an attempt to work the system, towards Lawrence’s “Greta Thunberg type of character.”
While the movie was conceived earlier than the pandemic hit in March 2020, DiCaprio added the bigger message about how science will get politicized carries much more weight within the new setting. “COVID hit, and there’s a whole new scientific argument going on there, and it’s just such an important film to be a part of at this particular time,” he stated.
But the problem of the movie, in response to McKay, was determining convey the urgency about local weather change whereas nonetheless permitting individuals to giggle, as he felt the comedy may assist with unifying the varied political beliefs audiences would possibly carry into the theater.
“You can feel urgency, and you can feel sadness, and you can feel lost, while also having a sense of humor, and that was really the intention with this movie,” he stated in the identical press convention.
“After the crazy last five to 10 years we’ve all had across the planet, [my feeling] was that God, wouldn’t it be nice to laugh at some of this? And feel the other feelings? So that was kind of the approach, because I think we get hit with sort of trumpeting doomsday.”
While the satire is about local weather change, with the assistance of University of Arizona astronomer Amy Mainzer, the movie additionally makes an attempt to painting comet science in a minimum of a considerably practical format, together with the scientists who do the work.
Lawrence portrays a Ph.D. candidate who seems (at first) to have a analysis breakthrough after discovering the comet, as having discovered an entire new world can be a boon in finishing the lengthy analysis work to get the diploma. But because it shortly turns into clear that her discovery is a catastrophe within the making, her character’s emotions in regards to the comet change.
“I think there was probably an evolution” in how Dibiasky thought of her namesake, Lawrence advised the panel. “I think at first she was very, very proud of this. And then I’m sure, resentment started to build up as people started fearing Comet Dibiasky.”
While the movie runs by way of the implications of getting a lethal comet related to an individual, Mainzer stated through the dialogue that it is a purely fictional state of affairs. “Fortunately, in real life with the asteroids [and comets], we would not name one that’s actually hazardous after a living person. That’s not allowed.”
Just about each type of stakeholder in science was skewered, so alongside the scientists got here satirical and adverse portrayals of how the media and politicians are inclined to take care of “bad news” and disseminate that to the general public.
U.S. president Janie Orlean (Meryl Streep, “The Devil Wears Prada”) at first turns down the astronomers by saying she needs the White House to verify their work utilizing what she considers extra prestigious establishments than the place Mindy teaches (the University of Michigan, which in actual life is a well-cited astronomical establishment.)
“It was kind of fun to put together this character that was just pure Id, just what her appetite wanted and about amassing power, money, more power and more money and that’s pretty much it. And nice hair and nails,” Streep stated.
“There’s no fellow feeling and that’s, unfortunately, that’s the cost of what being a public servant is now,” she added. “You really have to make a big sacrifice. Your family makes a sacrifice, and you have to be willing to do that. It’s amazing that we get good people, ever, to do it. But we need them right now.”
An early scene within the movie reveals Orlean and her son Jason — additionally the chief of employees of the White House — utterly dismissing the astronomers earlier than checking their work. This is regardless of the nice and cozy help within the script of NASA’s actual life Planetary Defense Coordination Office (PDCO) that assesses doubtlessly threatening objects.
Clayton “Teddy” Oglethorpe (Rob Morgan, “Daredevil”) was the senior-level consultant of PDCO within the movie, sitting within the room throughout this White House argument. He stated the scene was poignant given current top-level discussions about local weather science in politics. The Orleans, he stated, are “just dismissing facts and science.”
He continued, “That, to me, was just very much ringing true because of what’s happening, especially at this time in the country and where we were with the pandemic: things just being dismissed and everybody who says anything counter to what the truth is.”
“Don’t Look Up” debuts in theatres Friday (Dec. 10) and will likely be launched on Netflix’s streaming platform Dec. 24.
Follow Elizabeth Howell on Twitter @howellspace. Follow us on Twitter @Spacedotcom and on Facebook.
