Let’s dissect the gruesome ending to Adam McKay’s Don’t Look Up and how it was a massive injustice to one of his greatest heroes.
WARNING: The following contains spoilers for Search Not, Now in Theaters and Streaming on Netflix.
At Adam McKay’s Do not seek, it is safe to say that an unhappy ending was indeed an indictment against humanity. The director did not touch the comet due to the destruction of the Earth, which clearly shows that the karma of the planet has crashed and destroyed most of the lives due to mankind’s bad manners in the over the centuries. However, while this may have been a boon to a society driven by greed and superficiality, it was a massive injustice to Kate (Jennifer Lawrence).
She is among the scientists who discovered the comet and led the media charge to wake up the public, despite the US government trying to use it to its advantage. She and Dr. Mindy (Leonardo DiCaprio) went their separate ways, however, as the latter fell in love with Brie (Cate Blanchett) and loved being a celebrity, going so far as to cheat on his wife and leave his family with the looming apocalypse.
However, Kate stayed the course, only to be vilified online and get stuck in a small town in Illinois. There, the social outcast met another outcast in Yule (Timothée Chalamet), and while he was a much younger skate-punk than she was, she found his innocence charming. They were both anarchists at heart, but he taught him so much, for although being a rebel, he was an evangelist who preached the word of God. He even proposed to her when they reconnected with Mindy and had their last dinner. The fact that Yule prayed with them to allay their fears in the last moments painted him as a truly kind soul in the presence of so many imperfect people.
In this scene, it was about second chances, forgiveness and not being afraid in the face of death. Sadly, the comet hit and killed them all in the shockwave, which seemed to do Kate, who was the true blue in the movie, a disservice. She wasn’t selfish, and like Yule, she just wanted society to improve. Thanks to her, the government almost destroyed the comet earlier, so she almost saved humanity, and that alone should have given her room for some sort of saving grace.
The couple should have survived because the world needed nice people like Kate and Yule, an anti-fascist who hated the system but strove to be healed through love. Kate deserved all the better that besides doing everything in her power to save the planet, she was ridiculed by the public, and her ex even broke up with her because of it, writing books to take advantage of his pain. Yule and Kate being a part of the rebuilding together would also have been a fluke as they felt like soul mates destined to save each other and the world.
The ending has already killed Oglethorpe, an ally of the Planetary Defense Coordination Office, so he could have portrayed how even good people die as collateral damage. So, he didn’t need more righteous people to perish. What made this sting bigger was that Jason, President Orleans’ corrupt son, survived. He escaped the White House bunker, proving bad guys are lucky in the real world, which ultimately robbed Kate of her happy ending.
To see how Kate got screwed, Don’t Look Up is in theaters now and on Netflix.
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