‘Don’t Look Up’ Is The ‘Armageddon’ Reboot That None Of Us Needed – The Federalist

Theres this movie about a giant celestial body thats going to destroy Earth. In fact, its making an impact right now. No, its not Michael Bays triumph of American ingenuity, heroism, and a fathers love for his daughter that we lovingly call Armageddon. Rather, its Adam McKays really bad and really derivative iteration of that classic of American cinema.

On its surface, Dont Look Up, the film making the above-mentioned impact, should have been equally impactful. Its got the chick from X-Men portraying Ph.D. candidate Kate Dibiasky with Leonardo DiCaprio as Dr. Randall Mindy, her mentor. There are some other people. Its about a giant comet. Were all gonna die. But theres a chance we wont.

This is really where the two films diverge, and for the worse. This isnt Spider-Man: Far from Home territory, where multiple plotlines and possibilities merge in a glorious synthesis. This is an unnecessary reboot that only serves to remind us of why the original was awesome.

Since this is about Dont Look Up, though, perhaps I should at least discuss it a little. The movie begins with Kate discovering a new comet while working on another project. She calls Dr. Mindy to share news of the discovery. He calculates its size and trajectory and figures out that it was going to destroy the planet, so he calls some other people.

After a few minor twists and turns, the two plus one of the people they called finally get to visit President She-Trump, played by Meryl Streep, who brushes them off until it becomes electorally disadvantageous to do so, then sells them out for some Big Business interest who was overtly distinct enough from Mark Zuckerberg and Steve Jobs to not plausibly be either of them.

Naturally, Generic Evil Business Guy Who Totally Isnt Zuck Or Jobs takes over the mission to try to mine the comet for its rare-earth elements. I mean, why would a company need to do that, especially since comets are giant balls of ice, unlike asteroids that are made of metals?

In response to this, Dr. Mindy shrieks a lot about science and peer-reviewed science and Science and also peer-reviewed science before pivoting to how some things are beyond politics and only peer-reviewed politics should be trusted. At least I think thats what he said. To be honest, my eyes were glazing over by that point. Oh, Mindy also becomes a shill for the evil billionaire. For science.

At a similar point in Armageddon, Harry Stamper, portrayed by Bruce Willis, and his entire crew, including Ben Affleck playing A.J. Frost, had negotiated a deal, albeit one with the government, for learning to fly into space. Theyd also learned how to fly into space, flown into space, and started their actual mission, one which dealt with an actual asteroid, one which likely had some valuable elements in it. Why the oilmen didnt switch to mining the asteroid for computer parts is a question to which we will never get the answer.

Stamper, A.J., and company could have, instead, moped around and bought a sustainable, farm-raised, organic dinner to nourish them for the coming apocalypse, as Mindy, Dibiasky, and their families did. Like, they could have done that really easily. They were in a movie named Armageddon. Yet they chose not to.

Instead, these fictional heroes, from way back just over a decade ago when we were still allowed to have fictional heroes, forged ahead, despite Stampers ship and crew only almost landing in the right place, just around 26 miles away from where they were intending to land. Frost and his crews ship, on the other hand, crashed elsewhere even farther away on the asteroid.

As a result, Frost almost died, but didnt, unlike several other members of his crew. This meant that he and the other survivors only needed to navigate their super sweet moon buggy to the drilling site where the other crew, which had suffered far fewer fatalities, was working.

Of course, they did this with lots of help from science, though its unclear whether it was peer-reviewed. More importantly, they did so thanks to the American spirit that leads to things like movies and trips into space and movies about trips into space. Although I suppose movies like Dont Look Up mean we can at least still make movies about getting killed while sitting on Earth while the heroes gather around the dinner table to await imminent death, which is a climax of sorts, I suppose.

At Armageddons climax, we see A.J., who lost a game of shortest straw, prepare to meet his doom by manually detonating the nuke to blow up the asteroid to save the planet. But even though Stamper had some justifiable anger at A.J. for cavorting with his daughter Grace, played by Liv Tyler, Bruce knew she loved A.J.

As such, he ripped out the tubes for A.J.s oxygen supply, forcing him to return to the ship, where he and the others began their return to Earth while Stamper stayed behind to detonate the nuke, which he successfully did, thus saving the planet.

In other words, they actually saved the planet rather than just whining about it and pestering the government, unlike the protagonists of Dont Look Up, a film that doesnt exactly get everything wrong, although it does get its central thesis horribly wrong.

But it got one big thing right: By destroying the entire cast and the planet on which they existed, it makes a sequel impossible. For that, we have to thank its writers and producers. We are talking about a movie that Neil deGrasse Tyson, a man who hated the glory that is Armageddon, loved.

Richard Cromwell is a senior contributor to The Federalist. Husband. Father of three rambunctious daughters. Arkansan. Fan of whiskey and whisky. Originally an English major, Rich earned a degree in music business from Belmont in 2002. By day he produces shows and events for a local museum with a focus on giving back to the community. His writing can also be found at Pocket Full of Liberty. Follow him on Twitter, @rcromwell4.

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'Don't Look Up' Is The 'Armageddon' Reboot That None Of Us Needed - The Federalist