Don't Look Up

Kate Dibiasky, a doctoral candidate in astronomy at Michigan State University, discovers a previously unknown comet. Her adviser, Dr. Randall Mindy, calculates that it will collide with Earth in approximately six months and is large enough to cause a global extinction event. Dr. Teddy Oglethorpe, head of their Planetary Defense Coordination Office, verifies their findings and accompanies them to present their findings to the White House. However, they are met with apathy from President Janie Orlean and her son Jason, who is also her Chief of Staff. At Oglethorpe's encouragement, Dibiasky and Mindy leak the news on a popular morning show. When hosts Jack Bremmer and Brie Evantee treat the topic flippantly, Dibiasky loses her temper and rants about the threat before leaving. Public reaction is muted, and the announcement is downplayed by the NASA Director, a top donor to Orlean with no background in astronomy. When Orlean's sexual relations with her Supreme Court nominee make headlines, she tries to divert public attention to the threat of the comet, announcing a project to strike and divert the comet using nuclear weapons. The mission successfully launches, but Orlean abruptly aborts it when Peter Isherwell, the billionaire CEO of BASH Cellular and another top donor, discovers that the comet contains trillions of dollars' worth of rare-earth elements. The White House agrees to commercially exploit the comet by fragmenting and recovering it from the ocean, using technology proposed by BASH in a scheme that has not undergone peer review. Orlean sidelines Dibiasky and Oglethorpe while hiring Mindy as National Science Advisor. Dibiasky attempts to mobilize public opposition to the scheme but gives up under threat from the administration. Mindy becomes a prominent voice advocating for the comet's commercial opportunities and begins an affair with Evantee. Public opinion is divided among people who believe the comet is a severe threat, those who believe that mining a destroyed comet will create jobs, and those who deny that the comet even exists. When Dibiasky returns home to Illinois, she begins a relationship with a young man named Yule who she meets at her retail job. Mindy's wife comes to Washington to confront him about his infidelity, and returns to Michigan without him. Mindy questions Isherwell about the reliability of his technology, angering the billionaire. Cut off from the administration, Mindy reconciles with Dibiasky as the comet becomes visible from Earth. Mindy, Dibiasky, and Oglethorpe organize a protest campaign on social media, telling people to "Just Look Up" and call on other countries to conduct comet interception operations. Simultaneously, Orlean starts an anti-campaign telling people "Don't Look Up". Russia, India, and China prepare their own joint deflection mission—only for their spacecraft to explode on takeoff, ending the possibility of a successful deflection. As the comet becomes larger in the sky, Orlean's supporters turn on her administration. BASH's launches aimed at breaking the comet apart go awry, and everyone soon realizes that humanity is doomed. Isherwell, Orlean, and other elites board a sleeper spaceship designed to find an Earth analog. Orlean forgetfully leaves Jason behind, but offers Mindy two places on the ship. He declines, choosing to spend a final evening with his wife and children, Oglethorpe, Dibiasky, and Yule. As expected, the comet strikes off the coast of Chile, triggering an explosive extinction event. In a mid-credits scene, the sleeper spaceship lands on a lush alien planet 22,740 years later with a serious percentage of deaths before/during planetfall. Admiring the habitable world, Orlean is suddenly killed by a large, avian creature—a death predicted earlier by BASH's algorithms; other survivors soon find themselves surrounded by other avian creatures with no way to defend themselves. In a post-credits scene on Earth, Jason emerges from the rubble, having survived the impact and recording a social-media message ("#LastManOnEarth").

Plot from Don't Look UpCC BY-SA 4.0