The ending of Don't Look Up's weird Rotten Tomatoes score.
Written and directed by McKay, Don't Look Up ends with a surprisingly nihilistic conclusion. As the plan of President Orlean (played by Meryl Streep) and tech company BASH ultimately fails, the main characters resign themselves to their fate and have one last family dinner, indulging in casual conversation, and desperately avoiding the topic of their impending doom. This scene is a welcome change of pace, contrasting the world-ending apocalypse with an intimate family dinner and stepping away from the film's previously comedic tone for a more sincere emotional climax.
This final scene is great, but it's too little too late. The Big Short; other scenes, like DiCaprio and Lawrence's first meeting with the President at the Oval Office, come off as completely unrealistic.
It's a shame to see the talent of 's star-studded cast wasted on McKay's flawed script. While the whole film needn't have been a serious drama, the over-the-top quality of previous scenes, replete with McKay's signature improv, contrasts with the genuinely emotional acting present in that poignant final sequence. In fact, the dinner scene only serves to highlight the emotional authenticity lacking in the preceding two hours of the movie. The jump from absurdist satire to restrained tragedy demonstrates that McKay wanted to have his cake and eat it too, so to speak. The final result is tonal whiplash.
Moreover, the movie doesn't fully commit to its tragic ending. Don't Look Up has two post-credits scenes; one in which the elite few who were able to escape Earth return after 22,740 years, only to be devoured by strange animals; while the second sees Jonah Hill's character emerging from the rubble, seemingly the last man alive on Earth. While both of these scenes are certainly bleak, they end the film on a comedic note which lessens the blow of the film's quasi-Biblical finale and the emotional sincerity of that dinner scene. In short, while Don't Look Up's ending is great, it isn't enough to save the rest of the movie, due to the contrasting tone and lazy satire of the sequences that surround it.
