‘Don’t Look Up‘ recently broke the Netflix record for most hours viewed in its first week on the site. A lot of people love the film, but a lot of people hate it. The movie is the definition of “mixed reactions” from critics.
And director Adam McKay may have made the hate more intense when he tweeted out this back on December 29…
Loving all the heated debate our movie. But if you don’t have at least a small ember of anxiety about the climate collapsing (or the U.S. teetering) I’m not sure ‘Don’t Look Up’ makes any sense.
People took this quote and ran with it, basically claiming that McKay was trying to imply that if you don’t like his movie, then you don’t care about climate change.
Of course, he was very clearly not saying that, but this is the internet where people go to overreact. During a recent interview with IndieWire, McKay made it clear that he welcomes the critics.
The only reason I [tweeted] that was because when people watch the movie and they’re especially freaked out about what’s happening they tend to respond to it a little better. Someone jumped on it and said, ‘Oh, you’re saying if we don’t like the movie we don’t care about the climate,’ which is utterly ridiculous. No human being would ever say that. I gotta laugh, because it’s right out of the movie. Suddenly, it became like I was saying critics can’t say anything, and of course they can. It’s important to have debate and passionate critics.
He also revealed he’s attempting to dial back his time on Twitter, which is probably a good thing. Once you get sucked inside that hellish site, there’s no turning back.
By the way, ‘Don’t Look Up’ just earned a SAG nomination for best ensemble in a motion picture.
