Leonardo DiCaprio remains one of the most recognizable movie stars in the world. He shot to fame with the release of Titanic in 1997 and has remained a fixture of the big screen ever since, regularly appearing in movies across a variety of genres. Some of his most notable titles include The Departed (2006), Inception (2010), and The Wolf of Wall Street (2013), and he recently appeared in the acclaimed Killers of the Flower Moon (2023).

Despite appearing in a number of critical darlings over the course of his career, not all of DiCaprio’s movies earn unanimously positive reviews. The Great Gatsby (2013), for example, earned a mixed response from critics, as did J. Edgar (2011). Another divisive DiCaprio film arrived in 2021, earning mixed reviews even though it hailed from an Oscar-winning director and explored contemporary issues.

Don’t Look Up Director Defends Movie 4 Years Later

The Leonardo DiCaprio Movie Was Divisive

Adam McKay defends Don’t Look Up after the DiCaprio film earned mixed reviews. Serving as McKay’s follow-up to Vice in 2018 and The Big Short in 2015, the Netlix disaster comedy follows two low-level astronomers as they embark on a global media tour to warn of an approaching comet that will destroy Earth. Don’t Look Up features a standout cast, including Jennifer Lawrence, Meryl Streep, Cate Blanchett, Jonah Hill, Mark Rylance, Tyler Perry, and Timothée Chalamet, but the film divided critics, earning only a 56% score on Rotten Tomatoes.

Now, as devastating fires rage across Los Angeles, McKay, an outspoken climate activist, defends Don’t Look Up during a recent interview with NME. The director brings up the film’s impressive viewership figures, stressing just how global a reach the film has had and how unusual this is for comedies. McKay also mentions the film’s increasing relevance when it comes to politics and the economy. Check out McKay’s full comment below:

In the face of these dramatic catastrophes that keep happening, a movie seems really small and ridiculous. But what was inspiring and energising was the popular response to that movie, not the critics and the cultural gatekeepers who hated it. It ended up being number one in something like 85 countries, as diverse as Pakistan, Vietnam, US and Uruguay. That’s extremely rare for a comedy which is usually confined by cultural regional reference points.

The estimates of how many people saw that movie – Netflix will never say exactly – but it’s somewhere between 400 million and half a billion. Viewers all really connected with the idea of being gaslit. Being lied to by their leaders, lied to by their big news media, and being lied to by industries. It was funny – when I realised that was the common connection point, I was like, of course! It’s happening everywhere now with this global neo-liberal economy that we’re all living in. It’s such a cancer and everyone is feeling it.

Don’t Look Up was a clear allegory for the dangers of climate change, and it was widely criticized in reviews for its heavy-handedness in terms of its messaging.

What McKay’s Defense Means For Don’t Look Up

The Leonardo DiCaprio Film Was (& Remains) A Monster Hit For Netflix

Generally speaking, Don’t Look Up fared better with general audiences than with critics. In contrast to the 56% critics’ score on Rotten Tomatoes, the audience score sits at a much more respectable 78%. The viewership numbers also speak for themselves. Per Netflix, the film ranks as the second most-watched English-language movie ever on the site behind Red Notice (2021), boasting an impressive 171 million views and 408 million hours viewed.

Even though the movie seems unlikely to be listed among DiCaprio’s best films in the grand scheme of his career, Don’t Look Up does feature a standout performance from the star, as well as from Lawrence, Streep, Rylance, and others. The film is also sure to only feel more relevant as the climate crisis intensifies over the coming years. Don’t Look Up may have been a divisive movie, but its reputation could certainly continue to soften as time goes on.