Mark Rylance‘s turn as a deranged tech CEO in ‘Don’t Look Up’ is a clear dig at our country’s leading billionaire visionaries — but the question … who’s it actually aimed at???
You’ve probably heard about this new Netflix flick — but what you may not have known … Rylance portrayal as chief of a revolutionary company is getting compared to guys like Elon Musk, Jeff Bezos, Mark Zuckerberg, Tim Cook and others pushing the information envelope.
One thing the internet can’t seem to agree on … which of these billionaires serves as the true inspiration behind Rylance’s Peter Isherwell, who ends up contributing to everyone on Earth (save a select few) getting killed by an incoming comet. Sorry, spoiler alert!
For those who’ve seen it, you know Isherwell runs a company called BASH, which seems to be a spinoff of Apple — a la Cook/Jobs — but it’s way more advanced, in that it reads your every thought and mood, and predicts how you’ll die … all based on data it collects on its users. Isherwell, funny enough, also runs a space unit of some sort … similar to Musk.
In the end, Isherwell’s plan to blow up the incoming comet and collect the precious minerals found within it completely backfires … having led Meryl Streep (the President) and the rest of the world’s citizens astray. He high-tails it off Earth, before it blows up, in his own rocket, and attempts to colonize a new planet in the distant galaxy (which also hilariously backfires).
The point is … the dude seems to be an amalgam of all these guys in one — although most people appear to think he’s most like Time’s Person of the Year for 2021.
tfw it’s actually hard to tell the difference between real life and satirical art pic.twitter.com/YDdG9X1m8C
— David Sirota (@davidsirota) December 13, 2021
@davidsirota
It sounds like Rylance himself sees a little Elon in his character as well … although he’s quick to point out Isherwell isn’t necessarily a dead ringer for any one of the tech-y billionaires, despite him certainly being a farcical take on just about all of them.
As he explains, Isherwell’s actions are premised on the idea that any of our world’s problems can be solved with technology — a testament to our times and where we’re headed.
