Zero Genie

As a professor at the University of Arizona’s College of Science, Lunar and Planetary Laboratory, Amy Mainzer knows a lot about space.

Her work primarily focuses on assessing the dangers flying objects, like meteors, pose to Earth. In addition, she is also the primary lead for NASA’s Near-Earth Object (NEO) Surveyor mission, a project that hopes to study asteroids and comets in our solar system. 

With that kind of background, Mainzer might well be a character in a real-life version of “Don’t Look Up,” the film now on Netflix about a group of scientists who discover a planet-killing comet hurtling toward Earth.

She’s not in the movie, but you will see her name in the credits.

Mainzer, who has spent her career studying meteors and comets, served as the technical astronomy adviser for the movie. That’s an official way of saying, when the actors talked about space, she made sure they got it right.

And one thing they got right, she says, is that the scientific discoveries are only part of the challenge. The rest of the challenge is persuading people to do something about them.

“You’ll see throughout the movie the scientists are struggling as human beings to try to carry out the process of science and then communicate their findings and get people to take action based on those findings,” says Mainzer. “At its core, that is really what the movie is all about: Can we agree on what is true.”

Review:How ‘Don’t Look Up’ captures this current moment is stunning. And not so pretty

The film, which debuted last week,  is a parable for how society is handling climate change. Both are obvious catastrophes with clear solutions. But it’s the way the film depicts the challenge of trying to communicate science to a fractured audience that really shines. A key part of getting that through was Mainzer. 

Mainzer spent years working with Adam McKay, the director, and the star-studded cast to help them understand the nuances and difficulty of communicating scientific findings to the public.

She says that the struggles most scientists face when relaying unpleasant information are universal. Perhaps that’s why the movie feels so relatable despite being science fiction.

“In my opinion, this movie is fundamentally a cry for science-based decision making in all aspects of our lives, including climate change, the pandemic, and loss of biodiversity, just to name a few,” Mainzer told The Arizona Republic.

Because most of the production happened during the pandemic, on-set access was limited. Mainzer often watched the action on a screen via Zoom, chiming in from her computer to give advice in between takes.

In addition to going through multiple readings of the script, Mainzer helped shape the tone and mood for specific scenes, such as depicting the way people with certain identities are easily marginalized in scientific discussions. For instance, Kate Dibiasky, played by Jennifer Lawrence, is the one who initially discovered the comet but when powerful people seek guidance, they reach out to white, male scientists and they leave her out of the conversation.

Mainzer says the film also feels authentic in the way it portrays how the media, especially TV news, distills complex science. Such is the case when Dr. Mindy, played by Leonardo DiCaprio, goes on a fictional cable news program to talk about his lab’s findings only to be asked by one of the hosts if aliens are real. Mindy, in response, pans over the question with an annoyed “sure, in the vastness of space, why not,” only to pivot back to their discovery.

“There’s kind of this important, key scene in the movie where [Dr. Mindy] finally gets to say what’s really on his mind. We had a lot of conversations about that,” says Mainzer on working with DiCaprio to help craft his monologue. “A few times he had just said, ‘here, you tell me everything that’s on your mind,’ so I just let it rip a couple of times. We had dozens of conversations about that scene alone.”

Other features that lend to a feeling of accuracy, says Mainzer, were illustrating how misunderstandings about the scientific process can lead to misinformation. For instance, when the scientists present their findings in the Oval Office, the president, played by Meryl Streep, tries to haggle over how they should relay the news to the public. The scientists aren’t 100% sure the comet will hit, but they’re close to it.

In real life, scientists are rarely 100% on anything. But despite empirical evidence pointing in one direction, both in the film and in real life, there’s never a shortage of people, usually without scientific backgrounds, who push the narrative in the other direction.

Mainzer says there were other, less obvious, instances that the movie had to weave in to add to its portrayal of science in society. One included the ability of powerful people to corrupt scientific findings, like when Sir Peter Isherwell, played by Mark Rylance, uses his money and influence to take over the mission to stop the comet.

Mainzer said the main characters also walk the fine line of needing to effectively communicate information to an apathetic public while equally being people who themselves have flaws.

“One of the things that we see in the movie that I wanted to highlight is the idea that, what do you do when you are faced with the task of communicating news that’s not good to people who may not want to hear it,” says Mainzer. “You have two choices. You can either protest. Or you can say, ‘all right, well, I’m going to try to at least be in the room with the people who are in power to help influence their decision making, even if I really disagree with the way that they behave.’”

Mindy and Dibiasky represent these two lines of thinking. Mindy abhors the listlessness of those in power, but he’d also rather be close to decision-makers. Dibiasky, on the other hand, is frustrated by the lack of action and would rather scream.

Science stays at the fore of the movie, says Mainzer, because of the film’s collaborative approach. From the beginning, she worked with McKay, who was committed to highlighting realism.

“When Adam, the writer/director, was looking for someone to advise him, he stumbled on me, basically through looking on the internet and then through calling a mutual colleague we had at NASA,” says Mainzer. “[H]e explained what he wanted to do with the movie. He had some really important points to make about how important it is to make science-based decisions. So from that very first conversation, it was clear that we had common goals in terms of what we both care about.”

Mainzer is no stranger to working with video producers who want to incorporate science into their writing. She is the consultant and co-producer for PBS’s Ready Set Go, a non-fiction series that introduces space and astronomy to kids. 

In “Don’t Look Up,” Mainzer brought her knack for bridging science and television to the big screen. For a film that is as much a parody as it is a drama, the incisive portrayal of the scientific process runs deep and throughout. And that includes processing information not only through a strict, peer-review process but also through feeling.

“From my perspective, this movie has a really important nugget of hope in it, which is that science fiction has always held up a mirror to society and its purpose is to help us envision a future and then decide, well, we don’t want that one,” says Mainzer. “This is a movie that hopefully will make people think and will spark a conversation about how we deal with bad news in science, and if it achieves that, then it’s done its job.”

Lindsey Botts is an environmental reporter for The Arizona Republic/azcentral. Follow his reporting on Twitter at @lkbotts and Lkbotts on Instagram. Tell him about stories at lindsey.botts@azcentral.com.

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