Why the climate-wrecking craze for crypto art really is beyond satire | John Naughton

Critics attacked Don't Look Up for being over the top. But the mania for NFTs shows how on-the-money the movie is

On 24 December, the movie Don't Look Up began streaming on Netflix following a limited release in cinemas. It's a satirical story, directed by Adam McKay, about what happens when a lowly PhD student (played by Jennifer Lawrence) and her supervisor (Leonardo DiCaprio) discover that an Everest-size asteroid is heading for Earth. What happens is that they try to warn their fellow Earthlings about this existential threat only to find that their intended audience isn't interested in hearing such bad news.

The movie has been widely watched but has had a pasting from critics. It was, said the Observer's Simran Hans, a shrill, desperately unfunny climate-change satire". The Guardian's Peter Bradshaw found it a laboured, self-conscious and unrelaxed satire... like a 145-minute Saturday Night Live sketch with neither the brilliant comedy of Succession... nor the seriousness that the subject might otherwise require".