The comedy science fiction film ‘Don’t Look Up‘ directed by Adam McKay is now one of the nominees for Best Picture in the 2022 Academy Awards. Some of the characters are inspired by real people like the dangerous billionaire tech CEO Peter Isherwell who played by Mark Rylance.
Rylance’s said that he was looking for inspiration for his role among CEOs like Steve Jobs, Mark Zuckerberg, and Jeff Bezos. But he found that SpaceX and Tesla CEO Elon Musk is the perfect one for Peter Isherwell’s character.
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Points of similarity between Musk and Peter Isherwell
About the reason for his choices, the Academy Award-winning actor said that individuals who have very high-minded ideas about what they’re doing like Mr. Musk, do not think that they are bad people at all. Moreover, he warned that this is also what makes individuals like the real billionaires dangerous
“I looked at all those fellas. Maybe I should have gone down that more Californian, high-tech thing. But I went for something slightly different. I did read Elon Musk’s book — about half of it. But I certainly thought a lot about that mindset of men and technology being the greatest thing in the universe. That nothing else is a higher force, and anything that nature throws at us, we’ll deal with it. They’re thinking they’re doing good — so there’s that scene where he gets upset when Leonardo’s character thinks he’s just a businessman. These people have very high-minded ideas about what they’re doing. They don’t think they’re bad people; quite the contrary. You get that impression from Elon Musk. They think they’re going to save humanity. I think they’re dangerous,” Rylance said.
If you haven’t seen the movie yet, here’s a brief about Peter Isherwell’s character. He is an influential businessman who has a significant pull on the president of the United States. While the Earth is facing the danger of an approaching comet, he insisted to use experimental technology and rockets to address that danger.
Away from the events of the movie, Elon Musk tends to be very bold on his targets and ambitions. He is the one who brought back the capability to launch astronauts from American ground to the United States with its Crew Dragon program.