Kyle Mooney’s thoughts on Y2K can be summed up with three words: That was weird.
The writer-director-comedian was a young teen when 1999 gave way to the new millennium, and hysteria surrounding the Millennium Bug — a potential computer issue that could have brought on the end of the world — was at an all-time high. Mooney remembers his mother stocking up on water and granola bars, and though he didn’t give much credence to the phenomenon and its capacity for destruction, he still found himself a bit disappointed in the fact that nothing actually happened.
“I was always kind of obsessed with the idea that we were talking about this thing that felt so monumental in some way or another,” Mooney tells Inverse. “And then it was just a full nothing-burger.”
Mooney admits that he’s been “plagued” by the what-if of Y2K ever since. That quiet obsession has followed him through his long tenure in sketch comedy, his nine-year run on Saturday Night Live, and his first big-screen project, Brigsby Bear — but it wasn’t until New Year’s Eve in 2019 that he decided to turn that “nothing-burger” into… well, something.
Y2K, Mooney’s directorial debut, explores all that could have happened in 1999. Produced by A24, the film follows a group of disparate high schoolers whose rowdy New Year’s Eve party is harshly interrupted by a robot uprising. As the glitz of the early 2000s has started to become an all-consuming fascination in today’s pop culture landscape, Y2K may be the first to flip that nostalgia on its head in such a darkly funny way. It’s as enamored with noughties needledrops like “The Thong Song” as it is with skewering pre-Millennium culture.
Mooney is happy to join the ranks of films like Dìdi, carving out a niche for nostalgic, 2000s-era films. The director co-wrote Y2K alongside Evan Winter, and by all accounts, the writing process was a breeze. “We started pitching on it and within a week we pretty much had all of the major components of the movie you see,” Mooney says. “We were just psyched to put this era on screen. It hasn’t really been done a ton of times, and it is so hyper-specific, so it was just a fun excuse to sort of revisit our teenage years.”
It also offered Mooney the chance to introduce the phenomenon to the younger generation, most of whom are more or less oblivious to the idea of the Millennium Bug.
“I thought it was a minor thing at first,” says Jaeden Martell, who plays the shy, aimless Eli in Y2K. The It actor grew up thinking the event was more of a joke. He only realized just how big a deal it was after being cast in Mooney’s film... and meeting people who’d actually lived through it. “They all have horror stories. They all were genuinely terrified… They need to come out and talk about how that affected them, [but] they’re all hiding it.”
Whatever Millennials actually lived through will likely pale in comparison to Mooney’s imagined reality. Y2K sees a nigh-unstoppable virus appropriate any tech that runs on electricity, creating a robot army out of iMacs, Tamagotchi pets, and even microwave ovens. Said army launches an assault on Eli’s small town, rounding up any human that crosses their path and exterminating anyone who resists. It’s a terrifying, if familiar, concept, but Y2K’s robot beasts — created practically by Wēta Workshop — are also a major highlight of the film.
Mooney and Winter worked closely with Wēta to craft their amalgamated villains. “We were looking at everything from the era specifically, but also we were pulling out random images from Captain EO or She-Ra,” the director explains. “Evan was really good about finding era-specific visual effects, [but] my brain always goes to stuff that I’ve seen randomly in 1988 or something — so it was kind of an amalgamation of all these different, weird, and interesting aesthetic vibes.”
“It was like watching Daniel Day-Lewis, or something.”
Wēta’s concept artists took the brief and created something that surpassed the duo’s expectations. “They did so much of the work for us, I should say,” Mooney adds. “They’re practical so they’re like people in suits essentially… what Wēta came back with was just so incredible and so immediately in line with what we had in our heads, if not even better than we even imagined.”
Fighting against a force you could feel was also a major boon for the actors. Both Martell and Dennison know what it’s like to work against green screen and motion capture: Martell got his fill with the It films, while Dennison appeared in CGI-heavy spectacles like Deadpool 2 and Godzilla vs. Kong.
“I hate green screens,” Martell admits with a laugh. “It isn’t as fun. It pulls you out.”
“And as an actor you’re trying to sink in,” Dennison agrees. “There’s such a spark when you see practical effects... You can see the person under the suit breathing. Things like that really help you as an actor to really set your feet on the ground.”
It also didn’t hurt having someone like Mooney to guide them behind the scenes. Martell grew up watching Mooney’s sketches on the internet, so working with the comedy legend was definitely a “pinch me” moment.
“I was a huge fan,” Martell says. “He forever shaped and changed our humor. When you’re working with someone like that, who means so much to you, it’s really cool, [and] it was really cool to see him act.”
Working alongside Mooney — who appears as Garrett, the perpetually-high manager of a video store, in Y2K — offered Martell another understanding of comedy. “To see his process actually on-camera was really interesting,” Martell adds. “He takes it very seriously... It was like watching Daniel Day-Lewis, or something.”
Mooney’s approach to comedy may come as a surprise, especially after seeing him riff so effortlessly in Y2K. But for someone who’s been thinking about Y2K for the past 20 years, it’s only natural that he’d want to get it right.
