Geostorm

Geostorm

Starring Gerard Butler, Jim Sturgess, Abbie Cornish, Andy Garcia

Directed by Dean Devlin

The Story:
In 2019, after Global Warming totally destroyed the world with cataclysmic weather events, the world banded together and created Dutch Boy, a series of satellites that controls Earth's climate, designed and built under the direction of Jake Lawson (Gerard Butler).  Jake is relieved of command by his brother, Max (Jim Sturgess), who retains command of Dutch Boy for three years until it is given control from America to the world.

A few weeks before the trade-off happens, a series of glitches occur that result in mass casualties on Earth, and it soon becomes apparent that someone is purposefully sabotaging the station.  Jake is enlisted to go up to the main base to find how to fix it, while Max stays on Earth and works with his Secret Service girlfriend (Abbie Cornish) to find out who would want to cause a global extinction.

The Synopsis:
When I was a child, I would often play with my toys (Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles, Transformers, G.I. Joe, and so on), and I would use my imagination to put them in very life-threatening situations.  "Geostorm" is basically that concept with a bigger budget.  It's basically a lot of calamities happening with very little sense being made of it all.  In short: it's like someone threw darts at two different boards - one having a map of the world, and the other a list of possible weather conditions - and combined them in hopes of creating some fantastic CGI effects.  Be it a freeze front in Rio that turns people to ice and cause airplanes to crash, a firestorm under the roads of Hong Kong, or a rogue wave hitting Dubai, director Dean Devlin doesn't spare in the apocalyptic doom and gloom.  What he does spare in, however, is an adequate plot, a story that makes sense, and actors who seemed totally disinterested to be there - much like those who watched the film.

One of my favorite shows is "American Dad," and there's an episode where Francine talks on the phone to her sister, and refers to her as sister.  She then goes on to say, "What?  I've never called you 'sis' before?  You're right, it is oddly clunky and expositional.  I mean, I know you're my sister, so who am I saying it for?"  This immediately came to mind after the first scene between Gerard Butler and Jim Sturgess happened, where Butler's Jake refers to Stugess's Max as "little brother."  I'm an only child, but I doubt if I had siblings I'd refer to them as 'brother' or 'sister.'  Then again, the script did seem to be written by a two-year-old, so I guess they had to really establish that the two leading men in the film were brothers - otherwise it'd make what happened in the rest of the film seem even more nonsensical than it already was.

Speaking of, there's also a reference between the brothers about the secret code the two brothers used to share.  I'm sure it's just a throwaway reference and won't be included later in the...oh wait, there it is.  Good thing they spent precious moments talking about this special code earlier, or else we wouldn't know what was going on!  They really like to spoon-feed us the plot like it's a Hitchcock classic and not one slightly above an Adam Sandler Netflix original. 

Back to the script.  Uh...yeah it's pretty simple.  Bad guy wants to control the weather (and even though they toss out different ideas on who the bad guy is, you only really have two people to realistically pull from), and we're treated with calamities, both in the natural and the calamity of wanting to bash our own heads against the wall for sitting through it.  Not quite sure which is the better option. 

So we get characters who are utterly clueless - after several "glitches," they seem to think that it's still innocent glitches happening, despite common sense - and then we also get the same tired treatment of plot devices that we've seen in countless films before.  One man calls Max and tells him he knows who's behind everything, and instead of telling him who it was, he tells him to meet somewhere later.  Needless to say, the meeting goes according to plan and Max knows immediately who is behind everything and it all wraps up nicely...in case you didn't notice, that was sarcasm.  Of course they never meet and the mystery keeps going until the real threat is revealed in such a way I expected to see Fred, Daphne and Velma unmasking the bad guy and Shaggy going "zoinks!"

There are signature films that directors take on.  If you're watching a Michael Bay film, for example, you'll expect to see explosions everywhere.  Roland Emmerich is known for his Earth-destroying films such as "Independence Day," "The Day After Tomorrow," and "2012."  "Geostorm" seems to fall under Emmerich's signature song, but even this seems like a lesser version of Emmerich's classics.  That's because it wasn't Roland Emmerich who directed it, but his longtime collaborator Dean Devlin - whose first film is the aforementioned "Geostorm" - who did.  It's like Devlin is the ten-year-old brother to Emmerich, who begs and cries for him to let him do his own movie, and Emmerich finally sighs and tells him to do it.  Devlin then gleefully goes to destroy a lot of things and doesn't offer any substance to it - like most ten-year-olds do.

The actors don't seem at all interested to be a part of this film as well.  It was said by different cast members that Gerard Butler had trouble memorizing his lines.  Jim Sturgess had this head tilt throughout the film that made me tilt my own head to try and see him level-headed.  Andy Garcia had a soulless look in his eyes as the President, probably thinking "I was in 'The Untouchables' and now I'm here?"  Ed Harris floats through like a ghost, and Abbie Cornish seems to direct all her intense hatred to the film with her character. Much like the audience, the cast even seemed to think this was a stinker from the start.

It's a very interesting concept for a movie, because it obviously would never be done in real life.  The ramifications are way too deadly to imagine, and I'm surprised it took three years in the film for it to happen.  When mankind can control the weather, of course they'll be people who would use that to change the world to their liking.  It's a no-brainer, much like this all happened while control was still in American hands - after all, America is known for being the most violent country so what other country would use the satellite as the ultimate weapon?  Again, I'm being facetious. But only slightly.  Also, as far as the destruction goes, you've seen the best parts in the trailers.  There, I saved you two long boring hours.  You're welcome.

The Summary:
For a film that boasts worldwide destruction, the only thing "Geostorm" really destroyed was our time we wasted in watching it.

The Score: D