Geostorm

Dir: Dean Devlin

2017

**

Dean Devlin has a long career as a producer and has worked closely with Roland Emmerich in the past. Looking at his back catalog of films it’s probably no surprise that Geostorm is his chosen directional debut. One might wonder why another extreme weather disaster movie though, why indeed, the answer may lay in the fact that the only Emmerich films Devlin hasn’t worked on are 2012 and The Day After Tomorrow – he clearly feels he was left out and wanted a crack at the action sub-genre himself. Roland Emmerich’s films are big, stupid and something of a guilty pleasure – Geostorm on the other hand is big, stupid, and not quite a guilty pleasure. Actually that’s not quite true, Geostrom isn’t really that big, it’s incredibly stupid and something of a bore. Very little works in Geostorm, even when you ignore the science and logic. Based in the not-so-distant future whereby the world has clubbed together and built a super-space station that protects the Earth from extreme weather conditions, we are led to believe that meat-headed hard man Gerard Butler is the brains behind this unfathomable science. When pushed on the subject he punches people, rather than explain the science to them. We’re supposed to react positively to him somehow because of said punching, which is already a little too 1980s neo-conservative for today’s action movie fan, but the fact that he can’t even science particularity well is a step too far. Back in the day, watching New York getting smashed was an epic thing to witness (horrific but thrilling), in Geostorm it doesn’t even warrant popcorn. I don’t think this is necessarily all to do with the acts of terrorism the world has suffered in the last couple of decades, but sadly we have become numb to such images. The disaster genre comes and goes, I would argue that they were possibly more entertaining when the world isn’t suffering such disasters but know what we know now and also knowing many people in power are ignoring it, the whole extreme weather/disaster thing is something we should be talking about, rather than watching as entertainment. Geostorm isn’t meant to be taken seriously of course, but one can’t help it in this day and age. All that aside, the film takes place on a weather hit earth, with fire, freezing and volcanoes, as well as in space, with lots of explosions and cool space stuff – it has no excuse for being as dull as it is. It really should be a guilty pleasure. The reasons why it isn’t are quite simple. Firstly, the characters are crap. Secondly, the actors playing the characters are crap. Thirdly, the script given to said actors playing the characters is crap. It also lacks that one distinct action sequence that all good disaster films have. The story itself makes the 1970s James Bond scripts look believable. The reason why the bad guys want to destroy half the plant by bad weather? Because it is easier to be in charge of fewer people. Seriously, who on earth green-lights this nonsense. After a poor test screening the producers ordered extensive re-shoots, so I hate to think what it looked like before. I would hazard a guess that this will be Devlin’s first and last film as director, although knowing Warner Brothers these days, I dare say they’ll be several sequels, maybe even a ‘universe’ of films.