Geostorm (2017)

Oh my what do we have here?? Did we suddenly quantum leap back to the mid 90's???

So, its 2022 and technology has apparently advanced quite a bit. The Earth is now surrounded by a man made net of satellites which can basically control the weather. Up in orbit there is also an international space station that controls said net of satellites. Bottom line, its a global effort by mankind to try and protect the planet (of course when I say global that doesn't include every country, ahem). There's just one tiny problem, not all humans are nice, not all humans are on the same page. And so the net (called 'Dutch Boy' in reference to an 1865 fictional story) is hacked and used to cause natural disasters around the world. Enter the net designer Jake Lawson (Gerard Butler), who is tasked to solve the problem and essentially save the world. The end.

Some of you might think this is just a silly disaster flick, and you'd be right to a degree. But this movie is in fact more of a political thriller mixed with a disaster flick element. The natural disasters we see are in fact triggered and created by the man made satellites, which are in turn started by the evil saboteurs. So its not really man vs mother nature, its man vs man using mother nature as a weapon. To be truthful the idea isn't actually that bad, its just a bit dated. A Pierce Brosnan Bond plot type of dated.

Luckily everyone in the movie acts so seriously, so butch and stoic with their grimaces and steely eyed stares, you can rest assure that everything will work out just fine. Obviously our tough hero Jake Lawson won't die, you think he might (and really he should have, multiple times), but he doesn't. But its really quite amusing and so very 90's how the actors deliver their lines which such ridiculous levels of attitude; trying their best to look and sound as cool as possible as they glare into the camera. I think Jim Sturgess (Max Lawson) is the most guilty of this. He really shows-off all the cliched action movie facial expressions and poses. Its like everyone watched 'Armageddon' before they started filming.

That being said what do you get? Well pretty much everything really, the full gamut of disaster porn. Huge tidal waves, electrical storms, massive hailstones, a firenado, a freezing ice storm, the ground being torn open to reveal what I presume was lava etc...There are lots of sequences which show innocent people getting killed in lots of various ways; including massive carnage to buildings and property.

The action is of course all CGI which ranges from good to average. Whilst the sequences in space look totally fine but nothing amazing, they are by far the best looking parts of the movie. Almost all of the disaster action on Earth looks like CGI. To top that the sequences all look like they've been copied and pasted from other movies such as 'Deep Impact'. You wanna see city skylines get washed away (or frozen, or knocked over) by giant tidal waves? Its all here folks...again. The actual action is simply predictable as feck. Again from seeing other disaster movies you can pretty much guess what's gonna happen.

But one of the main issues with the action, like other disaster movies, is the fact its all so utterly stupid. Whilst trying to obtain a piece of data lodged in the space stations structure via a spacewalk, Jake's spacesuit goes out of control. He is flung all over the place crashing into the space station causing massive amounts of damage...yet he and his suit remain perfectly intact. On Earth whilst natural disasters are occurring specific characters are able to avoid the carnage around them and outrun pending doom in a car. How many times have we seen that? Then in the finale Jake and his new fellow scientist lady friend are both able to avoid masses of space debris flying around as the space station blows up around them. They both make it to a remaining intact satellite (via spacewalking I might add) which also manages to avoid all the deadly debris.

Then to top if all of nicely the last intact satellite pod (why would a satellite be able to house two adult humans inside?) is picked up by a space shuttle...that just happened to be flying by? Seriously was this shuttle just off to the side waiting for the explosion to happen and subside so it could search for potential survivors inside satellite pods?? And while we're at it, why couldn't the self destruct be turned off?? The reason for having one was valid enough, but what about an abort option people?? I also found it quite cute how the person in charge of a countries satellite seemed to be from that country. Like, would NASA (or whoever) go to the trouble of finding a Japanese person to put in charge of the satellite that controls Japans weather?? So the Peru satellite is controlled by a Peruvian person, and the Nepal satellite is controlled by a Nepalese person etc...I mean I know political correctness is hyperbolic these days but Jesus Christ come on!

Despite all that nonsense I gotta be honest and say I actually quite enjoyed this movie. It did exactly what it said on the tin. I was engaged and I found it quite exciting even though it was highly predictable. Yes its not a great movie, but its nowhere near as bad as people are making it out to be. I've said this before about certain movies, had this been released around 1995 or 1996, I think it would have been a reasonable hit. It would have fit in perfectly for the era, although it might have suffered from genre overload. These days of course this type of movie is practically dead, milked dry (almost solely by Devlin and Emmerich). But if disaster porn is your thing don't let that put you off because this really isn't all that bad, for what it is.

6.5/10