It’s a disaster all right.
Geostorm (2017): 5 out of 10: In Geostorm, the earth has suffered massive disasters because of global warming. The countries all get together to create a vast spiderweb of satellites that all have magical powers to control the weather. Our hero Gerald Butler, who single handily invented and constructed all the satellites, is fired cause he tells it like it is and now the United States is ready to turn the satellites over to the world at large, but someone has taken control of the satellites and are making then do bad weather instead of good. Can our disgraced hero find out who is behind this and save the world in time?
The Good
The Good: Well, it’s better than The Core. Abbie Cornish is pretty good as the fiance of the brother of the hero who is also the head United States Secret Service agent protecting the President who might be the traitor and who is the only person who can reboot the satellites. She easily has the best action scene in the movie.
The Bad
The Bad: Good lord, where does one start? Well, let’s start with one scene. Gerald Butler, our Mary Sue inventor/action hero/tell it like it is the guy is going back to the space station he designed (and apparently built… with scraps… he found in a cave.) Keep in mind he is going back to the station he was fired from publicly only four years ago. He meets with all the department heads of the station. None of them knows who he is. Not one. He is the most famous man on the planet; He built the station they are sitting in, and he only left four years ago. Not to mention he just flew up to the station in Space Shuttle like five minutes ago; he called this meeting, and he is wearing one of those Mr. Goodwrench shirts with his freaking name on it and the movie still tries to do one of those OMG it’s you moments.
Geostorm has the trying to prevent the disaster plot rather than the much easier to script trying to survive the disaster plot. It takes a tight script and a skilled filmmaker to make a preventing a disaster film work. (God help us, but Armageddon is a good example of the former while 2012 is a good example of the latter.) Geostorm doesn’t have a clue. The science makes zero sense. The space station has a self-destruct button you can’t turn off. The satellites are basically magical, shooting heat death rays at Moscow and causing earthquakes so severe there is an 800-foot tsunami in the Arabian Gulf. Heck, one of the satellites opens up to a luxurious two-person escape pod in a grown worthy moment that stands out in a movie chock full of them.
Gerald Butler is awful and acts as if we would rather be anywhere else. Since he is in almost every scene, that proves problematic. The rest of the cast, outside of the excellent Abbie Cornish, are well… there. The disaster scenes are decent (better than The Core but nowhere near the level of say 2012) but they don’t really produce any tension since it is people you have never met before running away from admittedly decent video game graphics.
In Conclusion
In Conclusion: Geostorm is almost more famous for the endless bumping of its release date, the expensive re-shoots and budget overruns. I expect a movie about the making of this film would be more exciting than the movie itself. Heck, even a movie about one of the two disasters at the beginning of the film that prompted this whole satellite building scheme would have worked better. I am a softy when it comes to disaster films. Some Syfy movie where a school bus full of kids falls into a sinkhole can keep me entertained for ninety minutes. I also genuinely enjoy Gerald Butler movies more than most. This, however, did not win me over. Still better than The Core though (Seriously, who puts a windshield on a drill?.)