Review of Geostorm (2017) by Amanda D — 06 Nov 2017

After 2012, you would have thought that we were finally over disaster movies. Unfortunately, Hollywood doesn't know when to quit. Now, we have Geostorm, a movie which claims to be smarter than the mindlessly destructive spectacle it really is.

Smart, according to the writers, means including a lot of convoluted stuff that needs to be explained to the audience. That means copious amounts of exposition. How much exposition is in Geostorm? There's so much exposition, that there's exposition to explain why Gerard Butler's (300) American accent keeps slipping. That's not the only misguided attempt the writers make at creating an intelligent movie. Geostorm makes a lot of fanfare how international this movie is, featuring characters and locations from all over the globe, introducing them with captions in a font that is in hopelessly outdated style. Of course, that's little more than a brazen attempt to pander to international audiences. Anyone who observes Hollywood will tell you that the international market is the only thing keeping floundering blockbusters like Geostorm afloat. In case all of that isn't enough, the script throws in a trite family drama, introduced with equally trite exposition, all the while stealing from every film between Gravity and The Dark Knight.

Ironically, Geostorm's attempt at being more than just another disaster movie ends up taking away from the movie's strongest suit and the only thing moviegoers are here for: the spectacle itself. What little we do see of the natural disasters is actually visually striking, even if they're unoriginal. Luckily, we do have plenty of sequences in space, and for the most part, the CGI holds up there as well. Granted, there are too many moments where the visual effects are too heavy handed, and it doesn't help that so many visual cues happen with perfect timing, but what's there of the special effects is fairly impressive. In the end, though, I don't think it would matter much if Geostorm featured more of its namesake, because I truly don't see how a movie like this could ever work.