Disastrous FU - Geostorm

As the great Mark Kermode of YouTube, the newspaper The Observer and member of the BAFTA’s, once said about Geostorm;

“Honestly, and I say this, I think it's the stupidest film I have ever seen." “It’s more stupid than Angels and Demons, and that’s not a phrase I thought I would ever say out loud.”

By jove, he was probably right. Outside of maybe The Little Panda Fighter, this may be the dumbest, most illogical movie ever put to screen. And when you’re getting compared to The Little Panda Fighter, something is wrong.

Geostorm is set in a global warming-ridden future where a satellite controls the weather to try and repair the Earth, but of course, sh*t hits the fan pretty fast. What follows is 109 minutes of meaningless babble, derivative storytelling, science from the 5th dimension and a real sense that people only made this movie because they had nothing better to do that day.

This movie is not truly bottom of the barrel – it has some sophisticated actors like Ed Harris and Andy Garcia trying to salvage the dreck of this movie – but wow, is it substandard. Not even the special effects are that good despite a $120 million budget, with a lot of the compositing and general blocking of CGI being really uninspired or lazy.

I'm confused by many things in this shot, such as why a building has been randomly placed in the middle of the sea or why the city in the background looks so fake.

Let’s talk about direction here. This is Dean Devlin’s first movie as a director, after being Roland Emmerich’s longtime producer and co-writer. There were also enormous re-shoots under the direction of Gotham co-creator and 1995’s Judge Dredd director Danny Cannon (the latter looks more appealing compared to this movie, holy sh^t). These reshoots are immensely obvious, by the way, considering all of the continuity errors and randomness that occurs.

Neither director could produce a movie that was in any way vicariously original. Everything in this movie feels stale, like the sort of thing we’d expect from a random disaster movie from Michael Bay or Roland Emmerich, and the camerawork lacks any sort of inventiveness, often accompanied by unnecessary quick editing. The movie isn’t even visually interesting, with much of the action being shot without emphasis on colour or unique camerawork, but rather just framing the action and making sure it gets on screen.

What is interesting about this grey, blocky, overly smooth image? Make the water blue and turn on the damn sunlight.

It’s fun to harp on movie logic and stupid decisions, something that many YouTube channels thrive on, but this movie has the logic of madmen raised on Fast and Furious crossed with physics from another planet. Like, why the hell is the satellite designed to control the weather of the world also equipped with a ginormous laser beam? Why would all of the security for the world’s deadliest weapon be biometrics from one easily compromised president? Why is the satellite named “DUTCHBOY”?

DutchBoy is the least scientific name I’ve ever heard! It would be better to call it the StormMaker, or WeatherGod, or Sir August de Wynter, or anything other than DutchBoy. Who the f%ck named it DutchBoy?

Just to close off, it’s laughable how unfunny this movie is. It keeps trying to throw in cringey comedy from Zazie Beetz’s side character, but it just doesn’t land. Andy Garcia (accepting his days of Oscar glory are long past) also gets this one awful line near the end, which could have been improved if they expanded on that line and made the whole scene just comedic, instead of feeling like a speed bump on a dirt road. It would have felt like a scene straight out of a sitcom, and it would have at least broken monotony in a good way that made the movie feel committed to an original idea.

Look, just don’t watch Geostorm. Watch Independence Day, or The Day After Tomorrow, or Train to Busan, or pretty much the majority of other disaster movies. Even if they’re bottom of the barrel like Armageddon, they are at least more visually interesting than this processed garbage. I’m going to give Geostorm a D-.

Have you seen Geostorm (god forbid)? If so, what did you think of it? Leave your answers in the comments below.