Talk about an ill-timed movie. On the tail of some of the most devastating hurricanes the United States has seen in decades, Geostorm is coming in to…regale you with an inspiring story of Gerard Butler fighting the weather? Unfortunately, it looks like he’s on the losing side in the new Geostorm trailer, which features all manner of CGI earthquakes, hail storms, tsunamis, and hurricanes. Because that’s what people to go the movies for, to see big budget recreations of disasters that are all too real.
Geostorm Trailer
It only takes a minute into the trailer for a character to say the title of the movie — “It’s a…Geostorm,” Daniel Wu dramatically declares — which is a word no human would say of their own volition. What follows is by-the-books exposition of how a manmade climate-controlling machine goes haywire, causing massive disasters across the globe that threaten millions of lives. And only Gerard Butler can stop it. I think.
If Geostorm is a movie that feels like it’s five years too late, that’s because it is. If this big budget disaster movie, helmed by Independence Day producer Dean Devlin in his directorial debut, were made directly after, say, The Day After Tomorrow or 2012, no one would have blinked an eye. The early 2000s were the heyday of cautionary tentpole tales about climate change, spurred on partly by the growing concerns about global warming and partly by the need to just see the Statue of Liberty get wrecked.
Geostorm would have been one of those, going into production back in 2014 before the film was delayed by expensive reshoots, script changes, and a long, pricey post-production process. The price tag ended up coming close to $ 15 million worth in reshoots — which is a disaster in and of itself. Now the movie is only met with more bad luck as it nears its October release date, mere months after Texas, Florida, Puerto Rico, and the U.S. Virgin Islands were ravaged by Hurricane Harvey and Hurricane Irma, in quick succession. It’s horrible timing for what looks to be an already-doomed disaster movie — less an escapist fantasy now than a grim reality. (Psst, climate change is real, folks. Also this article provides helpful links to donate to Hurricane Harvey and Irma victims.)
Here’s the official synopsis for Geostorm:
After an unprecedented series of natural disasters threatened the planet, the world’s leaders came together to create an intricate network of satellites to control the global climate and keep everyone safe. But now, something has gone wrong: the system built to protect Earth is attacking it, and it becomes a race against the clock to uncover the real threat before a worldwide geostorm wipes out everything and everyone along with it.
Geostorm is set to hit theaters on October 20, 2017.
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