It just opened yesterday, and already Hollywood movie analysts are blasting its plot and performance.
When catastrophic climate change endangers Earth’s very survival, world governments unite and create the Dutch Boy Program: a world wide net of satellites, surrounding the planet, that are armed with geoengineering technologies designed to stave off the natural disasters. After successfully protecting the planet for two years, something is starting to go wrong. Two estranged brothers are tasked with solving the program’s malfunction before a world wide Geostorm can engulf the planet.
From Variety:
“Geostorm,” a weather disaster drama starring Gerard Butler and directed by Dean Devlin, is heading towards a disaster of the fiscal sort for Warner Bros. Though the film is projected to over-perform just barely with a modest $12.5 million at 3,246 venues compared to a projected $10 to 12 million, it’s also carrying an estimated $100 million budget. The film has been released internationally and garnered roughly $7.4 million on Friday, bringing the global cumulative total to $29.8 million in addition to Friday’s domestic $4.3 million.
From The Independent
Geostorm review round-up: Is this the worst film of the year?
‘Uses digital technology to lay waste to a bunch of cities and hacky screenwriting to assault the dignity of several fine actors’
Which is precisely what Geostorm may be doomed to become, roping in Independence Day‘s producer Dean Devlin for a feature film debut that is predicted to flop hard at the box office.
The film sees Gerard Butler star as the architect behind an elaborate natural disaster defense system, which sees a series of climate-controlling satellites surrounding Earth, centered around the International CIimate Space Station.
Can Hollywood films about climate change make a difference?
But, is Geostorm truly the worst film of the year, especially with the (also) disastrously received The Snowman lurking in the shadows of cinema complexes everywhere?
Here’s what the critics thought. – read the review here
The trailer (the most ridiculous part, in my opinion, is the frozen airliner falling out of the sky):
There is one element of truth in the movie: Humans can’t control the climate.
At least Al Gore isn’t in it.
Oh, please, leave the Dutch out of it. Dutch Boy must refer to Hans Brinkers, the mythical lad who put his finger in the dyke. Not only would such action not have helped in any way, little Hans never was. The story is apocryphal and most likely originates in the US of A. A bit like the climate change myth, come to think of it.
Ed says… “originates in the US of A. A bit like the climate change myth, come to think of it.”
Why did the ROW buy that U.S. import instead of liberty inspired capitalism?
If you really want to make money with a disaster movie, you have to make it something that people can relate to. Zombie movies are good, and so are alien attacks from outer space movies, but eco-disasters? Well, maybe if they poke fun at the people who make money promoting climate disasters.
Let’s see how that would start:
Phone rings in local police station emergency center.
Operator: 911 emergency. Please state your emergency.
12-year-old girl on the phone: Umm, an iceberg came down the river and took my house away. I don’t know where my parents are.
Operator: Where are you located?
12-year-old girl on the phone: I’m on the garage roof. There’s another iceberg coming. Should I get off the garage roof?
Operator: No, you just stay where you are. What’s your street address?
12-year-old girl on the phone: 1066 West Wood Street. Okay, now there’s more icebergs. (crunching noises, trees on icebergs float by)
Operator: We’ll send a police officer to take a look.
12-year-old girl on the phone: Could you tell him to hurry? I need to go to the bathroom.
Operator: Did you say icebergs? (looks out window of call center, pokes another operator and points at something)
12-year-old girl on the phone: Yes, I did. They just keep coming. I need to go to the bathroom real bad. (Crunching noise, screams, heard over phone) Hello? Hello?
Still using solid rocket boosters.
How quaint.
Just watched Blade Runner 2049 – underwhelmed after all the hype.
More routine mindless dystopia, not quite saved by the extravagent special effects and artistic qualities.
The scientific issues of robots reproducing were not even touched on. No believability – bad.
What was hilarious though was the miles and miles of solar farms under the trademark perpetually overcast bladerunner skies:
Fore once the dystopia is correct – if power generation goes 100% remewable, it will be “blade-runner-esqe” dark and dingy all the time.
Tesla Moves Closer to Deal to Build Cars in China
https://mobile.nytimes.com/reuters/2017/10/22/business/22reuters-tesla-c…
Bad link…this is good.
https://www.reuters.com/article/us-tesla-china-factory/tesla-moves-closer-to-deal-to-build-cars-in-china-idUSKBN1CR0ME
RE: The Frozen Air Liner shattering like glass.
Aluminum does not get brittle when super cooled made me groan… FCC metals do not have a ductile to brittle transition temperature and instead remain ductile at low temperatures.
The only time that FCC metals experience brittle fracture is in the final stage of fatigue failure.
Like the BAC Comets with their square windows.
They were De Havilland Comets, BAC didn’t happen for decades, and the fatigue failure didn’t start at the square windows, it started at the ADF window in the roof.
The square windows were modified to oval on later marques because they were considered risky in the light of further research on the fatigue test rig.
This will not bode well for the next climate movie where scientists have to travel back in time to determine the real temperature of the Earth because the current data sets have been tampered with so badly they have become useless. The working title is “The day before yesterday”.
Or the movie where Al Gore tries to prove mathematically that global warming is real but suddenly disappears. That one is called “An inconvenient – poof!”.
LOL 😂
“EATEN the movie” [a post in which I contemplate my polar bear attack thriller made into a successful film]
Could polar bears trump sharks at the theatre? Does the fact that unlike sharks, polar bears make house calls, give it better odds than most?
Take a walk down memory lane and give some thought to what has made films starring big animal predators a hit (or not), like JAWS, THE SHALLOWS, THE BIRDS, GRIZZLY, and a number of others, both classics and bombs. What do these predator attack films tell us (if anything) about the probability of EATEN becoming a terrifying motion picture?
https://polarbearscience.com/2016/11/06/eaten-the-movie-what-are-the-odds/
The Birds? Are you referring to the Tippi Hedren/Rod Taylor movie by Hitchcock? That one was not too many degrees off from reality, if you think about it. Seagulls and terns can be quite nasty; smaller birds like starlings tend to flock for safety; and corvids like ravens and crows do sometimes attack when they feel threatened. They have their own language, too. I wouldn’t dismiss ‘The Birds’ as a bomb. It cost $2.5 million for production and made $11.4 million at the box office: not bad for 1963, so it was hardly a bomb.
Sara, I agree but note I said “both classics and bombs” – I’d consider The Birds to be a classic animal attack thriller.
Yummy. Don’t forget to lock up rights to all merchandise in perpetuity. Make sure the story lines lead to endless sequels. Give the main bear some special power or a large scar to make it distinctive. Maybe it has super intelligence due to a mutated brain. Or it was being experimented on by a mad scientist to have steel claws. Then it can be called “Claws”
At the end, “Claws” is not dead, but badly injured, floats into an illegal radioactive waste dump left by corrupt russian military. Claws is revived with a new craving for human flesh. Thus the sequel.
Eaten 2: Revenge of Claws
It seems that Hollywood is [losing] it’s bluster.
[Better losing its bluster than loosening its bloomers. .mod]
“.mod”, Thanks for filling in my unintended “elipsis”.
Maybe if the movie had loosened a few more bloomers and bustiers it would have done better?
A “B” movie rather than a “C”limate movie?
I’ll play Devil’s Advocate here and say that the problems are not specific to this film – it’s both OUR fault and Hollywood’s.
Take the Transformers film, “Last Knight”… or the Cruise “Mummy” film… or (pick pretty much any mainstream film… they are so poorly written, jumpy, almost as if written by 4-12 writers then tied together with a final “filler-in” writer. So full of loud explodes and almost zero plot or character developments. (Last Knight was excrement!)
Nowadays, if you want a truly decent film… you have to risk the chances of utter crap or utter brilliance… in the realm of the “indie films”.
But then… the “moron masses” seem to want and need these bang, crash, wow films…
As an interesting aside – most modern large passenger jets are not able to be glided – if they froze up solid in seconds in mid-air, they would fall – OK, yes, not straight down like that… but certainly on no sloping glide-path either.
Still… if films portrayed reality they would be so effing boring… if I wanted reality I;d open the front door, not watch a film!
Saw the trailer. That’s more than enough.
I think I might have to re-watch “Our Man Flint”, where superspy Flint saves the world from evil mad climate scientists bent on taking over the planet by controlling the weather. Undoubtedly a better movie than Geostorm.
I haven’t seen the sequel, but I believe Flint saves the world from evil mad feminists.
Why are modern movies so childish?
It’s always best to target one’s intended audience. 🙂
SteveT
Hey Guys (and Guyesses), I watched the trailer, and I think it looks like a pretty good popcorn movie.
Who cares about the underlying propaganda and other garbage? Just enjoy the laughs!
The world gets destroyed, everybody dies, and along the way, the special effects are way cool. Ie: it has all the makings of a good, entertaining, rainy day stay inside movie.
Just download it from any one of the pirate sites, and enjoy!
Here’s a real Geo-Storm!
https://youtu.be/-joY4owK51Q
Gotta send this out to my car buddies!
Looks like a Laff riot to me.
they missed the title with a typo the original name was “egostorm” 🙂