A Raging Storm of Problems

By: Preston Schaap

“Geostorm” is the newest adaptation of the disaster movie genre that attempts to take the worn out theme to the next level. The plot is fairly simple; in the near future, the world governments combine their abilities to create an elaborate space station that is able to control the world’s weather. Soon we find out someone is hacking the station and making it cause freak disasters across the globe. The protagonist (the washed up, jobless creator of the space station played by Gerard Butler) is hired once more to find out what is wrong before the station creates a geostorm that could destroy the world.

With other disaster movies like “2012”, “San Andreas” and “The Day After Tomorrow”, we see somewhat interesting characters placed in the center of insane natural disasters. In “Geostorm”, the protagonist is taken into orbit to the space station, completely unaffected by the terror being caused on the surface. The sense of immediate danger is almost completely eliminated. The reason people go to see natural disaster movies is to be placed in the shoes of a relatable character who is having the world literally fall apart around them. The exhilarating feeling of driving out of a city as fast as you can to outrun the earth falling in on itself is exactly what used to make these movies so entertaining.

Throughout the movie we see the main character and a team of scientists rush frantically around the space station trying to figure out who hacked the system, and then we see some nameless extras running and dying from snow storms, fire storms and other crazy disasters. Unfortunately, when these people are being attacked by the harsh environment you don’t really feel any connection to them so it really doesn’t matter if they live or not.

This movie suffers the most from its lack of urgency and weak characters, but it also suffers from an identity crisis. Disaster movies should never try to be more than just that. This film attempts to be a romance, mystery, and action movie all rolled into one dysfunctional package. Because of this, it’s weak in all those areas since it doesn’t concentrate on one or the other. When it all comes together at the end, it’s clear this will just be another generic disaster movie that will be lost in the rampaging storm of better movies to come this holiday season.
Final score: 4/10