Greenland
starring Gerard Butler, Morena Baccarin, David Denman, Hope Davis, Roger Dale Floyd, Andrew Bachelor, Merrin Dungey, Holt McCallany and Scott Glenn
written by Chris Sparling
directed by Ric Roman Wagh
Rating: ♦♦♦◊◊
A global disaster film, this movie follows the Garrity family (John, Allison, and young son Nathan) who must fight for survival as a planet-destroying comet races to Earth. There is an interesting start. Americans calmly go about their everyday lives while television news is filled with stories of an approaching comet that NASA is tracking. It is expected to safely bypass the Earth and provide a dazzling light show in both the night time and the day time skies. The story quickly evolves. Now it appears that a large piece of the comet will break away and hit the Earth, but land safely in the mid-Atlantic Ocean, providing exhilarating news and images. But John Allison unexpectedly received a text message saying he and his family have been pre-selected for evacuation to a safe location. Confusing. While the world is gathered around its television sets to watch a piece of space rock hit the Atlantic waters, the meteorite unexpectedly slams into Tampa, Florida, immediately incinerating millions of people on live TV. Wow. It’s a spectacular nuclear-looking fireball. Did NASA know this was the meteor’s true trajectory and simply didn’t report it, or was it all a miscalculation? It turns out that the comet is breaking up and all of it will slam into our planet over a period of several days, some in small pieces. But at least one, aiming towards landfall in Western Europe, is called an Extinction Level Event. Apparently, the government anticipated it with enough confidence to have a list of people to try to save. John Garrity is pre-selected because he is a structural engineer, a useful person in a post-apocalyptic reconstruction. The haven is a U.S. military facility in Greenland - a bunker. Why that should be safe from an Extinction Level Event is not explained.
Mention of an Extinction Level Event automatically recalls the films Asteroid (starring Bruce Willis, Liv Tyler, and Ben Affleck), and Deep Impact (starring Morgan Freeman and Téa Leoni), both similar disaster-from-outer-space movies from 1998. Deep Impact especially uses the phrase “Extinction Level Event,” or E.L.E.
When the Garrity’s arrive at a U.S. military base for transportation to Greenland, they are suddenly rejected because their son has diabetes, and people with pre-existing medical conditions are de-selected for the new world. They are an unfeasible burden. So, the Garritys scramble to find alternate transportation, which they find. They make it to the Greenland base just in the nick to time, as the world is engulfed in the shock wave and the ash cloud from the obliteration of Europe.
But, in Hollywood fashion, the world isn’t destroyed. Nine months after impact, the skies are clearing of dust, and there are enough survivors making radio contact with each other around the world to ensure humanity’s survival. I was disappointed by that. Doesn’t anyone in the movie business understand what “Extinction Level Event” means? It means extinction. That's why it's called that. But extinction means more devastation than they can show on film. Films are meant to be watched by people, which precludes extinction.
Greenland was not great, but it was okay. I liked the opening, as the backstory of the comet unfolds, the earth science of it, and the panic as the public slowly recognizes the enormity of what’s approaching.