Gerard Butler saves the world in ‘GEOSTORM’… and it’s absurdly magnificent

Courtney Howard // Film Critic

Life feels like a disaster movie lately. Our sitting president has made sure that a universal sense of insecurity has been imparted upon this country. Being that he’s anti-science, anti-EPA, anti-climate change, through his various shut-downs, he’s burying mother nature’s warning signs. So what happens? Disaster movies like 2012 and THE DAY AFTER TOMORROW begin to look like documentaries. You can add Dean Devlin’s GEOSTORM to that list too.

The premise is absurdly magnificent: Extreme weather is controlled by technology that, wouldn’t you know, winds up failing humans. Take a look at the trailer:

Gerard Butler stars as Jake, a scientist who, along with his brother, Max, played by Sturgess, is tasked with solving the satellite program’s malfunction. Cornish stars as Secret Service agent Sarah Wilson; Lara as Ute Fassbinder, the ISS astronaut who runs the space station; Wu as Cheng, the Hong Kong-based supervisor for the Dutch Boy Program; with Garcia as U.S. President Andrew Palma; and Harris as Secretary of State Leonard Dekkom. The film also stars Adepero Oduye (“The Big Short,” “12 Years a Slave”), Amr Waked (“Lucy,” “Syriana”), Robert Sheehan (“The Mortal Instruments: City of Bones,” “Season of the Witch”) and Eugenio Derbez (“Instructions Not Included”).

Listen, I love that scientists are the real badass heroes here – something that’s growing more and more like the stuff of fantasy everyday with you know who in the White House.

The film should do well for Warner Brothers for a few reasons. Audiences love it when Butler saves the world. His …HAS FALLEN (OLYMPUS/ LONDON) series has done respectably well at the box office. SAN ANDREAS was a big hit for the studio back in 2015, taking in $155 million domestically. It’s possible GEOSTORM will recapture that similar lightning in a bottle.

GEOSTORM opens on October 20.