Gerard Butler is well known as the “King of the B-Movie” thanks to films like Den of Thieves and Law-Abiding Citizen, which often feature a ludicrous premise grounded by Butler’s performance as a “salt of the Earth” type of character. These films usually aren’t critical darlings, but they tend to be major hits when they arrive on Netflix, when they inevitably land in the streamer’s top 10 list. The latest Butler movie to achieve this honor is the 2017 sci-fi, Geostorm, which is notable for being the directorial debut of Dean Devlin, who is best known for collaborating with Roland Emmerich on blockbuster hits including Independence Day and Stargate. Like those films, Geostorm has an over-the-top premise: after a cataclysmic disaster, Jake Lawson (Butler) helps design “Dutch Boy,” a collection of satellites that artificially manipulate the weather. Years later, Lawson — who was removed from oversight on Dutch Boy — is called in to help when the network starts malfunctioning and causing natural disasters.
While Geostorm had a fun premise and a solid lead in Gerard Butler, it had to deal with a rocky production that included $15 million worth of reshoots after poor test screenings, shifting release dates due to Batman V Superman: Dawn of Justice, and less-than-stellar reviews resulting in it bombing at the box office. Rubbing salt in the wound, Geostorm wound up falling in second place to Boo 2! A Madea Halloween. But in the years since its release, Geostorm has morphed into an entertaining — if utterly ridiculous — watch.
‘Geostorm’ Is the Exact Kind of Ludicrous That Makes Gerard Butler’s Movies Entertaining

Geostorm shares many of the same traits that have come to define many of Gerard Butler’s movies. Butler plays a character who is a single father seemingly beaten down by the world and who has a healthy distaste for authority. In fact, one of the very first scenes has Jake Lawson coming in late to a Senate subcommittee and engaging in an argument with one of the senators, despite his brother Max (Jim Sturgess) encouraging him not to rock the boat. But Lawson has another trait that’s common with Butler’s characters: he has that one specific skill that no one else has, which in this case is knowing how to get into Dutch Boy’s programming and figure out its inner works.

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The cherry on top? He’s a recently divorced father trying — and failing — to connect with his daughter Hannah (Talitha Bateman). The fact that this significant set of character traits keeps popping up in movies involving Butler is probably just an outlandish coincidence, but it also provides a sense of reliability, which might explain why Butler-led movies tend to thrive on streaming.
Since it’s a movie about a weather-controlling machine written and directed by one of the minds behind Independence Day, Geostorm is packed full of set pieces that are absolutely ludicrous. One scene features scientist Cheng Long (Daniel Wu) grocery shopping in Hong Kong, when the ground starts to crack and erupt as if a volcano is about to go off. A tidal wave in Brazil results in a cold wave that freezes the ocean, and a wave of innocent beachgoers, Tornadoes descend from on high and start ripping through Mumbai. While none of these events are even remotely plausible, they display when disaster movies like Geostorm are a big deal. It’s all about the spectacle, and Geostorm is a movie that definitely delivers on spectacle.
The Major Twist of ‘Geostorm’ Has Aged Surprisingly Well

Geostorm’s plot is actually split into two threads. While Jake enlists the help of Dutch Boy’s crew to discover the source of the malfunctions, Max ends up enlisting the help of his fiancée, Sarah (Abbie Cornish) — who happens to be a member of the Secret Service — and a hacker friend, Dana (Zazie Beetz), to investigate Jake’s suspicions that the President of the United States might be utilizing Dutch Boy as a weapon to reshape the world stage. Max soon learns that the true threat is the U.S. Secretary of Defense, Leonard Dekkom (Ed Harris).
Dekkom wanted to manipulate Dutch Boy into taking out political targets (including the majority of the U.S. government) so he could take the presidency. When the President rightfully calls him out for attempted genocide, Dekkom tries to defend his actions by saying he wants to bring America back to being a “shiny city on a hill.” While it sounds like your standard supervillain speech, Dekkom’s motive unfortunately bears a parallel to current events, and the mindset that America needs to be “made great again.” While Geostorm might not have taken the box office by storm during its theatrical run, it’s still a reminder of why the disaster movie tends to be a viable genre. Its Netflix popularity also means that Gerard Butler’s status as the “King of the B-Movie” remains intact.

Geostorm

Release Date

October 20, 2017

Runtime

109minutes

Writers

Dean Devlin, Paul Guyot