Geostorm (2017)
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Geostorm is an absurdly absurd movie, a grand example for bad movies, a mish-mash of ideas and concepts without any clear sense of where it wants to go. Is it a big disaster movie that relishes in destroying the world or a murder mystery in space? These two tropes don’t really work well together. But this is a movie that defies applying normal modes of film criticism because it simply is a mess. A slightly entertaining mess but still, what a mess.
Two things that stuck out to me. One is the character of Sarah Wilson (Abbie Cornish, who should really do better things than this). She plays a Secret Service Agent and falls into the somewhat terrible trope of the ‚Tough Woman‘, which means she can shoot and kill others easily, drive a car really well and save others at all times. Because she is ‚tough‘ that also means she cannot show a lot of emotions because unlike many male action protagonists, women are only allowed one thing. But what’s worse is how others react to her. In one scene, her fiancée, Max (Jim Sturgess, never believable) gets into a fight with her (because he doesn’t tell her what he has found out about the conspiracy that is going on) and his hacker friend Dana (Zazie Beetz, incredibly overqualified for this nonsense) looks at her, being really pissed and all she can do is whisper to Max: „She’s hot!“ It is such a weird thing to say at this point and drives home the idea that this is all that matters. When she later drives Max and the president (Andy Garcia, enjoying his paycheck) around and does INCREDIBLE action moves, all the president can say to Max is: ‚Marry her.‘ Because, sure, that’s what you do, try to own her, immediately relate her skills to his relationship to her, especially don’t tell her: ‚Wow, good job!‘
The other thing is much worse and even dangerous, if you ask me. The opening monologue explains that climate change has gotten worse and that the only way to stop or solve it was to build a complicated satellite machine that basically controls the weather. When the system then starts to fail I was thinking (or hoping) that it eventually would turn out that relying on machines that regulate the consequences of our actions would be a bad idea. But, no, quite the opposite. Instead what the movie offers is that we are still the problem and if we take out those few people who are “bad” and corrupted, then the machines just have to be improved and everything’s just fine. Why is that dangerous?
Well, first of all it means that we don’t have to change everything, we just have to wait for the right technology to save us. Dean Devlin, the writer/director explicitly says that this was one of the ideas behind the movie. This thinking is exactly what has brought us this far because people kept saying and thinking “If we are just able to control a little bit more, we’re okay and can just keep on wasting and producing and consuming. Woohoo!” That is incredibly dangerous. Especially because on the surface people might say that the movie is about global warming and helps to increase awareness. I believe it makes it even worse by choosing this angle.
Of course, secondly, and most absurdly in some way, this message also implies that we CAN’T change because humans are flawed and corrupt and greedy, so at least we have technology to save us because WE can’t certainly change since we are inherently bad and wrong and broken. Many movies support this idea (and I will eternally repeat the idea that we only have to change our culture not humanity) but in connection with the technology salvation aspect it is a dangerous mixture (which made $220 million, so well sold).
I said it before and I’ll say it again (and again and again and again): every cultural product includes cultural messages. This silly movie is no different and as much as I enjoy laughing about its ridiculous filmmaking, I feel obliged to point out and warn of the message it conveys, which is a message of inaction and self-hate.
