Arthur C Clarke, the science fiction writer and thinker, once predicted that before the end of the 21st Century, mankind will have full control over the weather.
He should have hung around for Geostorm! After all, Clarke’s idea is the central premise of the movie! Not only has mankind got control of the weather, he’s ‘turned it into a gun’ as Gerard Butler laments halfway through the plot.
Yes, Butler’s back. This time, instead of a sweary secret service agent or a bare-chested Spartan, he’s an *ahem* impetuous scientist (yes, really) who built a system of satellites that controls the weather and reverses the effects of global warming. Or at least it did, until some shadowy villain got their hands on it. A village in Afghanistan gets frozen over, Hong Kong frazzles in white-hot heat, and even Tokyo gets pelted with hailstones the size of cows. It’s all very dramatic. But who could be doing this? And why?
That’s the blurb out of the way. I won’t spoil the rest of the plot for you; it’s sort of Moonraker-2012, with a little whodunit sown into it. Trust no-one, we’re told. Yes.
That's all well and good but all I wanted to know is how the technology works. It's amazing - they created a global net of satellites that controls the weather by... dropping bombs? Firing lasers? Spreading… snowflakes? How? How does this thing actually regulate Earth’s weather? And how then could it have been weaponised?
Anyway, it all unfolds unquestioningly. There are no details. And no, we don’t even know whom to trust. Butler’s brother Max stays in Washington, while Butler himself jollies up to space to be gruff in zero g. Ed Harris frowns his way about the White House as a stern-faced Secretary of State, and then our characters have to (wait for it) kidnap the President to escape a lightning storm... and it all gets quite intense. Trust no-one we’re told, again. Fine. But how does the science work, Butler? Tell us how! Oh wait, you need to punch an annoying Englishman in the face? Right, you do that. Oh yes, you need to enter the codes to yaddy yada the flip-flop so you can turn the system off. Fair enough. But when do we find out how this all works? When?
I did laugh out loud when I realised that that was the big fix. Literally, the climax of the movie is turning the system off and then on again… in order to (and this is real) “Flush out the virus”. Thank you for calling IT support.
Anyway, that aside, Geostorm is big, daft, summer-blockbuster escapism. It is rubbish - I mean it’s junk food, not a home-cooked meal, but I quite like that it’s not unaware of it. It's silly and it knows it. And just as I enjoy an occasional Big Mac, I have to say I did quite like Geostorm. What I liked most was the thriller element - who was behind this genocidal plot? What would happen when the boys follow the trail all the way to the top? That was engaging. As soon as that mystery evaporated though (and honestly, if you think about it, there is very little mystery), we were in the last act and it was explosions and car chases and drive-in-reverse-under-a-bridge-while-sharp-shooting-with-the-President-in-the-back-seat (lol) territory, and it was all rather dull and plasticky. Much like that post-Big-Mac feeling.
Personally, I think if mankind did have control over the weather, we wouldn’t weaponise it at all. Not for political gain, not for militaristic purposes, not even for power. We’d privatise it. We’d squeeze money out of it and try to blackmail nations that don’t pay up. There’d be a billionaire in a glass tower who wears a turtleneck sweater, and there'd be greedy shareholders, and nefarious governments desperate to get their hands on the technology. Gerard Butler’s character would be a disillusioned engineer sent to fix the system, but instead he'd accidentally uncover the preprogrammed 'malfunctions' and end the movie by having a change of heart and blowing the whole thing up.
And in that version, they’d have to give us a clue about how it works, right? I mean it would be the premise of the movie. And then instead of getting punched in the face, the English guy could make some sort of joke about how his countrymen have missed having something unpredictable (the weather, I mean) to talk about, and then be frightfully helpful in dismantling the computer code. Honestly Hollywood, if I can come up with something more intriguing from here, what are you doing?
Well I suppose we know what you’re doing. You’re making Big Macs.
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