Ho man, did I enjoy Geostorm. It actually has very little to do with the obscure 1983 flick Metalstorm: The Destruction of Jared-Syn, which I'd kind of thought it might early on just hearing that it was a movie coming out? I mean, they do have a few vague similarities. Sci-fi setting, family dynamic, 3D release, the word "storm" in the title somehow... Though Metalstorm's scifi setting is generic space opera and Geostorm's is very near future; Metalstorm's family dynamic is father-son both antagonists while Geostorm's is brother-brother both protagonists; Metalstorm was shot in 3-D and Geostorm was converted 3-D... The "storm" thing in the title, I don't think Metalstorm at any point has any storms, metal or otherwise? So yeah, I guess the only thing they've got in common is their titles, and even that's probably just a coincidence, because you know who's heard of Metalstorm is friggin' nobody.
Actually, though, come to think of it the guy who directed Metalstorm also directed The Gingerdead Man, which had Jonathan Chase in it, who was also in Gamer, starring Gerard Butler, who's also the star of Geostorm... so yeah, they basically are the same movie.
Oh! And Geostorm is directed by Dean Devlin, who created Leverage, which had Jonathan Chase in one episode. Double Illuminati, right there...
Ahem.
Anyway yeah I really really really enjoyed it. Head and shoulders, by far, the best destruction movie I've seen, in my life. It's actually more of a conspiracy thriller; the extreme weather stuff isn't the focus of the film as much, and is horrifying instead of fun to watch. Which is, y'know, the way it should be? So yeah I loved the movie, loads and loads. I walked out of the theater after it finished, shocked and awed, muttering the word "dang" to myself over and over.
Getting more distance on it, though, it wasn't flawless or anything, and I'm less inclined to forgive those after a good night's sleep (which I actually did not get, so huh.) There's a lot about it that now to me is all, did that really happen?, because seriously there's a big old ticking clock there at the end, AND the problem is solved with literal seconds to spare, AND meanwhile everything's exploding, AND they manage to escape the explosion in time, AND the dog lives, AND the dog showed up for that scene just so that it could live. BUT... it works. Everything works. We could totally suspend our disbelief throughout all of that. Even the fact that the storms magically go away by themselves, mere seconds before they would have snowballed together into the titular world-ending "Geostorm." Guess the Geostorm point is when the storms become self-sustaining? Wasn't exactly how they described it but that makes enough sense.
There's a scene, quiet scene between brothers, at the end, at the climax, where the timer's still ticking down and they're just talking, working out some stuff while thousands of people are drowning/freezing/catching on fire/getting crushed by bus-sized hail/getting exploded by lightnings/etc down on earth. And it's like, people are dying and you two are just chatting, but nope the movie's too smart for that, they were having the heart-to-heart while the killcode was uploading, and they get right back to work right as it's time to get back to work (maybe the movie could have made it clearer that there would have been that upload time, but maybe they did say something about it, or maybe they wouldn't need to because it would take that long in real life.)
And there's a scene where it's all, oh crap things are going to explode, why did you program the space station to explode, and it turns out that there is a good in-universe explanation for that, and stuff like it. I mean, I was convinced.
The film's portrayal of space is... well, there's sound up there, apparently. I'm actually totally willing to forgive that though because as far as I could tell the vacuum scenes do not at any point ignore Newton's first law of motion, which not even Gravity managed to do consistently. (Some would say the accuracy there makes the sound in space more egregious, but I still think hey maybe they just added it in post.)
Also the space stations in this movie would be large even if they were just normal earthside constructions. Like, some dang big conference rooms up there in the ISS, who knew.
And don't get me started on how satellites were depicted...
But it's a greeeat movie, or, at least, I think so.
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