Ric Roman Waugh
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The latter is on full display in "Greenland" where the title certainly sounds benign and sort of "let's go on vacation" dreamy compared to its similarly themed predecessors "Deep Impact" and "Armageddon" where a celestial object is certain to cast a shadow on Annie singing about there always being tomorrow to look forward to.
Both the synopsis and the start of the film reminded me slightly of an old favorite of mine, Deep Impact (1998).
With plenty of soul-searching, Greenland is reminiscent of Mimi Leder’s Deep Impact (1998) which is largely considered to be far superior to the brash and risibly over the top Armageddon .
It’s as if Waugh wants to channel popcorn tear-jerkers like “Deep Impact” with arthouse meditations like Lars Von Trier’s “Melancholia,” while hanging on to a small budget.
That’s as a result of the decision to eschew the multi-character approach, and the bombastic, apocalypse porn of previous killer-comet movies like 1998’s double whammy of Deep Impact and Armageddon (okay, asteroid in the latter).
The latter is on full display in "Greenland" where the title certainly sounds benign and sort of "let's go on vacation" dreamy compared to its similarly themed predecessors "Deep Impact" and "Armageddon" where a celestial object is certain to cast a shadow on Annie singing about there always being tomorrow to look forward to.
With plenty of soul-searching, Greenland is reminiscent of Mimi Leder’s Deep Impact (1998) which is largely considered to be far superior to the brash and risibly over the top Armageddon .
What Movies Will It Remind You Of?: Greenland exists in a slightly uneasy space among Emmerichian dreck 2012 , Bayish dreck Armageddon , halfway-decent dreck Deep Impact , artsy dreck Melancholia and, somewhat possibly interestingly, Spielberg’s War of the Worlds , but, somewhat possibly disappointingly, minus the aliens.
That’s as a result of the decision to eschew the multi-character approach, and the bombastic, apocalypse porn of previous killer-comet movies like 1998’s double whammy of Deep Impact and Armageddon (okay, asteroid in the latter).
Then again, even in the pulpy Armageddon , the complicated between Ben Affleck, Bruce Willis, and Liv Tyler also worked, and even the most dead inside amongst us still remember sobbing at the clichéd “noble sacrifice” that climaxes the movie.
Gone are the days when Bruce Willis would go try and nuke the rock in “Armageddon,” more fitting for 2020 is an action movie about civilization grappling with its fragility.
Unlike the typical, effects-laden, comet-threatens-the-planet B-movie, “Greenland” is more in the vein of Steven Spielberg’s “War of the Worlds,” with the scenes of chaos and destruction serving as the backdrop for the story of one family’s desperate quest for survival — even when circumstances have ripped them apart.
Its stand-out sequence, in which a desperate horde of people are trying to board several planes heading to rumoured safety, harkens back to the electrifying ferry scene in Steven Spielberg’s War of the Worlds.
What Movies Will It Remind You Of?: Greenland exists in a slightly uneasy space among Emmerichian dreck 2012 , Bayish dreck Armageddon , halfway-decent dreck Deep Impact , artsy dreck Melancholia and, somewhat possibly interestingly, Spielberg’s War of the Worlds , but, somewhat possibly disappointingly, minus the aliens.
If Waugh lacks the vision and/or resources to compete with something like Steven Spielberg’s “War of the Worlds,” the granular focus of Chris Sparling’s script encourages the director to seize on the moments that are too small for other, more spectacle-oriented disaster movies to accommodate.
Steven Spielberg attempts something similar in 2005’s War of the Worlds .
Unlike similar innocent-massacring disaster movies like Steven Spielberg’s War of the Worlds, Waugh doesn’t need to show moments of outsized violence to make his statement.
It’s as if Waugh wants to channel popcorn tear-jerkers like “Deep Impact” with arthouse meditations like Lars Von Trier’s “Melancholia,” while hanging on to a small budget.
What Movies Will It Remind You Of?: Greenland exists in a slightly uneasy space among Emmerichian dreck 2012 , Bayish dreck Armageddon , halfway-decent dreck Deep Impact , artsy dreck Melancholia and, somewhat possibly interestingly, Spielberg’s War of the Worlds , but, somewhat possibly disappointingly, minus the aliens.
Yet for all its fiery action elements (exploding planes, torched cities etc), Greenland arguably has more in common with the character-driven traits of Lorene Scafaria’s end-of-days romcom Seeking a Friend for the End of the World (or even Lars von Trier’s Melancholia ?) than with the 1998 double-whammy of Deep Impact and Armageddon , the latter featuring Bruce Willis as a deep-sea digger enlisted to ‘“drill some holes” in space.
The only sliver of hope — the only thing that stops “Greenland” from essentially becoming a Barstool-friendly “Melancholia” remake — is the special alert that John gets on his phone.
Supplied While at times borrowing shamelessly from San Andreas, Independence Day and The Day After Tomorrow, Greenland is also successfully unambitious on its own terms.
Roland Emmerich – who gave us Independence Day , The Day After Tomorrow , and 2012 – continues to cast a gargantuan shadow over the genre.
Upon reflection, Greenland is one of the better disaster movies of the century and, for my part, the best one since 2004’s The Day After Tomorrow.
Nothing here is as bad as wondering how Dennis Quaid can walk the entire east coast in a day a la The Day After Tomorrow, but if one stops to think about Greenland for a moment while watching it, they’ll be amazed anyone is alive after the thirty minute mark at all.
While there are memorable and even iconic films from decades past, like Twister (1996) or The Day After Tomorrow (2004), there have also been a fair share of duds.
It’s not your typical Bay or Roland Emmerich (“Independence Day,” “The Day After Tomorrow”) kind of disaster film, but something more cerebral, like “The Trigger Effect” (1996) if tamped down and made into mainstream pap.
Its elitist strain is reminiscent of the narrative for 2012 (2009) but is about as disaster-epic fluff as San Andreas (2015) and miles away better calibrated than another Butler flick, Geostorm (2017).
Supplied While at times borrowing shamelessly from San Andreas, Independence Day and The Day After Tomorrow, Greenland is also successfully unambitious on its own terms.
Much more in line with 2015 Norwegian disaster-thriller The Wave than your typical Hollywood apocalyptic fare (think 2012 or San Andreas), Greenland believably traces how civil society would come to pieces in the eye of an impending disaster.
As anyone who has suffered through Deep Impact, The Day After Tomorrow, 2012, San Andreas and Butler’s own Geostorm knows too well, Hollywood’s last meal of choice is a heaping serving of cheese, gooey and viscous.
As silly as San Andreas was, it didn’t skimp on the disaster movie money shots.
“Greenland” is a lot like “San Andreas” with a comet instead of an earthquake and far more mundane special effects; it’s essentially a soapy family drama set against the backdrop of an apocalyptic catastrophe.
While not as operatic or elegant as John Woo’s output from that era, there are clear parallels and references to “Hard Boiled,” “Hard Target” and even his maligned “Mission: Impossible” sequel.
What Movies Will It Remind You Of?: Greenland exists in a slightly uneasy space among Emmerichian dreck 2012 , Bayish dreck Armageddon , halfway-decent dreck Deep Impact , artsy dreck Melancholia and, somewhat possibly interestingly, Spielberg’s War of the Worlds , but, somewhat possibly disappointingly, minus the aliens.
Roland Emmerich – who gave us Independence Day , The Day After Tomorrow , and 2012 – continues to cast a gargantuan shadow over the genre.
Much more in line with 2015 Norwegian disaster-thriller The Wave than your typical Hollywood apocalyptic fare (think 2012 or San Andreas), Greenland believably traces how civil society would come to pieces in the eye of an impending disaster.
Movie studios have recently served up plenty of cartoonish nightmare scenarios, including “Deep Impact” (1998), “Dante’s Peak” (1997), “The Quake” (2018), and “2012” (2009), and the latter film stressed out some moviegoers for three years until the clock reached January 1, 2013.
The opening frames establish a soap-opera level of melodrama that permeates throughout every clunky interaction, with the Garrity’s cliche-ridden origins being unengaging to invest in (this movie rips the maudlin divorce subplot right from Roland Emmerich’s 2012 ).
As anyone who has suffered through Deep Impact, The Day After Tomorrow, 2012, San Andreas and Butler’s own Geostorm knows too well, Hollywood’s last meal of choice is a heaping serving of cheese, gooey and viscous.
One thing that Greenland has going for it is that it offers better visuals than 1979’s Meteor (although that stinker had Sean Connery in a role not typically mentioned in his career retrospective).
Since then, we’ve had everything from Abel Gance’s troubled 1931 French sci-fi thriller La fin du monde , in which rioters and revellers await doomsday, to 1979’s star-studded Meteor , about cold war enemies working together to fend off an approaching threat.
Natalie Wood! Henry Fonda!) Meteor back in 1979.
Movie studios have recently served up plenty of cartoonish nightmare scenarios, including “Deep Impact” (1998), “Dante’s Peak” (1997), “The Quake” (2018), and “2012” (2009), and the latter film stressed out some moviegoers for three years until the clock reached January 1, 2013.
In its early minutes – where death is foreshadowed through the steady chatter of cable news coverage – the film echoes the fatalism of These Final Hours, Zak Hilditch’s standout 2013 apocalypse feature.
Ric Roman Waugh, a former stuntman on “Lethal Weapon 2,” the original “Total Recall” and “Gone in 60 Seconds,” isn’t quite it.
The genre features natural disasters like Charlton Heston avoiding a cracking earth in 1974’s “Earthquake,” or Steve McQueen and Paul Newman fighting for top billing as they try to put out a skyscraper fire in the human-made disaster epic “The Towering Inferno.”
Supplied While at times borrowing shamelessly from San Andreas, Independence Day and The Day After Tomorrow, Greenland is also successfully unambitious on its own terms.
Roland Emmerich – who gave us Independence Day , The Day After Tomorrow , and 2012 – continues to cast a gargantuan shadow over the genre.
It’s not your typical Bay or Roland Emmerich (“Independence Day,” “The Day After Tomorrow”) kind of disaster film, but something more cerebral, like “The Trigger Effect” (1996) if tamped down and made into mainstream pap.
Given the disaster movie genre’s penchant for releasing their films in pairs, like with 1996’s Twister and Tornado!, or 1997’s Dante’s Peak and Volcano, or 1998’s Armageddon and Deep Impact, I wait with bated breath for whichever film is paired with Greenland, the latest Gerard Butler effort to grace our biggest (and smallest) screens.
Maybe it’s that flooded ballroom scene from 1972’s “The Poseidon Adventure.”
Olympus Has Fallen is best remembered as the more successful of two dueling White House-themed action movies (the other was White House Down).
In fact, had you asked me which “White House In Peril” picture released in 2013 would still be telling its story today, I’d have bet big money on Roland Emmerich’s White House Down (if only because Channing Tatum and Jamie Foxx seemed like better box office bets over Butler).
Olympus Has Fallen — which came out in the 2013, the same year as that other president-in-jeopardy movie, White House Down — started off with a massive attack on D.C., with national landmarks like the Washington Monument and the White House getting smashed.
In Olympus Has Fallen , a Die Hard clone that was inferior to White House Down in every respect except domestic box office performance, he saved the president from terrorists, and in the execrable London Has Fallen , he did it again.
Anyway, Angel Has Fallen strips away much of the Die Hard tropes from the first two installments, even as its politics and "Who are the baddies and why are they being bad?" plot comes straight out of Roland Emmerich's painfully underseen/underrated White House Down.
Olympus Has Fallen hit theaters March 2013, a few months before (the superior) White House Down.
It’s not your typical Bay or Roland Emmerich (“Independence Day,” “The Day After Tomorrow”) kind of disaster film, but something more cerebral, like “The Trigger Effect” (1996) if tamped down and made into mainstream pap.
In the interest of full disclosure, I must grant that I was filling in certain elements along the way, recalling the cartel reprisals of Savages and Edward Norton’s depictions of prison in American History X and 25th Hour.
Much more in line with 2015 Norwegian disaster-thriller The Wave than your typical Hollywood apocalyptic fare (think 2012 or San Andreas), Greenland believably traces how civil society would come to pieces in the eye of an impending disaster.
I believe it was taking influence from Roar Uthaug’s absolutely brilliant 2015 disaster film The Wave .