Greenland (2020)
Directed by Ric Roman Waugh
John Garrity, his estranged wife and their young son embark on a perilous journey to find sanctuary as a planet-killing comet hurtles toward Earth. Amid terrifying accounts of cities getting levelled, the Garritys experience the best and worst in humanity. As the countdown to the global apocalypse approaches zero, their incredible trek culminates in a desperate and last-minute flight to a possible safe haven.
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29 films that influenced Greenland
What critics say influenced Greenland
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.
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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.
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.
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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.