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| Images courtesy STX Films |
Five years later, the Greenland saga continues as the Garrity family must escape the aftermath of the Clarke interstellar comet to find a new safe haven away from impending doom and the catastrophic remnants it left behind. The film kicks off giving audiences a full scale look at the global destruction caused by the impact. The world is in devastation and disarray, only 25 percent of mankind has survived, and those folks left behind must avoid certain death due to radiation storms. Or they may die in one of the military incursions happening around the globe.
As a science fiction disaster film, all reality is abandoned here. This is pure escapist drama that attempts to amplify the plot of the first film. Unfortunately, the script plays it too safe and is stuck on repeat for much of its 98 minute run time. Nothing new or interesting happens with the lead actors seeming relatively bored with the script and repetition of the project. The first Greenland movie was interesting because it attempted to change the narrative a bit. Instead of worrying too much about the disaster at hand, it spent its time carefully looking at the relationships of the lead players and their desire to get their sickly son to safe harbor. There was a backbone rooted in their familial bond.
Sadly enough, Greenland: Migration completely forgets the son was ever sick. There is no mention of him needing his meds, which was such a integral plot point of the original movie. This alone takes the viewer out of the film. Details are important when making a sequel. The full abandonment of many things we learned about the Garritys is fully missing here, which ultimately sours the film as whole. Gerard Butler is still playing hero here, but instead of making inspired decisions to protect his wife and child, he's on a whim here.
The original Greenland was a straight to streaming release and actually gained quite a bit of traction. It actually screened very well with critics across the board. Its great but underplayed visual effects along with tightly wound scripting mixed with a great support part by Scott Glenn gave the movie a different perspective on the entire armageddon sub-genre. Greenland: Migration abandons all the positives about the first release and trades them in for subpar writing, lackluster character development, and small thinking that's capped off by unadulterated scientific buffoonery.
This entire thing revolves around getting to safe green space where they can rebuild their entire lives and start anew. There could have been something inspiring here considering the state of the world right now. Migration's returning director Ric Roman Waugh appears to have lost the plot. This follow up lacks the heart and the ambition of the first. By the final moments this sequel loses all focus and tries to get us to safety as quick as possible with emergency after emergency but no real stakes or threat. They all deserved better than this weak follow-up.
In its best moments, Greenland: Migration commits character assassination repeatedly. This thing treads into the horrid typical sequel territory we've all come to expect from big-budgeted features. This one is absolutely dead on arrival.
-CG