‘Greenland’ makes it hard to care that the world is ending

Posted on December 30, 2020

By MARK VIOLA

When it comes to movies about (potentially) world-ending disasters, they tend to come in two types, depending on who the main characters are.

The first category is what I call the “hero story,” which is about the people who will fight to save the planet from whatever disaster they are facing. A great example of this would be “Armageddon,” which followed a group of oil rig drillers sent into space to blow up a giant asteroid before it could impact and destroy the world.

The second category is what I call the “survivor story,” which follows (usually) a small number of people, often a single family or group of friends, who will not make a difference in the larger plight of humanity, but are trying to survive all the same. The classic example of this kind of story is “War of the Worlds,” which kept its focus very tight, although a more recent example would be the low-budget comedy “Save Yourselves.”

One of the very few films that managed to depict both sides of this particular cinematic coin was “Deep Impact,” which followed the people trying to stop an approaching comet, as well as average folks just trying to survive its possible impact.

The latest world-ending disaster movie is “Greenland,” directed by Ric Roman Waugh (“Angel Has Fallen”), and it definitely falls into the “survivor” category. Although the movie boasts a pair of solid performances from leads Gerard Butler (“Angel Has Fallen”) and Morena Baccarin (“Deadpool”), the story never really does enough to differentiate itself from the scores of other disaster movies that have come before it.

The movie benefits from the lack of quality big-budget movies over the past six months, which resulted in me enjoying the film for decent stretches of time — and I imagine many others will as well — if for no other reason than it feels grander than most of the movies I’ve watched lately. However, it’s still not going to be a movie I really remember when I think back on this year, despite how few films I actually saw. (While I’m on the subject of 2020, however, I will say it was somewhat cathartic to watch people dealing with a much worse catastrophe than the real-life problems we’ve faced this year.)

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