Greenland 2: Migration hits theaters this January as a sequel to the disaster film Greenland (2020) that came out during the COVID-19 Pandemic, and fails to innovate in theme or in story beats beyond what is expected from another run of the mill disaster flick.
It builds on the story of John Garrity (Gerard Butler) as he struggles to survive a post-apocalyptic Earth with his family years after the Clarke interstellar comet ends 70% of life on Earth. In this sequel, the audience follows John and his family through an apocalyptic wasteland in their attempt to traverse Western Europe from Greenland in hopes of reaching the Clarke comet impact crater.
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Without delving deeper into the plot, the film essentially establishes a scenario, the wastelands of Europe, and seemingly integrates elevator pitches of challenges and tragedies that the family will encounter in their travels. If the goal was to keep the audience entertained through shock and anxiety, then the film succeeds. But if there was any intent to craft substance in the plot or to ask the audience to care for the characters in the film, then any evidence of depth was absent from that movie house. In fact, there are several plot devices in the first act that go nowhere and are never brought up again, like placing Chekhov’s gun in the film but forgetting halfway through writing the script that it even exists.
Greenland 2: Migration requires a suspension of reality, with one too many coincidental events happening around the characters for the convenience of the plot. However, playing characters in the center of every possible disaster is sometimes acceptable and effective for movies like 2012. But on the other hand, you have blueprints of great disaster films like my personal favorite, The Day After Tomorrow (2004), that while scientifically exaggerated, still managed to have characters worth investing in and caring for.
To Greenland 2’s credit, if you remove all common sense from the decisions the characters make, the film actually becomes enjoyable and can be treated like eating through a cookie jar, a new disaster flick plot point per bite. I came out of the cinema agreeing that there is potential for the film to be a good disaster movie if only they focused more on the story and less on coming up with ways to make John’s life difficult. Anything beyond that is asking too much from this film sequel that probably did not have to exist.
RATING:
2 out of 5 crowns
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