When Greenland 2: Migration opened in American cinemas on January 9, 2026, audiences found themselves confronting a peculiar case of life imitating art—or perhaps art inadvertently predicting life. The same week Gerard Butler’s Garrity family fled their Arctic bunker across a devastated Europe, the real Greenland dominated headlines for reasons its 56,000 inhabitants—predominantly Inuit—could never have anticipated: President Donald Trump declared that the United States will take action on Greenland “whether they like it or not.”
The film’s title itself—Migration—now reads as darkly ironic. In Ric Roman Waugh’s sequel, migration means survival, the desperate movement of humanity toward safety. In contemporary geopolitics, migration has become the operative metaphor for something else entirely: the attempted migration of sovereignty from one nation to another, consent be damned.
Two Catastrophes, One Island
The sequel picks up five years after the Clarke comet destroyed most of Earth, following the Garrity family as they leave the safety of their Greenland bunker and embark on a perilous journey across the wasteland of Europe to find a new home. The Earth remains in violent chaos—tectonic upheaval, electromagnetic storms, lingering radioactive fallout. Greenland served its purpose as refuge; now the family must seek the rumoured sanctuary of the Clarke crater in southern France.
The fictional premise—that Greenland’s geological stability and remote location make it humanity’s natural bunker—maps uncomfortably onto real strategic calculations. Trump told reporters that “we’re not going to allow Russia or China to occupy Greenland, and we’re not going to have Russia or China as a neighbour.” The logic is survivalist, if not apocalyptic: in a world of great power competition, control of the Arctic represents the ultimate insurance policy.
The Monroe Doctrine Meets the Midnight Sun
What makes the current moment so extraordinary is not merely that an American president wants Greenland—this is, after all, at least the sixth serious American attempt since 1867. It is the explicit willingness to contemplate force against a NATO ally. White House press secretary Karoline Leavitt stated that Trump and his advisers are discussing a range of options to pursue this important foreign policy goal, and of course, utilizing the U.S. Military is always an option at the Commander in Chief’s disposal.
Danish Prime Minister Mette Frederiksen warned of catastrophic consequences: If the United States chooses to attack another NATO country militarily, then everything stops. The alliance that has underwritten European security since 1949 suddenly appears contingent rather than foundational.
In Greenland 2, the family encounters trigger-happy troops in Liverpool protecting a bunker from desperate survivors, and struggles across a now-empty English Channel. The post-apocalyptic breakdown of international norms feels less fantastical when real-world leaders float military options against treaty allies.
The Voices Unheard
Perhaps the most striking parallel between film and reality is the marginalisation of Greenlandic agency. The movie, as critics have noted, largely ignores the stuff that would complicate its survival narrative—the actual inhabitants of the land, their preferences, their futures.
Real-world coverage often does the same. Yet the leaders of Greenland’s five political parties issued a joint statement calling for the U.S.’s disdain for their country to end, adding: “We do not want to be Americans, we do not want to be Danes, we want to be Greenlanders.”
Greenlandic lawmaker Aaja Chemnitz put it plainly: “Greenland is not for sale, and Greenland never will be for sale.” She invoked a principle that ought to resonate in any democratic society: “We have a firm saying in Greenland: ‘Nothing about Greenland, without Greenland.’”
Nearly 85 percent of Greenland’s population rejects the idea of becoming part of the United States, according to a 2025 poll. That this overwhelming democratic consensus carries so little weight in Washington’s calculations tells us something about how great powers actually conceive of sovereignty when resources and strategic position are at stake.
Resources as Destiny
Both the fictional and real Greenland derive their significance from what lies beneath the ice. The film’s bunker exists because of stable bedrock; the real island’s value lies in vast mineral deposits and its strategic position in the Arctic, where melting ice is opening new shipping routes and exposing resources previously locked beneath permafrost.
Trump framed ownership as non-negotiable: When we own it, we defend it. You don’t defend leases the same way. You have to own it. This transactional logic—that security flows from possession rather than alliance—represents a fundamental challenge to the post-war international order.
The irony is acute. The United States already maintains significant military infrastructure in Greenland through a 1951 treaty. Greenlandic officials have indicated openness to expanded military cooperation. What they have not offered—and what no amount of pressure seems likely to secure—is the surrender of their sovereignty.
The Crater and the Threshold
Greenland 2 ends with the Garritys reaching the Clarke crater, where the impact zone’s properties have settled the tectonic and radiation danger locally, and where humanity has begun to rebuild. It is a hopeful conclusion, premised on the idea that catastrophe can create conditions for renewal.
Real geopolitics rarely works this way. The current scramble for Greenland represents not renewal but reversion—a return to nineteenth-century great power logic in which territory changes hands through purchase, pressure, or force. That this is occurring between NATO allies, in the Arctic, over an island whose people have clearly articulated their preferences, suggests we have crossed some threshold.
Columbia University economist Jeffrey Sachs said that Europe is far more likely to be invaded from the West (US) than from the East today. Whether or not one accepts this assessment, its mere plausibility marks a transformation in transatlantic relations that would have seemed unthinkable a decade ago.
What the Film Cannot Show Us
Gerard Butler has said the Greenland films are ultimately about the themes of love and sacrifice and family. And maybe asking ourselves, What am I going to do that adds quality to this world? This is the disaster movie’s perennial comfort: that amid civilisational collapse, human bonds endure and redemption remains possible.
What neither film can address—what disaster cinema structurally cannot address—is the slower catastrophe of eroding norms, the gradual acceptance that might makes right, that treaties are provisional, that the self-determination of small nations is negotiable when great powers decide otherwise.
One reviewer noted that the film shouldn’t be confused with current headlines about Trump’s threats to take over the real Greenland. This is not that. True enough. The comet in Greenland is an external threat that unites humanity in common struggle. The threat to Greenland today comes from within the Western alliance itself.
When the Garritys emerge from their bunker, they find a world ravaged but recoverable. When Greenlanders look at their current situation, they see something perhaps more troubling: a world where their closest ally speaks openly of taking their land by force, and where the international community watches with apparent helplessness.
The disaster movie offers catharsis. Reality offers no such resolution—only the difficult work of defending principles that suddenly seem fragile, in a world where even the Arctic is no longer remote enough to escape the reach of great power ambition.
Fiction Meets Reality: A Comparative Analysis
Dimension
Greenland 2: Migration (Film)
Greenland Crisis (Reality)
Nature of Threat
External cosmic catastrophe (Clarke comet) uniting humanity against common enemy
Internal alliance fracture; threat originates from within NATO, dividing allies
Strategic Value of Greenland
Geological stability; bedrock shelter from comet impact, radiation, tectonic chaos
Rare earth minerals; Arctic shipping routes; missile defence positioning; denial to rivals
Indigenous Agency
Greenlandic people essentially absent from narrative; island treated as empty refuge
85% oppose US acquisition; five parties issued joint statement; “Nothing about Greenland without Greenland”
Selection Mechanism
Government notifications based on essential skills; brutal triage of who survives
Great power calculus determines whose sovereignty matters; small states’ preferences marginalised
Use of Force
Survivors fight each other for bunker access; troops guard Liverpool shelter; bandits roam wasteland
White House confirms military “always an option”; Frederiksen warns attack would end NATO
Historical Precedent
Fictional scenario; no historical parallel for comet-based extinction event
Sixth US attempt since 1867; prior offers in 1867, 1910, 1946, 1955, 2019
Resolution
Hopeful ending; family reaches crater sanctuary; humanity rebuilding
Unresolved; diplomatic talks scheduled; outcome uncertain; norms under strain
Underlying Message
“Love, sacrifice, family”—human bonds endure through catastrophe (Butler)
Treaties provisional; might makes right; self-determination negotiable when great powers decide
Table 1: Comparative analysis of fictional and real-world Greenland crises (January 2026)