{"id":83437,"date":"2026-05-15T18:40:13","date_gmt":"2026-05-15T18:40:13","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/dk\/83437\/"},"modified":"2026-05-15T18:40:13","modified_gmt":"2026-05-15T18:40:13","slug":"the-best-disaster-movie-in-years-is-dominating-on-streaming","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/dk\/83437\/","title":{"rendered":"The Best Disaster Movie In Years Is Dominating On Streaming"},"content":{"rendered":"

\n

\t\t\t\t\t\t\t\t\t\t\t\t\tBy Brent McKnight<\/a>
\n\t\t\t\t\t\t | Published 29 seconds ago\t\t<\/p>\n

\"\"<\/p>\n

In 2020, normally reliable box office draw Gerard Butler released a flop. Unfortunately, his disaster movie Greenland hit theaters while the real world was already living through a global catastrophe. Audiences stuck at home during COVID weren\u2019t especially interested in watching another story about society collapsing, panic in the streets, and governments struggling to contain mass death. The timing crushed its theatrical potential.<\/p>\n

But it found life over time by streaming on HBO, and word of mouth grew to the point that, against all odds, Greenland got a sequel in January of this year. Now both the sequel and the original are topping the streaming charts. Greenland 2: Migration is the most-watched movie on HBO Max this week, and the original Greenland is right behind it at number two.<\/p>\n

Before You Watch The Sequel, Watch Greenland<\/p>\n

\"\"<\/p>\n

If you go into Greenland, the latest world-threatening disaster<\/a> opus fronted by Gerard Butler, expecting the over-the-top scene-chomping chaos in the vein of Geostorm<\/a>, you\u2019ll find something quite different. Sure, the fate of the world is on the line, but the Scottish tough guy isn\u2019t the one responsible for saving the day, and this is much more grounded and straightforward.<\/p>\n

Though we\u2019re talking destruction on a potentially global scale, the story is much smaller and personal. Instead of trying to save the world, he\u2019s just trying to save his family. The result is the best disaster movie since the 2015 Danish import The Wave<\/a> set the high-water mark in that regard, pun very much intended.<\/p>\n

\"\"<\/p>\n

Gerard Butler plays John Garrity, an everyman trying to mend fences with his estranged wife, Allison (Morena Baccarin<\/a>), because every hero in every disaster movie always has an estranged wife, and his moppet of a son, Nathan (Roger Dale Floyd). When a comet with the decidedly ho-hum name of Clarke makes a beeline for Earth in what would be an extinction-level event, he has to find a way to get them to safety.<\/p>\n

That\u2019s it. At a basic level, that\u2019s the story. It is, of course, much more difficult than that, and Gerard Butler\u2019s John is thwarted at every turn. In reality, it\u2019s all pretty typical stuff, standard disaster movie fare. Their escape is fraught with obstacles: there\u2019s a lottery to decide who the government saves, the diabetic son loses his insulin, there are problems with the evacuation point, the family gets separated, and so on. There\u2019s nothing particularly inventive, surprising, or even original going on, but while Greenland<\/a> hits familiar beats, it does most of them really well.<\/p>\n

A Series Of Escalating Problems<\/p>\n

\"\"<\/p>\n

Chris Sparling\u2019s Greenland script is essentially an escalating series of problems, one piled upon the next. Simple, but effective. And stuntman-turned-director Ric Roman Waugh (Angel Has Fallen<\/a>) takes every opportunity to ratchet up the pressure. Again, there\u2019s nothing mind-blowing or innovative, but it\u2019s efficient and generally successful in its efforts to crank up the tension.<\/p>\n

Eventually, fire rains from the sky, and exploding planes are everywhere while Gerard Butler hammer-fights in the back of a pickup on the freeway. Scenes like that pepper the movie, highlighting Waugh\u2019s action background. <\/p>\n

\"Greenland<\/p>\n

But for most of Greenland<\/a>, probably the first two-thirds, the threat of annihilation from above is just that, a threat, looming out there. We get moments and glimpses, often shown via news footage or social media posts, which keep the larger threat a presence while the characters deal with the more in-your-face concerns of the moment. It\u2019s also a handy strategy with the film\u2019s relatively modest $35 million budget<\/a>.<\/p>\n

Gerard Butler\u2019s John and Morena Baccarin\u2019s Allison navigating the human element is where the film is most harrowing during this stage. Waugh and Sparling do a good job of showing the various reactions to the strain of impending doom. Some people pray, some party, some essentially kick off the Purge; there\u2019s both cruelty and kindness as individuals go out of their way to help, while others only look out for number one. If a car pulls over, are their intentions altruistic, or do they have robbery on their mind? Questions like this center and ground the main action, giving every choice and move an urgency.<\/p>\n

\"\"<\/p>\n

For the most part, Greenland clips along at a brisk pace, propelled by the moment-to-moment hurdles, it\u2019s one barrier after another. The filmmakers don\u2019t waste a lot of time with the setup; there\u2019s tension in the marriage, the kid has an illness to contend with, there\u2019s a comet, go. Gerard Butler plays a solid, concerned father and husband, Morena Baccarin delivers an equally sturdy, worried wife and mother, and the kid is there, too. The script doesn\u2019t ask much of the actors or require them to stretch in any way, but they do what they need to do and accomplish what they set out to accomplish.<\/p>\n

One Disaster After Another<\/p>\n

This one-disaster-to-the-next approach to story structure provides enough energy to push Greenland forward. Until it doesn\u2019t. With around 40 minutes left, things hit a deep lull, and the momentum peters out. The story bogs down in the minutiae of the Garrity family drama, which does the film no favors. It\u2019s tedious and bland, not to mention ill-timed in the grand narrative scheme. <\/p>\n

\"Gerard<\/p>\n

When we stop, we realize how flimsy the characters are. It\u2019s forgivable when they rush through one hazard after another, reacting and making split-second choices, but when there\u2019s time to truly look at them, their thinness shows. No one cares why Gerard Butler and Morena Baccarin\u2019s characters broke up.<\/p>\n

Greenland attempts to work its way out of this pause by ramping up the disaster<\/a> quotient. This is where we get flaming space debris bombarding our heroes, apocalyptic chaos, and what amounts to a car chase with comet chunks. But even though they up the ante in this regard, the plot rehashes what came before; the characters do things they\u2019ve already done, and this repetition feels stale. Even with cataclysmic explosions, fireballs from the heavens, and all manner of end-of-the-world pandemonium, the film kind of limps to the finish line.<\/p>\n

With Greenland, Ric Roman Waugh, Gerard Butler, and company deliver precisely the movie they promise. Big and booming, there\u2019s plenty of bombastic thrills and brink-of-annihilation action, with just enough human connection to keep viewers engaged. It never veers from the disaster movie template, but everything it does, it does well, and should more than sate those looking to watch the world crumble on screen.<\/p>\n

\"\"<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"By Brent McKnight | Published 29 seconds ago In 2020, normally reliable box office draw Gerard Butler released…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":83438,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":"","_share_on_mastodon":"0"},"categories":[5],"tags":[41709,11988,57,10087,13246,4864,9933],"class_list":["post-83437","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","category-greenland","tag-disaster-movies","tag-gerard-butler","tag-greenland","tag-hbo-max","tag-morena-baccarin","tag-reviews","tag-streaming"],"share_on_mastodon":{"url":"https:\/\/pubeurope.com\/@dk\/116580058909433998","error":""},"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/dk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/83437","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/dk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/dk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/dk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/dk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=83437"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/dk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/83437\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/dk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/83438"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/dk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=83437"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/dk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=83437"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/dk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=83437"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}