Greenland 2: Migration review: Gerard Butler returns to be the dad we need
In case this week hasn't stressed you out enough, Greenland 2: Migration has arrived to kick your cortisol levels into overdrive.
Incredibly, this sequel to Greenland imagines an even worse-case scenario to the first film's premise. Sure, the 2020 disaster movie featured a massive comet called Clarke that was barreling toward the Earth so fast and furious it was sure to destroy most of the world's population and life as we know it. But what if, five years later, the survivors have a new series of Herculean obstacles to face before they can find any kind of peace?
Greenland 2: Migration throws earthquakes, tsunamis, and radiation storms with vicious lightning at the Garrity family — and that's all in the first 20 minutes. From there, the story takes them on a dangerous trek to find a "promised land" where they can live happily ever after. But beneath all this action and disaster, this sly sequel is about the challenge of being a good dad as Gerard Butler's family man, John Garrity, gives everything he has to save his family at every turn.
Brace yourself, because Greenland 2: Migration will have you gasping and crying before those credits roll.
Greenland 2: Migration imagines a brave new world of horror and hope.
Set five years after Clarke first pitched the Garrity family into a frantic flight to a high-security bunker in Greenland, this sequel shows a world transformed by the comet's impact. The globe is pockmarked with impact craters and death. In voiceover, John (Butler) explains that at least 75% of the world's population has been wiped out. Those who survived struggle against radiation that makes it dangerous to be outside without a special mask.
In their bunker, the Garritys' new community shares resources and debates what the future can look like. Rations are running low and tremors shake the bunker, threatening to shatter it. But scientists theorize that the crater where the biggest chunk of Clarke hit could become a new cradle of life. It's said the air and water there is pure, the land rich and ready to be cultivated. Plus, the furious natural disasters that plague this bunker don't get past the new mountains formed by the crater's impact.
Determined to give his 15-year-old son Nathan (Roman Griffin Davis) and his wife Allison (Morena Baccarin) the best life this world can offer, John asks them to pack up and trek from Greenland to this promised green land in the South of France. But getting there won't be easy.
It's not just that nature is ruthlessly indifferent to the remnants of humanity. What resources and terrain that remains is being fought over. Marauders make the roads dangerous, while what's left of London is a scene of riots. As in Greenland, the Garrity family will see the best and worst of humanity, finding vicious foes and earnest friends. And through it all, John doggedly pushes his family forward.
Greenland 2: Migration has a grimmer tone.
The experience of watching Greenland was similar to a panic attack. One sequence after another made things harder for the Garritys, the plot playing out like the escalating worst-case scenarios that anxiety can trigger. And on top of that, the ticking clock of Clarke's impact made for chest-tightening tension. There was an incredibly prolonged sense of scramble to the first film, which separated John and Allison, forcing them to fight not only to survive but to find each other, all while keeping their young son — who has diabetes that requires insulin — safe.
In Greenland 2: Migration, there's less excitement and more sadness. The frenzy of being chased out of their spacious and pristine suburban home is swapped for a speedy fleeing of a crumbling bunker, where all they own can be shoved into a backpack or two. Inexplicably, the only mention of Nathan's diabetes is that he should grab as much insulin as he can before they leave the bunker. Shouldn't insulin be refrigerated? Wouldn't he run out eventually? Shhhh, this movie doesn't have time for your petty logic.
In the first film, the Garritys were everyday folks. Now, they are trauma-hardened refugees, alert and scared, but not as panicked as they were on day one. This shifts the feeling of the movie from fearful to a world-weariness that weighs heaviest on John, because he knows something the others don't. In the first act, it's hinted that John's scavenging trips to recover resources from the radiation-rich outside world have irrevocably hurt his health. His ragged cough becomes its own ticking clock: Can he get his family to safety before his time is up?
Gerard Butler is riveting in Greenland 2: Migration.
Butler's long been a solid choice as an action lead. Here, his broad shoulders stand strong against a sea of physical assaults from water, fire, stone, and man-made violence. His signature growl roars to boost the morale of his family as they face nauseating challenges, like traversing a rope bridge during an earthquake. But it also purrs low and alluringly to offer comfort to his loved ones. This is a man not only looking to make it to tomorrow, but all too aware that he's paving the path for his son's future one hard-won step at a time. There's a throbbing heartbreak to that.
The existence of the whole world was under threat in the first film. Here, the stakes are more immediate, personal, and devastating; mortality takes on a new meaning for an aging father who's increasingly aware he'll never see his boy become a man.
Screenwriters Mitchell LaFortune and Chris Sparling neatly knit this emotional thread into the barrage of action set pieces. Director Ric Roman Waugh (Greenland) brings disaster-rich pages to vivid life, reimagining major cities and natural landmarks as wastelands or life-or-death obstacle courses. There's plenty of nightmare fuel in what the Garrity family faces. Yet Greenland 2: Migration doesn't quite hit the way the first one did.
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I'm not sure if that's the movie's fault or mine. This sequel does have a more elegiac tone, and understandably so. Outside of John's declining health, what he's seen in the last five years is that even the end of the world as we know it does not guarantee that mankind will get our shit together and embrace community and kindness. Even as he's taking down a bad guy with a gun, there's a look of sorrow in his eyes, because this struggle just won't end. But am I projecting? On my way to see this film and on the way home afterwards, I couldn't help but doomscroll through horrifying news headlines about violence, war, and cold-blooded murder. I'm aware that this hopelessness might be my own. I might have brought it into my understanding of the film. Or this sequel is reflecting a fear that's in the zeitgeist right now.
To be fair, Greenland 2: Migration does offer sparks of hope, both in compassionate people met along the way and a climax that strives for heart-warming. And it is soul-lifting to see Butler as the dad who won't ever give up. Waugh's message with the movie seems to be a recognition that the evils and violence of the world can be overwhelming, even for the strongest among us. But there's still value in fighting for a better tomorrow. Still, after all the horrors seen on screen and off, this sequel is less entertaining than it is a determined reminder of how much cruelty in the world is not caused by an act of God, but acts of man.