The marketing campaign for Geostorm, and then the actual content of the movie itself, would lead you to believe that somebody had decided to shuffle a Roland Emmerich knockoff into production in an attempt to capitalize on the subgenre that had made the filmmaker cinema’s pre-eminent master of disaster.
The blockbuster is so eerily reminiscent of Emmerich’s work that you may have been wondering why he didn’t launch legal action for infringement, but the truth is almost morbid in its incompetent hilarity. Geostorm marked the feature-length directorial debut of Dean Devlin, which is hardly newsworthy in itself.
However, when you realize that he’d collaborated with Emmerich as either a writer or producer on Stargate, Independence Day, sequel Resurgence, Godzilla and more, Geostorm‘s failings become even more egregious. Clearly leaning absolutely nothing while sat under the learning tree, Devlin only went and got kicked off the project for reshoots, to be replaced by Danny Cannon.
Getting replaced on your own movie by the guy that helmed Sylvester Stallone’s Judge Dredd must have been embarrassing, but even then, Geostorm still bombed hard. It lost $75 million for the studio, ended up with a Rotten Tomatoes score of 16%, but yet continues to play well on streaming.
For inexplicable reasons, Geostorm is once again making a push for on-demand success as per FlixPatrol, where it currently sits just outside of the HBO Max Top 20.