The Most Ridiculous Sci-Fi Blockbuster In Years Is On Tubi
A truly bad movie is a work of art, like Plan 9 From Outer Space or Manos, movies that are so bad viewing them is considered an experience every cinephile has to experience at least once. You can’t fully appreciate great films without knowing how bad things can get when a director’s vision is bigger than his budget. The greatest modern example of these movies is Geostorm, the nonsensical sci-fi disaster movie starring Gerard Butler that makes no sense when you explain and even less when you try to watch it, but it’s become an ironic cult classic.
Gerard Butler, Scientist
For starters, Butler is playing Jake Lawson, a satellite designer whose name might as well be “Good guy,” who was brought back on board the project he was kicked off of three years earlier to figure out what’s going wrong with a system of weather-controlling satellites. Satellites are able to freeze a village in the desert and unleash fire tornados in Hong Kong in a sequence that sounds like it should be amazing looking but comes off like a screen saver. Even the mystery of what’s going on in Geostorm is barely interesting on the surface level, with Jake immediately suspecting a member of the satellite crew is a traitor.
He’s right, of course, and as you watch Geostorm, you’ll learn that Jake is never wrong, right down to pinpointing the exact key U.S. official responsible for the entire mess. In a testament to how bad the movie is, in the best way possible, even you can crack the conspiracy by looking at the cast list. That and the solution to a rogue satellite network is to knock the satellites out of orbit by using other satellites as weapons, and at least that looks as ridiculous as it sounds.
Geostorm is both a film that moves a mile a minute, with something happening all the time, and yet, thanks to some of the worst dialogue of the modern era and mind-bogglingly inconsistent pacing, it also feels like nothing happens. When the geostorm finally hits, it’s in bland scenes of mass destruction that have less weight to them than the characters orbiting the plant in zero-gravity. And yet, you need to see this film to really understand what an amazing misfire the entire project was.
The Best B-Movie In Years
The cast is stacked, from Butler to Abbie Cornish, Ed Harris, Andy Garcia, the always underrated Mare Winningham, Zazie Beetz, and Into the Badlands’ star Daniel Wu. Behind the camera, Dean Devlin, the man behind the fun adventure shows The Librarians and Leverage makes his directorial debut, and he tries really hard. In fact, you can tell everyone is giving their all to Geostorm, by chewing the scenery and delivering the most inane technobabble with a straight face, it’s that passion and visible effort that makes this a true B-movie classic.
Geostorm is the most boring sci-fi disaster movie ever made, and in a way, it’s also the best because it’s so big, brash, and tries so hard. There are better movies out there, thousands of them, maybe a million, but very few films nail that sweet spot that makes for the perfect viewing with friends as you all yell at the screen. You should never, ever, watch this movie alone because then the horribleness hits you full on, but with friends doing your best Mystery Science Theater, it’s the best film of the last ten years.
Best of all, Geostorm is now streaming on Tubi, so you don’t even have to pay to watch it.
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