Summary
Greenland 2: Migration is a notable step down even from its so-so predecessor, delivering a morbid procession of tragedies without any relatable human drama to latch on to.
The thing that worked about Greenland was that it was an anti-disaster movie. It promised a world-ending calamity and eventually delivered it, but the impact of the destructive Clark comet was seen so infrequently that the human response to the coming calamity became the sole focus. Naturally, that response was found to be lacking, but the movie benefitted from exploring that, which means that Ric Roman Waugh’s ill-advised sequel, Greenland 2: Migration, would have been dead in the water even if it didn’t end up being the movie that audiences feared the first might be and were pleasantly surprised to discover it wasn’t.
Far from feeling like a logical extension of the themes of its predecessor, Migration picks up where its star Gerard Butler’s execrable Geostorm left off, with a procession of calamities befalling the characters so frequently that it quickly starts to feel cartoonish. And the potential for an intriguing drama was right there, with things opening in the Greenland bunker where the first movie ended. The subterranean haven, chock full of people hand-picked by the American government to restart the world who visibly can’t stand one another, would have felt like an appropriately claustrophobic setting for a continuation of the first movie’s themes and dynamics. Instead, Waugh, with the same lack of subtlety that characterised his equally rubbish January release, Shelter, collapses the bunker with an earthquake and sends the Garrity family on an international quest to find some breathable atmosphere in the crater left by Clark’s original impact.
John (Butler, How to Train Your Dragon) is an engineer who has spent the time between movies scavenging for supplies in the irradiated outside world in a hazmat suit a bit eerily reminiscent of the first film’s status as a pandemic release. His administrator wife, Allison (Morena Baccarin, The Wrecking Crew, Sheriff Country), and their now teenage son, Nathan (recast as Roman Griffin Davis from The King of Kings), are dragged around by him as he once again goes to any and all lengths to save them, the ticking-clock that was once Clark’s imminent arrival now replaced by John’s worsening health.
The expanded scope makes for a very different-feeling sequel, one with a sort of “worst road trip ever” slapstick quality that is curiously underpinned by an exceptionally morbid funereal streak. Both vibes are ill-advised. So many perilous problems befall the Garrity family in such rapid succession that it starts to feel ridiculous, and Waugh lacks the facility for human emotions and behaviour to really sell the drama. Supporting characters are treated with pitiless disinterest; the movie’s enthusiasm for visiting awful deaths upon them is rivalled only by its curious tendency to get all maudlin about it afterward.
Greenland 2 is also – in case it wasn’t obvious from the subtitle, Migration – very lightly about something, but only in ways that are a bit embarrassing. There’s an entire set-piece – the film’s best, to be fair – based around dangerously crossing the English Channel out of desperate necessity, and a minor supporting player who is on-screen for all of five minutes spends most of that time explaining why people moving from one place to another don’t always stop at the first ostensibly “safe” location they arrive at. Waugh isn’t the filmmaker for this kind of subtext, and the script from Mitchell LaFortune and Chris Sparling doesn’t help.
The characters, none of whom are especially likable – least of all the kid, I found, but that’s almost always the case – fare equally badly, though if we’re being frank, that could be an acting problem. Only Butler feels credible, imbuing this rickety flick with some semblance of real human drama, but his arc assumes we care about his plight much more than we do. It all becomes inexplicably morbid after a while, a dull procession of tragedies that pale in comparison to even a so-so predecessor.
