The Gerard Butler Disaster Movie That's Killing It On Amazon Video
It seems like everyone loves a good disaster movie no matter what's going on in the real world. With the coronavirus affecting the movie-making business and halting most theatrical releases, many films have ended up on streaming sites instead. Quite a few have even found more success with this method than they ever would've had with a traditional theatrical release, including films such as Hulu's Run and Netflix's The Lovebirds.
This trend continues on in December 2020, with a new disaster action movie that's drawn in a huge number of viewers. Delayed a few times because of the current pandemic, Gerard Butler's new movie Greenland has finally been released on digital, and audiences on Amazon Prime Video are already loving it.
Greenland stars Butler as a structural engineer named John who lives with his estranged wife Allison (Deadpool's Morena Baccarin) and their son Nathan (Roger Dale Floyd), who has diabetes. In what first appears to be an interesting scientific event, the world gathers to watch the passing of the newly discovered Clarke comet. The celebration is forgotten when a fragment from the comet enters the atmosphere and destroys most of Florida on live television. Understanding that more fragments are to come in the next couple of days — with one predicted to cause an extinction-level event — John and his family race to evacuate to bunkers in Greenland, the last hope for the human race to survive.
Gerard Butler fights for his family to survive in Greenland
Though Butler is known for crazy disaster movies that don't always impress, Greenland has been well-received, boasting a 76 percent, Certified Fresh rating on Rotten Tomatoes. Many people are applauding the film's gripping story and depiction of a family in crisis, as the people around them react with either a selfish need to protect themselves, or a selfless desire to help others. Greenland also shows a new, more grounded side of Butler.
One critic, Martin Carr from We Got This Covered, even argues that Greenland "breaks the mold," and cites the film's timely subject matter as one of its merits. "It's hard not to see parallels here between the current global pandemic and an ever increasing sense of paranoia," writes Carr.
The movie definitely parallels the present state of the world as we deal with the coronavirus, but perhaps viewers find comfort in knowing that through everything we've dealt with in 2020, at least we can rest easy knowing that there isn't an incoming comet threatening to destroy the Earth.
Along with Butler, Baccarin, and Floyd, Greenland features Scott Glenn, Hope Davis, David Denman, Holt McCallany, and Anthony Bachelor, among others. Currently, the film is only available to rent for $19.99 on Amazon Prime Video and other video-on-demand platforms. But don't worry – Greenland is scheduled to premiere on HBO Max for streaming sometime in early 2021 (via Deadline).