Greenland Parent Guide

John Garrity (Gerard Butler) thought his year was about as bad as it was likely to get following a disastrous low point in his marriage to Allison (Morena Baccarin) – but he underestimated the potential for further calamity. A cluster of asteroids is on a collision course with Earth, and while some of the fragments are small enough to burn up in the atmosphere, many aren’t; when one makes landfall in Tampa, the impact causes a shockwave that blows in the Garrity’s windows in their Atlanta home. Although they seem to be in good shape for an emergency evacuation, the situation is complicated and getting worse all the time…

As disaster movies go, Greenland is pretty impressive. It’s got a lot of the visual drama of 2012 but without as much goofy over-the-top CGI and poor character work. I mean, this isn’t a cutting edge character study, but the filmmakers do actually seem to care about the characters as people as much as they care about them as plot elements. That’s because Greenland gets a lot of its tension and intensity from the emotional lives of the characters, and that doesn’t work as well when you’ve got one dimensional cutouts. Morena Baccarin is carrying more than her share of weight in that department, but she’s always been a sensational actress, so I’m not particularly surprised that she’s bringing real heart to this.

Greenland is also remarkably mild as big apocalypse movies go. Yes, people are dramatically killed, but almost always offscreen or at a scale so large that no gruesome detail is visible. There are some exceptions, but even those are no more graphic than what you’d find in your average superhero movie these days. The other big issue is profanity, but frankly, if you find out Chicken Little was right all along and there’s an extinction-level asteroid heading for your house, I think you’re allowed to cut loose a little. It’s still not a good choice for little kids, but it’s definitely a fun movie night for teenagers.

That said, now may not be the best time to watch the end of the world on screen. We’ve dealt with enough history being made in this foul year of our Lord 2020 without playing the “what if’s” of dangerous asteroids in our heads. If it’s any comfort, this kind of mass extinction is unlikely to creep up on us out of nowhere. First, space is huge and there’s a lot more not-Earth than Earth out there for asteroid clusters to demolish. Second, almost every major astrophysics organization from NASA on down to your local astronomy club tracks big stuff like this – it would be really hard to hide an event like this for any amount of time. If that’s not reassuring enough for you, then don’t watch this movie. You’re stressed enough as it is, and you should give yourself a break. Go eat some carbs and watch the mindless movie of your choice – as 2020 draws to a close, we’ve all earned it.