Sometimes, the comedy almost writes itself. Completely unintentional in the case of Armageddon-epic Greenland, of course, and, yet, I couldn’t help laughing at the predicament from our current POV as a nation.
Let me explain: The premise of Greenland is that an extinction-level event is occurring in the form of the Clarke comet, which has broken apart and is smashing into the Earth, bit-by-bit. We’ve already seen what a small bit can do (take out an entire US city); the extinction level rock is on its way.
The USA knows it’s coming. HA! Sure it does. I want to point out that Donald Trump was President when this film was made … and now that we are under the fascist regime of Trump II, well, science and truth are optional, nay, forbidden. It’s entirely possible that even if current astronomers were still allowed the tools to locate a Clarke, the Right -and hence Trump- probably would call it a “hoax,” label it as “woke propaganda,” and let the planet smash to bits without doing anything.
But that’s not where the humor lies.
The subplot of Greenland is that a selection committee has targeted certain useful people to help build for the after. John Garrity (Gerard Butler), a structural engineer, is one of these select few. The task before him is to get he and his family to a safe base in Greenland despite the end-of-the-world chaos that abounds.
Now, lemme tell you how this would go IRL – Let’s say the extinction bunker only held, say, 50 spots. Trump would pick every.single.one. First, he’d insist that he needed ten spots for himself. Then he would take 20 spots for useless sycophants (toadies, bootlickers, “yes” men all selected among people who already kiss his ass either in person or on television). The final 20 spots would go to Miss Teen Universe contestants. That would be the entire world of the survivor bunker. The rest of us would die. And from the afterlife, the Trump post-apocalypse reality would play 24/7, and it would be the best TV of all time: In episode one, we establish that Trump is uncomfortable, mad about it, and every adult he’s selected is an absolute idiot. Somewhere around episode six or seven, the survivors would start dying. None of them have skills or sense. I’m sure most were billionaire CEOs or TV personalities in the before, with no genuine ability to solve problems that don’t involve delegation or reliance on actual working human beings they take for granted. Trump would survive, of course; these assholes have been specifically selected for their desire to feed themselves to the Orange Turd if necessary. Somewhere around episode nine, it would be revealed that one of the girls in this disgusting afterlife harem is clearly smarter than the others. She becomes a leader and the western world has a chance for survival … except she contracts measles and dies because of the lax vaccination standards and the inability to collect a single survivor with any real medical knowledge whatsoever. By episode twelve, everyone would die. 40 from malnutrition and disease, and the last, Trump himself, because of a broken heart: no one was left to tell him how brilliant he is.
That’s how that would go.
As for our movie, well, Greenland is exciting; I’ll give it that. And it does a good job of illustrating end-of-the-world panic. The main story is that Joh is given three spots on the Greenland-bound plane, but to use them properly, he has to make nice with his estranged wife (Morena Baccarin). This
is complicated by a diabetic child (Roger Dale Ford). The bunker ain’t got no tolerance for imperfection. And, naturally, everybody gets separated, so the film is mostly about getting these three together again while the apocalypse is having its way.
The film is clunky. While it gets some things right – the panic, the lawlessness, etc., I think it imagines some things which are definitely untrue, like clear roads, lack-of-border control, and a family in which the value of kinship fluctuates wildly between, “I LOVE YOU! I LOVE YOU! I LOVE YOU! DON’T EVER LEAVE ME AGAIN!!!” and “Oh good, you’re here,” And, of course, the idea that Trump’s America wouldn’t botch Armageddon completely. Oh my, is that ever fiction. He failed a pandemic. FAILED. Despite the entire world showing him what to do. He FAILED. “Operation Warp Speed,” you say? 1) It came way late 2) It wasn’t the first COVID fix (that was German company Pfizer) – that’s was the important part 3) When given the tools, he botched distribution. Go ahead and blame Biden all you want; Joe saved us. Donald did not. There is a very good reason the US accounted for FIVE TIMES the project amount of COVID cases and deaths, and the #1 reason is “Trump is an asshole.”
That was a pandemic. Kiddy stuff. Armageddon? Good Lord, there’s no way Trump would do anything that saved anybody but himself. And even then … he had access to the best scientists in the United States when COVID happened. He mocked them, chose quackery, and almost died from COVID.
So, yeah, Greenland was unintentionally funny. It was a bit thrilling; I can’t say I super wanted these people to survive, but the film gave us nobody else to root for, so here we are. Yay! Time for Greenland 2.
There once was an engineer named John
Whose life had become quite a yawn
Suddenly, the end game
Realization, with shame
He better do some repair and get gone
Rated PG-13, 119 Minutes
Director: Ric Roman Waugh
Writer: Chris Sparling
Genre: Our screwed future
Type of being most likely to enjoy this film: Disaster addicts
Type of being least likely to enjoy this film: The repelled-by-chaos crowd
