Greenland 2: Migration Review: A Rare Gem In A Genre Defined By Action And Spectacle Over Logic And Depth

Greenland 2: Migration dares to ask what few disaster movies want to consider: What realistically happens next, when the dust has settled? Sure, there are movies like 2012 that end with a jump forward in time, showing that humankind will now attempt to rebuild—which is how Greenland ends as well—but the gritty details of how exactly the world can move forward and what the fallout really looks like are rarely explored.

Yet, it is precisely in those details that Greenland 2 finds its way, all while maintaining the tone, energy, and high stakes of its predecessor.

The Last Of Us Meets Disasters On The Big Screen (And It Actually Works)

If sequels are difficult to pull off, then the rare disaster movie sequel is that much harder. Disaster movies tend to ask a lot of their audiences, particularly when it comes to suspending disbelief. Greenland didn't do that to the extent of, say, Geostorm (another Gerard Butler disaster flick), but even the Garrity family's survival in the first movie requires viewers to be a bit forgiving.

Greenland 2 is not free of this same limitation, but it manages to remain on par with the amount of grace required of its audience—a feat in and of itself. The sequel picks up several years after Greenland ends, and the world isn't quite where audiences might expect following that movie's conclusion. Although the final scene of that movie suggests that the bunkers the world over are finally reconnecting and the survivors are well on their way to building a new Earth, Greenland 2 begins on much more dire footing.

The Garrity family remains in their bunker, as do all who made it to the Greenland safe haven, but that's as far as they can go. In addition to the air being lethally toxic, the planet is plagued by a host of storms as well as comet fragments continuing to crash-land at a moment's notice. What's more, humanity is far from coming out of this devastation with a renewed sense of unity. War, violence, and a global scarcity mindset make other people as deadly as the weather events themselves.

Perhaps the biggest pleasant surprise of Greenland 2 is the fact that the stakes continue to feel high, often in completely unexpected ways. The movie is less about shock factor and large-scale disasters (although there are some brand-new weather phenomena introduced to the franchise, including a disaster movie fan-favorite, tsunamis) and more about the realities of humanity and how dark an era this would realistically be.

In that way, Greenland 2 feels more akin to post-apocalyptic TV show The Last of Us than it does many disaster blockbusters. Yes, comet fragments rain down from the sky, and there are plenty of death-defying moments, but there are also gritty scenes involving shoot-outs and depictions of humans at their very worst, willing to kill or let others die if it means saving their own skin.

The movie's stars have also lost none of their heart. One of the things that set Greenland apart was how granular the focus on the Garrity family was, even as the thrust of the movie was a planet-killing comet hurtling toward the Earth. Greenland 2 strikes the same balance, with John (Gerard Butler), Allison (Morena Baccarin), and Nathan's (Roman Griffin Davis) relationships and survival feeling just as integral to the plot as the (albeit a bit far-fetched) geology.

Even beyond this one family, Greenland 2 considers finer details, such as the government bringing more therapists than surgeons into the bunkers because they knew how traumatizing these events would be for the survivors. Gerard Butler in a therapist's office isn't exactly what one might expect from a disaster movie, but it lays the groundwork for where the movie ultimately lands.

And therein lies the truly impressive aspect of this sequel. Not only does it avoid disaster and death solely for disaster and death's sake—a common pitfall of the genre—but it also has an actual message to deliver, and deliver it does, all without feeling ham-fisted or clichéd. While not exactly revolutionary in terms of what that deeper meaning is, the fact that the movie achieves that depth alongside its death-defying moments should be applauded.

Greenland 2 wasn't flawless, of course. There were details that had to be overlooked, particularly when it came to the Garrity family's ability to get help from strangers when the movie went to great lengths to show how desperation and survival instincts had led to an every man for himself mentality. It seemed that, at every turn, the family was able to find Good Samaritans in the nick of time.

There's also the self-made problem of Nathan's insulin, which only feels like a gap in Greenland 2 because it was such a major element of the first movie. In fact, Nathan leaving his insulin behind is the very reason the Garrity family missed their opportunity to board a plane to the bunker. Particularly given that Greenland highlighted the government's rejection of anyone with a chronic condition, it's a little odd that they nevertheless had enough insulin stockpiled to provide it for several years.

The titular migration also avoids any focus on Nathan needing his insulin, outside of the fact that Allison tells Nathan to grab as much as he can. Even these gaps can be forgiven, however, as it's easy enough to imagine that, while the government wasn't choosing to save anyone with a chronic condition, they would have hoarded as many resources as possible, and that Nathan could have been managing his insulin off-screen.

All things considered, these grievances are trivial, and Greenland 2 manages to put itself in a league of its own, proving that, not only can disaster movies avoid being totally nonsensical, but also, there can be something that comes after—and that exploration of what's next can be just as good as what came before.