Greenland Migration: good news! (critical)

With this second part, Greenland, an apocalyptic B series with Gerard Butler, becomes a saga. If the scenario is a little exhausted in the length, the whole holds up well.

As Donald Trump considers how to “acquire” Greenland to the point of making it a “national security priority,” this Greenland Migration is timely. It is in fact in a bunker in the heart of the Arctic archipelago that the thing begins. We see a handful of humans confined after the collision of a comet with the Earth, triggering an uninterrupted series of natural disasters. It all started six years ago in the first Migration by the name of the American Ric Roman Waugh (the former stuntman turned director-pygmalion of Butler does it again here) We then discovered this modest – and very nice – apocalyptic B series in the middle of Covid. Seeing the sky fall on our heads was something synchronous with the times.

The choice of Greenland as a pocket of survival in this sequel is quite ironic, especially since the air there is unbreathable and we will soon have to flee this hostile land for… France! France where an immense crater offers the only promise of an ecological Eden. So much for political fiction. We wonder what fly bit the screenwriters. Maybe it was a chifoumi thing! Still, Trump needs to take off his MAGA hat. The series is still Encore and it still suits it just as well. The big special effects lean more towards the Roland Emmerich of the beginning of the millennium than the James Cameron 2025 and the survival is completed in less than an hour and forty… Proof that Hollywood still knows how to produce things cheaply.

Butler as a sensitive protective father – beard and bulging muscles – races against time with wife and son slung over his shoulder. The trio, like a Tex Avery character escaping repeated falling pianos, miraculously manages to avoid all the cataclysms and circulates with their fingers in their noses: boat, car, hike… Over time, the thing inevitably wears itself out a little. At the time of assessment, Greenland must no longer exist on the map and Butler can lie down on the fresh grass of a dried-up sea in what must once have been the coast of Corsica. We are impatiently awaiting the third part to find out if the coming upheavals will offer our humanity a face in which to recognize itself again.

By Ric Roman Waugh. With: Gerard Butler, Morena Baccarin, Roman Griffin Davis… Duration: 1h39. Released January 14.