Greenland (2020)
I got roped into watching the 2020 disaster movie Greenland, an experience that my body fully rejected!! The second the credits rolled, I sprang out of my seat and shouted, "That was not for me!"
My mother figure asked me what I meant. "It was a get-married-right-now panic attack," I said, walking around to her side of the bed.
"I think it's great," she said.
Shortly after my actual mother died, this same mother figure asked me when I planned to start dating in earnest. Instead of telling her I had zero plans to date in-state, I'd snapped "I'm happy and I'm healthy." Now, 14 years later, we have returned to this exact conversation loop.
"Oh, you know," I said, apologetic now, "I like apocalypses with aliens or zombies, so they're maybe at a little more of a remove from reality." Then I muttered something about leaving to write an angry Letterboxd review, which made the on-call nurse giggle.
What is Greenland? Spoilers follow because fuck this movie!
The movie opens with hangdog-faced "structural engineer" Gerard Butler sneaking into his own home and gazing wistfully upon his estranged wife, who is hard at work on a treadmill or elliptical. Wuh-oh!! Looks like someone is getting ready to start dating! When she does eventually notice him skulking around behind her, she's cold as ice.
His son, however, is delighted to see him. The only character's name I can remember is the husband's, but I'm almost positive the son also has a name. But the son has diabetes! Wuh-oh! And comets are expected to strike the earth! Wuh-oh!!
"I'm sure they would not use the words 'extinction event' on the local news," I said aloud at this point.
Neighbors are gathered at the family home when Gerard's phone dings. A pop-up emergency notification instructs the family to travel to the nearest military base, because they've been "selected" (to survive). This scene turned into a real Twilight Zone moment of domestic unrest.
At this point, I murmured something about the movie turning into an "off-road SUV fantasy" (I couldn't think of the phrase "four-wheel drive" at the time). Indeed, survivalists and preppers really enjoyed the realism of this movie.
I didn't like this couple's dynamic; while they were driving, Estranged Wife kept saying stuff and Gerard kept doubling-down and fiercely ignoring her while gripping the wheel. Being trapped in a car with a driver whose judgment you do not trust is like being kidnapped by the Bone Collector, so my distress was reaching, I thought at the time, a fever pitch. I said something out loud, at this point, about being very grateful to've evacuated the wildfires with my friends C&J. It was as calm as could be, considering; I was glad we'd gone in the opposite direction of the throngs of traffic.
To make a long section of the movie short: the family isn't going anywhere, not with a diabetic son. ("Yeah! Reject this whole weird eugenicist experiment!" I said to the TV.) But the family gets separated; Gerard runs back to the SUV, still abandoned in a standstill traffic jam on the highway. A Post-It from his wife is clipped under a wiper blade: in a lovely feminine script, it says that she and Son are headed to her dad's in Lexington. We will never see this beautiful SUV off-roading again. It's also the last time we see Estranged Wife do anything smart or autonomously (not that we even see her leave the note, as she apparently does this offscreen).
I guess the other thing you need to know is that Mother, Father, and Son were all on the military base just long enough to receive Chekhov's Wristbands, which indicate they were selected by the government for survival—even though the wristbands are now useless because they've been flagged by the system as, I don't know, collectively diabetic. I guess they're also like concert wristbands, in that they don't come off unless they're snipped off.
Wife and Son stop off at a pharmacy, where others are already gathering First Aid supplies. Wife makes her way into the pharmacy part of the pharmacy, where she grabs hundreds of dollars worth of insulin (or idk, how much is "three of them"? They're, like, vials for a pump). However, a band of looters arrives, shooting at anything that moves. Estranged Wife is eventually noticed by a member of the gang. She appeals to his humanity (using her ill son), and he lets her escape the pharmacy.
Okay, I'm updating this post to add this paragraph, right here, to say I was also really offended by the diabetes thing. Of course the screenwriter picked a 'safe', common-enough chronic illness to saddle the family Son with—so that the weird eugenicist inside the audience will be internally shrieking "that's barely a disease!" not even aware that they're subconsciously comparing various diseases and disabilities now. Also, the laziness of the "kid with diabetes" trope, with Mom frantically pleading with strangers for grace: it barely worked in Panic Room, and it's the kind of thing that only works on me once. (The only thing I'll say in favor of giving any fictional character diabetes is, it's an immediately-recognizable chronic illness that has to constantly be managed, and is therefore extremely vulnerable to corporate cruelty and human greed. So I want to honor the anxiety of "constant illness management" as valid.)
The Wife and Son are picked up on the highway by another cishet couple, half of which is Hope Davis. The husband is visibly way younger than Hope Davis, which wouldn't mean anything in real life, but it seemed like it might mean something in a disaster movie—that these were perhaps odd ducks, not to be trusted. (Meanwhile, Gerard Butler gets picked up by a truck heading in the same direction, already crammed full of travelers.)
Sure enough, Hope Davis's husband suddenly makes a wild, opportunistic judgment call. He abruptly decides he's absconding with Diabetic Son, as well as Estranged Wife's wristband, for himself. He never stops reframing his motives as anything but altruistic. (Meanwhile, "your husband abandoned you," he tells Estranged Wife, by way of explanation, as he shoves her out of the vehicle and into the road.)
He, Hope Davis, and Someone Else's Screaming Son speed off toward another military base, hoping to catch the next flight to Greenland. Everyone on Earth hopes to gain admittance to some allusive bunker, which is in Greenland, by the way. Sorry, the movie's title doesn't make any sense without that detail.
All of this chilled me because, by the movie's own logic, Hope Davis's husband is a "good" man and a "good" husband—to Hope Davis only. In other words, in this movie, you need your own good husband as protection from all the other good husbands.
And isn't this already how I've lived my life? I remember, when I was 21, my friend Lenny accusing me of dating someone just to protect myself from having to fully engage with other fellas ("He's real," I'd said of my then-boyfriend, indignant; "I have no doubt he's real," Lenny had replied). I remember sitting in an Austin bar when a man started lasciviously commenting on my chest; I flashed my brand-new sparkler at him and told him my tits were now spoken for. The man immediately apologized—to Ted.
And hadn't Ted implored me to only go out after dark "with a friend"? ("I know you don't see yourself this way, but everyone else sees a woman," Ted had warned me, of my propensity for being victimized after-hours. He couldn't always be around! Please never be unattended!) That is the neurological drag path, the trauma groove, that Greenland reiterates again and again: without a spouse, a father figure, a legal chaperone no one wants to mess with, you're a sitting duck.
Lest we erroneously believe that dadbod Gerard Butler is too middle-aged to survive the breakdown of the fabric of society: he has now been attacked by multiple men wanting his wristband. Successfully fending them off, Gerard kills a man with a hammer. (edit: Sorry. Using a hammer, Gerard accidentally kills an unarmed man.)
Hope Davis and Husband, meanwhile, are rejected at the military base. I missed how Screaming Son ever got reunited with Estranged Wife, because I'd left the room for 20 seconds to grab a fresh cola. How I missed anything during this plodding movie, I do not know.
The whole family reunites at Estranged Wife's Dad's. Estranged Wife embraces Gerard, grateful to see him for once, sheerly because of how much easier her trip would've been if he'd been around. Uh-huh. Grandpa gets to enjoy his daughter's and grandchild's presence for about five whole minutes before Gerard is beating a drum about driving straight to the airport. ("We have to leave right now," he warns his wife.)
Grandpa has chosen death, however. ("Notice how he's effectively giving his daughter away to his son-in-law a second time," I said aloud—bristling at how this movie is about an unclaimed woman getting passed around and just, like, driven everywhere.) The family runs out to the driveway. "Take my truck!" commands Grandpa.
"Boy, I thought it would be an old truck," I said, "like a dusty old blue beater, but no, that's a modern fully-loaded fancy truck."
In the truck, the Un-Estranged Wife is performatively shmoopy and animated. "Do you remember when—?" she asks her husband. Maybe it was their meet-cute story or something.
"Yeah," Gerard says to her paper-thin anecdote with an anodyne smile that made me think he didn't. And I mean, of course he didn't; this is a movie.
Barf. I could feel my arm-hairs standing on end. This is the opposite of romantic. This is staying together because of a shared history, with nostalgia doing the heavy lifting; there is not a single scrap of evidence in this movie that their marriage has ever worked. (I considered stating aloud, but did not, that I would genuinely prefer to rewatch The Happening a hundred more times.)
The family off-roads all over the countryside. At some point Gerard Butler rescues a man from a car fire. Because my mother figure's TV has frame-smoothing turned on, the CG in this $10mil movie is really obvious; Gerard is the star of this video game. Rendered flames lap at his forearm while he yells. Very manly. Truly, truly, the nuclear family is the ultimate escort mission.
Now it is nighttime. The family off-roads into the middle of a runway, obstructing an airplane that is mid-takeoff. The pilot hops out, furious. Gerard asks him to load up his wife and child. ("No way, we travel together," or whatever says Un-Estranged Wife, now fully recommitted to her spouse.)
"How much do you weigh?" the pilot demands of Gerard Butler.
"180," says Gerard Butler. I laughed.
"Come on," says the pilot.
"205!" says Gerard Butler. I laughed again. These weren't jokes; I was just desperate to laugh at anything, and it was the first time I'd laughed during this movie. Of course all I could think about now was the fact that the plane was way over capacity and that their fuel would realistically run out before reaching Greenland.
Well, both the pilot and the co-pilot die because fuck this movie. At this point I was googling Greenland's runtime, because it felt like I'd been squirming in my seat for five hours. 119 minutes! What is this, Lord of the Rings?
They make it to the bunker on foot. They live. The bunker's doors open nine months later. Credits.
My emotional discomfort had turned into physical pain around the time Hope Davis had showed up; ever since then, my instinct had been to gnaw my own leg off. And mind you, the reason we were watching this was because my mother figure had wanted to rent the brand-new sequel (now streaming!!!), at which point I'd blurted I wasn't familiar with the original movie. By the time the credits rolled, I'd been writhing in my seat for at least 25 minutes, watching the clock creep forward on my smartphone's screen, my hoodie over my head.
I can't prove that Greenland is Project 2025 propaganda, but it sure reeks of it. I muttered something about it being a "good husband fantasy" (rather than "patriarch porn"). I said whatever else—see first five paragraphs—before bolting from the room.
The next day, I popped back in, fully recovered.
"Wow, you look beautiful today," I exclaimed. She shook her head. "Seriously!" I said. "Your skin looks amazing. Are you wearing blush?" She shook her head no. She had these freshly-pinched cheeks.
"What are you watching?" I asked her.
It was Bridgerton.
"Ohhh, that's why," I teased her.
I texted her daughter, who has the flu. It's the actual flu, too. I worry I gave it to her child. Previously we'd all gotten sick, but I'd gotten sicker for longer, and now the family is sick again, which has me suspicious, like maybe I'm responsible for incubating this. Anyway, we're all healthy over here. I told her that her mother was looking unusually radiant, and that she was currently watching Bridgerton.
"Lol! I couldn't make it through the first episode. Like soft-core porn," her daughter replied.
I did remember that was how she'd felt about it. However, "I did not tell [your mother] this opinion," I replied in a text. "STILL I think it seems very healthy for your mom, speaking in terms of circulation. She really did have gorgeous cheeks when I went in! Extra healthy looking."
Then I mentioned watching Greenland the night before. I offered a short synopsis. "Yeesh," she said. "It sounds awful," she added. That's the thing! This movie got decent-to-great reviews! Critics found it "reassuring." I'll bet!
3/4 update: What is so reassuring about Greenland? There's a deep, resonant refrain of "you'll be sorry when I'm gone" underpinning the entire movie: the same wounded warrior archetype that steers the movie The Room, or the thinking of a ten-year old who packs a bag and starts walking, but ultimately returns around dusk and their parents never noticed their absence. So Gerard's Wife gets punished left and right until the "real world" has tortured her into comphet, driving her back into the arms of her eager spouse. Crisis alone—whether manufactured or organic—is a flimsy foundation for a marriage, and the frantic logic of "because I have to be here" is downright dysfunctional. (And? What happens when a beleaguered partner is sick of the other person "having to be there"?? The straights are not okay.)
To me, the most realistic part of Greenland is the constant fretting over how much luggage you're allowed to bring. That's perfect, that's facts.