WEATHER WITH YOU
It’s Gerard Butler versus inclement conditions in Geostorm. Sounds like a disaster movie...
Geostorm: Or why Gerard Butler should have picked up an umbrella.
“Dad, can’t we put something up in the sky that can fix this?” That’s the question Dean Devlin’s daughter asked one night about tackling global warming. Like a lightning bolt, inspiration struck, and Devlin set about writing a new movie. Of course, this being the guy who co-penned Independence Day, his movie turned out to be disaster epic Geostorm. Set in the near future, when weather-controlling satellites have been launched to solve environmental problems, a deadly super-storm threatens mankind.
Leave it to NASA scientist Jake Lawson to attempt to avert disaster and save his family. “It felt very tantalising,” says Gerard Butler, who plays Jake, of first reading Devlin’s script. “I love movies with epic proportions and epic ideas. Sometimes they don’t work, but if they do, you’re gonna scare the shit out of the audience, and they’re gonna go for a ride and have a great time.”
Don’t expect to see Butler flexing in Spartan pants this time, though. In Geostorm, he plays a more cerebral kind of character whose only hope of saving the world is engaging his grey matter. “He’s kind of the opposite of most characters I’ve played, who are more together and focused, which I loved!” enthuses the 300 star. “There’s a beautiful vulnerability to him. Jake’s not an action hero; he’s an unlikely hero. His heroics come through his mind, as opposed to his physicality. He probably wouldn’t see himself as courageous, and his mind and personality have got him into as much trouble as they have good. He can be stubborn, aloof, and he doesn’t suffer fools gladly.”
Jake’s not the only one weathering the storm. There’s also Alexandra Maria Lara’s space station commander Ute, Jake’s brother Max (Jim Sturgess) and his girlfriend, secret service agent Sarah Wilson (Abbie Cornish), who’s tasked with protecting Andy Garcia’s POTUS. “What I love about her is that she is a whole woman,” Cornish tells Red Alert. “She is confident and sexy and funny and intelligent and tough. I was so happy to see that in a big blockbuster movie.”
While Geostorm marked Devlin’s directorial debut, the film’s original March 2016 release date was shunted back into 2017 when Warner Bros brought in Danny Cannon to oversee reshoots (Devlin was busy working on David Tennant thriller Bad Samaritan). “Dean is my brother,” says Butler, revealing that Cannon’s additional material “answered some of the questions” test audiences had.
Reshoots also had the added benefit of giving Butler the chance to flex a little. “The test audience said, ‘Wait a minute, Gerard Butler isn’t kicking ass! We need to see him kick some ass!’” laughs the actor. “So suddenly there’s a scene where I’m kicking the shit out of someone. At one point I had to smash his head into a desk. He smacked his head off a computer and he had a huge welt, but he didn’t care.” Now that sounds more like it.
Geostorm opens in cinemas on 20 October.