Gerard Butler is a certified action star, commanding the screen in movies like 300 and Law Abiding Citizen, but he has stepped outside of the genre on multiple occasions. After first stepping into science fiction with his role in the 2002 sci-fi-fantasy Reign of Fire, the actor returned to the genre for a 2017 sci-fi flop that is now streaming for free.
That movie is Geostorm, and it started streaming for free on Tubi on January 1st. The box office and critical failure, directed by Dean Devlin in his feature directorial debut, stars Butler as Jake Lawson, a satellite designer and former ICSS commander in a race against time to save the world from a cataclysmic storm caused by malfunctioning climate-controlling satellites. The sci-fi disaster movie also stars Jim Sturgess, Abbie Cornish, Ed Harris, and Andy García.
Geostorm Bombed in Multiple Ways
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“A disaster of a disaster flick” is how Peninsula Clarion’s Chris Jenness described Geostorm, and they weren’t far off. The movie was a significant failure in just about every way a movie could be. Although the film grossed $221 million to become one of Butler’s highest-grossing movies after the How to Train Your Dragon franchise and 300, that box office haul couldn’t compete against its $120 million production budget. The movie marked a significant financial loss that cost Warner Bros. around $70 million, and it didn’t score any wins when it came to critical and audience reception.
Geostorm is one of Butler’s lowest-rated movies of all time, with just an 18% critic score on Rotten Tomatoes, and unfortunately, the movie’s audience reception wasn’t much better at just 35%. The movie’s ambitious efforts to blend a climate disaster movie with a political thriller and an espionage subplot completely missed the mark and resulted in a messy and overstuffed plot filled with weak characters, cringeworthy lines, clichéd disaster movie tropes, and more plot holes than we can count. The movie’s visuals and effects didn’t help things either, the disaster scenes looking cheap and unconvincing and ridden with continuity errors despite Geostorm’s big budget.
Time has been much kinder to Geostorm, though. The film has found a surprising second life as a streaming success, helping Geostorm transform into a solid “so bad it’s good” film. After appearing on the streaming charts at Netflix and HBO Max, Geostorm is now ranked No. 6 on Tubi in the U.S., joining other popular titles like Equalizer 2, Prey, Driving Miss Daisy, S.W.A.T., and The Burial.
What’s New on Tubi?
Tubi has plenty of great streaming options in its free catalog, and that collection grew in January. Movie fans looking for their next film can now stream titles like The Cabin in the Woods, Jumanji, Love Lies Bleeding, Mulholland Drive, and Pulp Fiction after the films joined Tubi’s lineup at the start of the month.
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