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PG-13
for some strong violence, bloody images, and action.
Starring
Gerard Butler, Morena Baccarin, Roman Griffin Davis, William Abadie, Nelia Da Costa
Director
Ric Roman Waugh
Producer
Gerard Butler, Basil Iwanyk, A
Genres
Thriller
Action/Adventure
Released by
Lionsgate on
1/9/2026
Nationwide
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Trailer
Review
It's a given that many modern blockbusters will have sequels - they arrive in theaters with a "franchise-in-waiting" tag already attached. Greenland, the 2020 comet-meets-Earth disaster movie, was not an instant candidate for this illustrious group, despite being fronted by Gerard Butler. Nevertheless, the film's pandemic-influenced streaming success prompted Lionsgate to pursue a second installment. So here we are - all dressed up with no story to tell. That is the fundamental problem with sequels to movies designed as stand-alones; the follow-up often feels like an inelegantly attached narrative appendage.
That's not to say that Greenland was anything groundbreaking, but it effectively told its story and ended. Once the credits rolled, I didn't feel compelled to wonder what happened next to the characters. Now, for better or worse, we find out. Greenland 2: Migration brings back Butler's John Garritty; his beloved wife, Allison (Morena Baccarin); and his diabetic son, Nathan (Roman Griffin Davis, replacing Roger Dale Floyd). This time, instead of making the trek to the base in Greenland, they're going in the other direction, heading for the crater where the comet Clarke impacted (somewhere in France). The screenplay forces them into a linear, video game template, where they must endure a gauntlet of physics-defying tasks - like dodging falling fireballs and navigating rickety ladder bridges - just to unlock the next level on their way to the promised land.
Ultimately, Greenland 2 feels less like a stand-alone film and more like an extended, high-budget epilogue to the first movie. The characters remain so thinly drawn that if you don't remember (or haven't seen) Greenland, you may find it difficult to figure out why anyone would care about them. To amp up the danger level, the premise suggests that fragments of the deceased comet are in decaying orbits around Earth; every so often, a storm of them comes buzzing landward, remaining intact and wreaking havoc. This helps to explain why surviving pockets of humanity have opted not to resettle the surface. However, a scientist has theorized that Clarke's impact crater may, in fact, host a surprisingly fertile sanctuary.
Director Ric Roman Waugh (who also made the original Greenland) does a workmanlike job with his dystopian vision. This particular post-apocalyptic world utilizes all the usual tropes (minus zombies) and presents them in a way that is both eerily familiar and devastatingly different. I found myself consistently more invested in the film's aesthetic and the incipient world-building than in the half-baked storyline and one-dimensional characters. A subplot involving a factional war zone in France is so poorly developed that I was never sure exactly what the stakes were, who the "good guys" were actually supposed to be, or how it was possible for a ramshackle bus to go from a refugee camp all the way up a mountain to the lip of the crater. There is a lot in Greenland 2 that doesn't make a lick of sense.
For those craving a Gerard Butler kick-ass performance, you have come to the wrong movie. One of two things is occurring here: either Butler is doing an excellent job portraying a man buried under layers of crushing world-weariness, or he's bored out of his mind and just trying to get to the paycheck at the end. I could never quite decide. His biggest action sequence involves a bunch of unstable ladders and an even less secure stick-and-rope bridge across a canyon. During this sequence, I was vividly reminded of King Kong, except there is no giant ape waiting to shake the bridge. Instead, the script relies on a convenient earth tremor arriving at the precise moment required to inject a dose of artificial suspense.
This is a January release, so expectations must naturally be kept in check. Then again, Butler has delivered some delicious early-year surprises (Den of Thieves in 2018 and its sequel in 2025). This isn't one of them. Granted, I've seen much worse in theaters at this time of year, but there is little reason to experience this one. The special effects are solid and Waugh gives us the beginnings of an intriguing world order, but any genuinely interesting ideas are quickly shunted aside just so the poorly defined characters can trudge toward their pre-ordained conclusion.
© 2026 James Berardinelli
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