GEOSTORM

GEOSTORM. Dean Devlin, dir., co-script with Paul Guyot, producer (one of three). Kirk M. Petruccelli, production design.[1] USA: Warner Brothers, Jerry Buckheimer Films et al. (production) / Warner Bros. (US and most of world distribution), 2017.[2]

Plot summary / Synopsis from IMDb: " =When catastrophic climate change endangers Earth's very survival, world governments unite and create the Dutch Boy Program: a world wide net of satellites, surrounding the planet, that are armed with geoengineering technologies designed to stave off the natural disasters. After successfully protecting the planet for two years, something is starting to go wrong. Two estranged brothers are tasked with solving the program's malfunction before a world wide Geostorm can engulf the planet."[3]

The image of the numerous Dutch Boy[4] satellites surrounding this near-future Earth shows cybernetic and other high-tech containment that is initially protective and comforting and then threatening — and then protective again when the system is purged of a virus and rebooted, making for a happy ending for a disaster movie (i.e., sympathetic main characters and sentimentally attractive extras survive, and we can forget about the massive death toll from, in this case, the run-up to what would have been a "geostorm" of world-wide disaster). In addition to the Dutch Boy system itself, there is the mostly-protective containment of the International Space Station, rendered threatening in the last part of the movie by the count-down to "Self-Destruct" (it is never explained why the ISS would have a built-in self-destruct system).

There are some octagons, but the film stresses to a very high degree the meme, or trope, of hexagons.[5] The hexagons do help to keep the film visually coherent, but any other significance is obscure.

NOTE: Our citation of a film is not necessarily a recommendation that users of the wiki see it. Students of the motif of high-tech containment probably should see GEOSTORM, plus completists for the popular culture politics of climate change and violent weather.

RDE, Initial Compiler, 22Oct.17