Based on the critical reactions and commercial performance of White House Down, Independence Day: Resurgence, Midway, and Moonfall, Roland Emmerich can’t even make halfway decent Roland Emmerich movies anymore. In retrospect, then, his regular collaborator Dean Devlin’s attempt at emulating the Master of Disaster with Geostorm was doomed from the start.
Having teamed with Emmerich as either a writer or producer on Stargate, Independence Day, Godzilla, and The Patriot, you’d have thought Devlin may have learned a thing or two on how to craft serviceable big budget entertainment predicated on the end of the world. Instead, he ended up getting booted out of his feature-length directorial debut and replaced by Danny Cannon for the extensive reshoots, and you know things are bad when the guy who helmed Sylvester Stallone’s Judge Dredd is drafted in.