ComingSoon Editor-in-Chief Tyler Treese spoke with Greenland 2: Migration director Ric Roman Waugh about the disaster movie. Waugh discussed the film’s hopeful ending, its shocking death, and its overall themes. Greenland 2: Migration is now available to rent and own on Premium Digital from Lionsgate.
“In the aftermath of a comet strike that decimated most of the earth, Greenland 2: Migration follows the Garrity family (Gerard Butler, Morena Baccarin, and Roman Griffin Davis) as they’re forced to leave the safety of their bunker in Greenland to traverse a shattered world in search of a new home,” reads the film’s official synopsis.
Tyler Treese: Ric, congrats on Greenland 2: Migration. I really enjoyed the film, and it all starts with that opening segment of Gerard Butler exploring outside and getting caught in the storm. It’s a really exciting way to start the film. It even reminded me of a video game I’m a big fan of, Death Stranding, in a fun way. What was your overall philosophy with that segment? Because it is just a strong, impactful start.
Ric Roman Waugh: One, we never thought we were making a second movie. You know, we were so excited when we read Chris Sparling’s first script with Greenland and just what it represented, and then to come out in the middle of a disaster, it was pretty crazy times for obviously everybody. We loved how much the movie meant to everybody, to the audiences around the world. So, when we started thinking about the second movie, it was really staying in the chronology of the timeline of what the pandemic did. So that’s why we also set this five years later from where the first movie came out.
The first movie doesn’t pull any punches. Most comet movies thwart the comet, and it never hits. We told you the Earth was gonna go through an extinction event, and it did. So this opening is really important. The idea of the rebirth, you know, of a world that is starting over again and trying to get itself above ground, and then go and scavenge. Really, what the thematic thread for the whole movie was about is what every species since the beginning of time has had to do to survive, which is migrate, and so it’s about going out and foraging to gain things for your own survival.
This was the first sequel that you’ve done, and I thought it was interesting because you avoided the common issue of repeating yourself very well. There are similar thematic elements and returning characters, but this does feel very different and unique. What was the key to making sure this built off the previous film without just doing the same thing again?
It is a really good question because it was the question that we all asked ourselves: how do we do something different, but how do we also maintain the thread? It really came down to the family. It’s about this love story of a husband and wife who are barely even getting along in the beginning, and they’ve refined their love and what matters the most. And instill that in a young child who suddenly spends half of his life underground, trying to figure out now as a young adult, where his place is in life.
So we really carried the common thread about their journey, you know, and how the movies can be back-to-back. You can watch both movies simultaneously, and it would give you the complete journey of where the Garritys are in this evolution. But they’re completely different rides because the first movie is all about getting to safety, and the second movie is a wasteland.
It’s about how an extinction event looks. We did a lot of research with how fast Mother Nature rebounds. We studied the Chernobyl area because of the radiation that would be polluting the air. We studied the Australian brush fires, about what happened there with all those areas that got scorched. Did a lot of deep dives on the original Yucatán Peninsula, where the original extinction event occurred and where that asteroid hit. Also, a lot of theories of that is where Mother Nature rebounded because it basically pounded the sediment so hard that it ended up becoming its own microclimate. So, we used that as creative license. Say, okay, this is the journey, and where would Mother Earth start to be reborn and use that as your journey, right, as your structure, but really having a brand new experience and reminding the audience that we’re not only gonna pelt you from the sky, we’re also gonna deal with underneath your feet now with seismic activity.
But we’re going back to what we all deal with, which is man versus man. Are you going to be selfish or are you gonna be selfless when it’s life or death? Are you going to take away from others, or are you gonna help others? I always love that basic metaphor for what this movie, this franchise, stands for.
Gerard’s character passes away in the film. People were crying in my theater. People just loved Gerard, and they love his character in Greenland. Why was it the right time to say goodbye to him here?
Ric Roman Waugh: It wasn’t ever meant to be a gimmick. It was just really an organic way of the first movie of a man atoning from making a horrible mistake, and owning up to his sin, and the movie really representing forgiveness and atonement. Then we always loved how the first movie had a crisis within a crisis. It was always about the family and their own version of crisis, and then they deal with a world crisis, right? That’s what our lives are. When the pandemic hit, everybody was dealing with their own things, and then we had to try to balance that. We wanted that same journey in the second movie and really about the whole idea of legacy, right?
My sons are twins, and they’re 18, and that’s about the rites of passage. What am I leaving them as my legacy to them? What am I leaving for mankind, especially if you were in a rebuild state? So it was really about putting his character in a ticking clock knowing that he has a shorter lifespan than we think. He only has so much time to try to instill what he can in his family and loving them, and the rites of passage of a son, but also getting them somewhere where a lot of us felt the same in the pandemic. We were tired of surviving, and we wanted to live again. So we brave the new world of pandemics and viruses out there and everything else. Obviously, this is on a bigger scale of that same kind of theme.
Despite that death, the film ends on such a lovely, hopeful note. I thought it was really impactful, especially as we’re living in such divisive times. What’s been the biggest response that you’ve had talking to fans who saw Greenland 2? Because that ending is just so hopeful and beautiful, and it comes in this action film with a ton of great setpieces, and it just has like a really heartfelt ending, which I really enjoyed.
Well, can I tell you, Tyler, I’m a softie. I think that I try not to pull punches with any of my movies, you know if you look back at like Shot Caller, when violence breeds violence and you become violent, you’re not gonna get out of prison. You hopefully pass on a message to your son, and you get that kind of smile on your face of that the rites of passage has happened, and a sense of forgiveness.
In this one, it was really about a world today, where hope is so important, right? We’re all dealing with a lot of stuff in our own world today. So, it was really about that. It was also the fact that if John’s whole M.O. was to get his family to safety, to allow them to start to live, not just survive, but also understanding, getting his son to understand who he was and what he represented.
I love that whole metaphor that we all wanna learn from our parents, from our fathers and our forefathers before them. Seeing it in Nathan of becoming a man and the future of where we go next, as mankind.
It was surreal that during the week of release for this film, the Greenland-U.S. controversy was going on. How surreal was it seeing that? Because Greenland was all over the headlines, but the film wasn’t the first thing people were seeing. That had to be very strange to experience.
It was funny, I was a little bit day late and a dollar short of even understanding what people were talking about. I don’t follow the news religiously; I just try to get the information I need and move on from it. People started talking about it, but I knew that that was always in the zeitgeist. Like that had been going on for quite a while, to talk about Greenland, and then I didn’t realize it was becoming so much more real.
To be honest with you, Tyler, any of my films and especially this one, I just try to keep my head out of all that, and stick to our game plan, which is to make a love story, to not only this family and complete their journey, but also to us as people and humans, you know?
My favorite thing about this franchise is it’s ordinary people under extraordinary circumstances, and more so than most of my movies, where those just normal people, they’re us. They’re flawed, they’re vulnerable, they’re dealing with their own issues, and then they’re just trying to do it right. They’re just trying to live their right life, right? I love the story of this and love Allison’s journey on this as well, of a woman who is not just gonna sit, she’s gonna be a part of the rebuild and goes into government, and the complications of that and so forth. It’s just everything about that. That’s what I love about this movie, and I love the ending of it, what it has to say.
Thanks to Ric Roman Waugh for taking the time to talk about Greenland 2: Migration.
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