Yeah... I got dragged to this because I have a friend who loves disaster movies. I tried to enjoy it by just not thinking about it but it was so stupid it kept pushing the reset button in my brain.
Like:
"we have a self destruct to prevent the whole station from crashing into earth" ... okay, I can accept this poor excuse to introduce a threat, we could have at least called it a 'scuttle initiative' and joked that it was basically just a self destruct... but okay.
"and it takes like an hour to blow everything up" ... okay, precision is the name of the game in space... I mean it would be great if they could show us how everything exploding at least inconveniences people... but alright, it's just an excuse for another timer.
"also we've basically lined every panel with C4" SERIOUSLY?! Have you people never even heard of the movie Gravity? You have a HUGE interconnected network of satellites and you're just going to turn this station into enough debris to guarantee a Kessler effect? Even assuming the debris didn't destroy the net because it's orbit is so much farther out, it would never be able to be rebuilt.
This is where my brain completely restarted and I just couldn't ignore every those problems anymore.
Oh wait, did I mention the building that exploded because it got hit with lightning? Apparently concrete + electricity = BOOM.
Oh and we have the generation of this purely theoretical 'Geostorm' down to the SPLIT SECOND. And there are absolutely NO side effects up to that split second. None, it all just stops the moment you stop the satellites as long as you're before that.
Related to that, apparently shutting down the satellite rows one by one, does not shut down those satellites... but once you've restarted the system it all comes back up the very second you flip the switch.
Also what exactly was up with the whole Geostorm scenario in the first place? I mean they broke into encrypted secret data to discover thousands of tests that led to Geostorms... but what exactly were those tests? The exact ways the system had to fuck up to create a Geostorm? Isn't that kind of random? I mean it included freezing deserts and bahama resorts so it couldn't be tests for natural weather... but in what crazy world did they think the satellites would all start screwing up all around the world? And why did it start slowly with just one or two?
Like, why did it have to start with the freezing of some village in the middle of a desert somewhere? Why give away the plan at all, couldn't they just jump straight to turning on all the satellites and screwing up everyone's weather and create a Geostorm that way? And if it's so precise it required every precise step and they knew every step from the test they found, why didn't the good guys just kill any one of those satellites? I mean they DID kill one of said satellites, by hitting it with another satellite, so that should have prevented the Geostorm right there!
And why the hell did the communications room still work only minutes before the self-destruct was complete?! Did they design the self-destruct with the intention that someone would still be onboard when they blew it up?! Certainly the com dishes/towers/whatever would have been blown up in the first phase since they are at the extremities of the station?
And why did he take his dear sweet time saying good bye! It's the FATE OF THE WORLD man! Don't leave that shit to the last second!
Why would rebooting the system clear out the virus? Best case, how can they be so certain the virus doesn't just start back up with the system?
Since when are the AUTOMATED SATELLITES empty inside and setup to accommodate passengers?! I mean that would have been a great moment if it was some kind of cargo panel and they had set it up in the beginning that they could have cargo (to replenish some of the weather control perishables or something)
AND my biggest problem... it's CALLED GEOSTORM! SHOW US A GEOSTORM! Have everything go to hell and Gerard has to use the satellites to stop the Geostorm after he beats the hacker! Give us some truly awesome, creative visuals, like a massive tsunami wave about to wipe out Tokyo and then he freezes it right before it hits! Show people huddling for warmth at a resort, the freezing wave creeping towards them when suddenly a heat beam comes down and blasts along it, resulting in the whole place looking like a sauna! Have some situation where his brother / the president have to go out into the crazy thunderstorm for something, but Gerard hits the area with a cold front and counters the thunderstorm, so instead of being hit with lightning they just get snowed on instead. Get creative, have the German woman pointing them out, him at a keyboard spouting off some pseudo-science BS solution and show some crazy scene of people being saved!
...
But no. We just get some over-explosion'ed, coincidence-ridden action cliche ending where the crazy weather just... stops. The worst part is you could STILL have had all that too, have them be fighting against the self-destruction timer trying to stop the already started Geostorm instead of racing against some BS 'countdown til Geostorm' that means nothing. And then they have to escape the station too.
I think I'm more bothered by the fact that there were a bunch of wasted premises here than any specific problem with the movie. So much wasted potential...