2012 «««½
PG-13, 158m. 2009
Cast & Credits: John Cusack (Jackson Curtis), Amanda Peet (Kate Curtis), Chiwetel Ejiofor (Adrian Helmsley), Thandie Newton (Laura Wilson), Oliver Platt (Carl Anheuser), Thomas McCarthy (Gordon Silberman), Woody Harrelson (Charlie Frost), Danny Glover (President Thomas Wilson), Liam James (Noah Curtis), Morgan Lily (Lilly Curtis), Zlatko Buric (Yuri Karpov), Beatrice Rosen (Tamara). Screenplay by Roland Emmerich and Harald Kloser. Directed by Roland Emmerich.
If The Towering Inferno, Irwin Allen’s 1974 all-star pyrotechnic three-hour epic about a raging fire in a 135 story high-rise was considered the big daddy of disaster movies of the 1970s, director Roland Emmerich’s 2012 is definitely the great grandfather of all doomsday flicks.
Everything that’s been made up to now that’s threatened humanity’s existence featuring giant meteors (Deep Impact and Armageddon both from 1998), aliens with bad attitudes (Independence Day & Mars Attacks both from 1996, War of the Worlds - 2005), nuclear war (The Day After - 1983, Dr. Strangelove and Fail Safe both from 1964), and meteorological disturbances (The Day After Tomorrow - 2004) pale when compared to the cataclysms that happen in 2012.
Picture someone ordering a Big Mac, fries, and coke and instead of it being at a local McDonalds, you are asked by Emmerich at the theater if you would like your disaster movie “super-sized.” On that level, I can’t say he didn’t deliver.
What aliens did to the White House leaving the nation’s capitol in ruins in Emmerich’s Independence Day he returns in 2012 to finish the job sending a giant tidal wave along with the remains of the U.S.S. John F. Kennedy aircraft carrier hurtling towards the Commander In Chief’s place of residence.
“I’m coming to join you, Dorothy,” President Wilson (Danny Glover) says watching the oncoming wave as he prepares to meet his late wife in the afterlife.
Forget REM’s song “It’s the End of the World As We Know It.” 2012 is “Apocalypse Now!”
Like the disaster movie genre that began with a bang in the early 70s with such Oscar nominated all-star box office hits as Airport (1970), The Poseidon Adventure (1972), and Earthquake (1974), the same genre reinvented itself back in the mid-1990s that started with Twister (1996) thanks to the digital wonders filmmakers can conjure up now using computers.
The 70s catastrophic genre, however, went out with a whimper with the such laugh riots as the Airport sequels, The Hindenburg (1975), and courtesy of Michael Caine, The Swarm (1978) and Beyond the Poseidon Adventure (1979). It’s one thing if the acting and dialogue are awful. They can be forgiven so long as filmmakers supply the audience with the visual effects. Fail on that promise and they’ve lost their audience.
By comparison, I wondered if the reinvented genre has not begun to run its course watching 2012. The story has practically the same opening setup as Deep Impact (1998) where instead of an astrophysicist learning a giant meteor is on its way to Earth, it’s a geologist (Chiwetel Ejiofor) who learns in 2009 that radiation from the Sun is melting the planet’s core that will ultimately cause earthquakes and tidal waves and alerts the president, who in turn, alerts all the world leaders. To the viewer, thankfully all this happens within the first half hour which is how long it takes for three years to go by as the big screen becomes black and boasts the year “2012” in big giant numbers.
Somewhere along the way, if audiences are not familiar with the film’s doomsday premise already, or have never heard of the internet much less the controversy surrounding the date, Dec. 21, 2012, they’ll learn this has to do with the end of the Mayan calendar. Instead of a new era beginning, the film’s events are a disaster of epic proportions, much to the viewer’s delight thanks to those damn Mayans.
At the same time, you can almost tell which characters are not likely to survive before the film is over. Hint: It usually always is the ones who think only of themselves.
I suspect all there is left for filmmakers to pursue if they are to make any more films where humanity bites the big one is if they do one about the Sun dying out that engulfs the entire solar system. For all I know that idea is probably already in the works and if not, I want story credit and a share of the profits when they do one. Then again, humanity did go up in flames in Knowing earlier this year.
At its best, what 2012 offers is the emotional element. Yes, I admit I shed a tear or two as “Nearer My God to Thee” was being played as the Titanic was sinking in James Cameron’s 1997 epic. I also shed a tear for the assortment of type casted characters waiting for death near the end of Deep Impact. As silly as it may be, seeing various characters in 2012 bidding farewell to loved ones and looking back regretting at how they didn’t make things right with family members in the past as the end drew near left me with the notion at how short life is and how one shouldn’t wait until the last minute to tie up loose ends. I swore I saw a guy sitting a seat away from me wiping his eyes, but I could be wrong.
If that’s the best piece of originality 2012 could come up with, then I got my money’s worth.
©11/13/09
PG-13, 158m. 2009
Cast & Credits: John Cusack (Jackson Curtis), Amanda Peet (Kate Curtis), Chiwetel Ejiofor (Adrian Helmsley), Thandie Newton (Laura Wilson), Oliver Platt (Carl Anheuser), Thomas McCarthy (Gordon Silberman), Woody Harrelson (Charlie Frost), Danny Glover (President Thomas Wilson), Liam James (Noah Curtis), Morgan Lily (Lilly Curtis), Zlatko Buric (Yuri Karpov), Beatrice Rosen (Tamara). Screenplay by Roland Emmerich and Harald Kloser. Directed by Roland Emmerich.
Everything that’s been made up to now that’s threatened humanity’s existence featuring giant meteors (Deep Impact and Armageddon both from 1998), aliens with bad attitudes (Independence Day & Mars Attacks both from 1996, War of the Worlds - 2005), nuclear war (The Day After - 1983, Dr. Strangelove and Fail Safe both from 1964), and meteorological disturbances (The Day After Tomorrow - 2004) pale when compared to the cataclysms that happen in 2012.
Picture someone ordering a Big Mac, fries, and coke and instead of it being at a local McDonalds, you are asked by Emmerich at the theater if you would like your disaster movie “super-sized.” On that level, I can’t say he didn’t deliver.
What aliens did to the White House leaving the nation’s capitol in ruins in Emmerich’s Independence Day he returns in 2012 to finish the job sending a giant tidal wave along with the remains of the U.S.S. John F. Kennedy aircraft carrier hurtling towards the Commander In Chief’s place of residence.
“I’m coming to join you, Dorothy,” President Wilson (Danny Glover) says watching the oncoming wave as he prepares to meet his late wife in the afterlife.
Practically nothing is safe in 2012 from complete destruction. Viewers get a taste of what could happen to California when “The Big One” hits as the state sinks into the ocean. Yellowstone National Park erupts into an active volcano, much to the joy of conspiracy/doomsday nut Charlie Frost (Woody Harrelson) who delivers his end of the world sermons from his trailer home.“It’s kind of galling when you realize that the nutbags with the cardboard signs were right all along,” says White House Chief of Staff Carl Anhauser (Oliver Platt).
Forget REM’s song “It’s the End of the World As We Know It.” 2012 is “Apocalypse Now!”
Like the disaster movie genre that began with a bang in the early 70s with such Oscar nominated all-star box office hits as Airport (1970), The Poseidon Adventure (1972), and Earthquake (1974), the same genre reinvented itself back in the mid-1990s that started with Twister (1996) thanks to the digital wonders filmmakers can conjure up now using computers.
The 70s catastrophic genre, however, went out with a whimper with the such laugh riots as the Airport sequels, The Hindenburg (1975), and courtesy of Michael Caine, The Swarm (1978) and Beyond the Poseidon Adventure (1979). It’s one thing if the acting and dialogue are awful. They can be forgiven so long as filmmakers supply the audience with the visual effects. Fail on that promise and they’ve lost their audience.
By comparison, I wondered if the reinvented genre has not begun to run its course watching 2012. The story has practically the same opening setup as Deep Impact (1998) where instead of an astrophysicist learning a giant meteor is on its way to Earth, it’s a geologist (Chiwetel Ejiofor) who learns in 2009 that radiation from the Sun is melting the planet’s core that will ultimately cause earthquakes and tidal waves and alerts the president, who in turn, alerts all the world leaders. To the viewer, thankfully all this happens within the first half hour which is how long it takes for three years to go by as the big screen becomes black and boasts the year “2012” in big giant numbers.
Somewhere along the way, if audiences are not familiar with the film’s doomsday premise already, or have never heard of the internet much less the controversy surrounding the date, Dec. 21, 2012, they’ll learn this has to do with the end of the Mayan calendar. Instead of a new era beginning, the film’s events are a disaster of epic proportions, much to the viewer’s delight thanks to those damn Mayans.
At its worst, 2012 wreaks of familiar soap opera plot clichés done in countless other recent disaster movies. The filmmakers would be neglecting their duties if they didn’t give us such typecast characters here that we’ve seen in other films like John Cusack as Jackson Curtis, a divorced father of two and skeptical science writer, not to mention chief rescuer who is estranged from his wife (Amanda Peet), and her new husband (Thomas McCarthy).Perhaps I should quote the dog. After all, he or she is a character too in this film. “Arf, arf!”
Apparently, there must be some unwritten law in Hollywood that says it’s perfectly ok to kill off as many characters as they want, so long as they spare the dog. You know no matter how perilous the situation is you can always count on “Man’s best friend” to either escape a fiery conflagration from an alien laser beam as in Independence Day or make its way on a metallic tightrope that connects to a giant ark carrying humanity’s survivors in 2012.
At the same time, you can almost tell which characters are not likely to survive before the film is over. Hint: It usually always is the ones who think only of themselves.
I suspect all there is left for filmmakers to pursue if they are to make any more films where humanity bites the big one is if they do one about the Sun dying out that engulfs the entire solar system. For all I know that idea is probably already in the works and if not, I want story credit and a share of the profits when they do one. Then again, humanity did go up in flames in Knowing earlier this year.
At its best, what 2012 offers is the emotional element. Yes, I admit I shed a tear or two as “Nearer My God to Thee” was being played as the Titanic was sinking in James Cameron’s 1997 epic. I also shed a tear for the assortment of type casted characters waiting for death near the end of Deep Impact. As silly as it may be, seeing various characters in 2012 bidding farewell to loved ones and looking back regretting at how they didn’t make things right with family members in the past as the end drew near left me with the notion at how short life is and how one shouldn’t wait until the last minute to tie up loose ends. I swore I saw a guy sitting a seat away from me wiping his eyes, but I could be wrong.
If that’s the best piece of originality 2012 could come up with, then I got my money’s worth.
©11/13/09
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