As the oncoming tectonic shift begins to ravage Los Angeles in "2012", Kate (Amanda Peet, "A Lot Like Love") and her husband Gordon (Tom McCarthy, "Duplicity") casually shop for groceries. Just as Gordon mentions that something is coming between them, an earthquake rips through the market. The ground opens up, literally tearing the couple apart.
The moment encapsulates everything that makes "2012" unbearable. The dialogue is painfully corny, and the situations are created for the sake of a tired special effect. The movie might happily take its place in the "so bad it's good" category, but director Roland Emmerich made what he thought would be a meaningful cautionary epic. Instead, the man who plagued audiences with the similar "The Day After Tomorrow" pumps out an overstuffed heap of disaster porn.
In current day India, a scientist discovers that explosions on the sun will cause the earth's crust to collapse in just a few short years. An American geologist, Adrian (Chiwetel Ejiofor, "American Gangster"), relays the news to a top White House aide (Oliver Platt, "The Ice Harvest"), who then alerts the president (Danny Glover, "Lethal Weapon"). Over the next three years, the world's leading nations plan the survival of the globe's rich and important citizens.
Except for Jackson Curtis (John Cusack, "1408"), Kate's ex-husband, no average civilians are aware of the situation. A limo driver for a Russian billionaire, Jackson is tipped off by the host of a conspiracy theory radio show (Woody Harrelson, "Zombieland") while camping with his children in Yellowstone National Park. As it becomes clear that the end is near, Jackson loads the entire family (including Kate and Gordon) into the limo and searches for the airplane that will carry them to safety.
There's a little more to it than that, but Emmerich obviously wants audiences to focus on the collapse of civilization. Special effects geeks will point out that the crumbling cities and tidal waves are comparable to the latest Xbox 360 game, but they are still fun to watch. However, special effects just aren't enough to satisfy moviegoers anymore. When Emmerich made "Independence Day" 13 years ago, computer-generated disasters were still impressive. Now, who cares if monuments topple to the ground? To his credit, Emmerich had $200 million to work with, so you can't blame him for not spending every last dime.
Halfway through the movie, the ridiculous banter and CGI overload don't seem so bad. But near the end, you simply want it all to end. The fate of the main characters no longer matters. The flooding just needs to start. Too many false climaxes turn an already unintentionally funny movie into a full-blown comedy.
The awful dialogue wouldn't be so hard to take if Emmerich didn't take his film so seriously. Even talented actors like Glover and Cusack can't help but look like hacks with the lines they are given. Ejiofor, in particular, becomes a whipping boy for critics. As the moral compass of the film, Adrian convinces various heads of state the lives of a few stowaways are more important than the thousands aboard one of the escape ships. His rousing speech near the end of the film rivals Bill Pullman's rallying cry from "Independence Day" in both enthusiasm and absurdity. Adrian is so righteous that he barely flirts with the president's beautiful single daughter (Thandie Newton).
Within the disaster genre, leaps of faith are part of the experience. But even the most naïve moviegoer will grow frustrated with what propels the film forward. Don't ask why the Curtis family flies directly over Hawaii when they have the entire Pacific Ocean to work with. Don't ask why Jackson and his children are casually released by the government after crossing into a marked-off zone. And most important, don't ask why the characters can call each other with cell phones after everything else humans have built has been destroyed; the Verizon network may be a lot stronger than you think.
"2012" isn't the worst movie of all time, or even the year, but it should take its rightful place among famously botched blockbusters like "Waterworld" and Emmerlich's own "10,000 BC." It will take a worldwide audience desperate for apocalyptic action to make the movie a hit. Let's hope the crowd isn't big enough to help the studio break even.
Is the End Really Coming in '2012'?
Few people have destroyed the world more than Roland Emmerich. In his mega-hit "Independence Day," aliens laid waste to pretty much every metropolitan center on the planet, and in his eco-thriller "The Day After Tomorrow," much of the northern hemisphere is buried under ice.
In his third crack at presenting the apocalypse, this weekend's "2012," Emmerich taps into the angst of thousands of astrologers, doomsday enthusiasts, and conspiracy theorists who fear that a massive cataclysm will strike the earth on December 21 of that year. Yet unlike previous dates tied to the Earth's expiration, this one has its roots in various sources throughout history including interpretations of the Mayan calendar, astrology, and the ancient Chinese fortune-telling text the "I-Ching."
The concern about a coming global calamity has grown so great ahead of "2012" that NASA has even taken the unusual step of starting a campaign to dispel these theories. Below, we've outlined some of the most notable claims for the supposed apocalypse.
The Mayan Calendar
2012 first gained the patina of doom with the best-selling 1966 book "The Maya" by Harvard archeologist Michael D. Coe. He noted that the Mayan culture's famously complex "Long Count" calendar simply ends on 12/21/12, speculating that civilization might come crashing down on that date. Other scholars argue, however, that the Mayan calendar would merely flip over like an odometer that reached 100,000 miles.
Galactic Alignment
Astrologers have also pointed out that during the winter solstice of 2012, the orbital planes of the solar system and the twelve Zodiacal constellations will intersect with the "Dark Rift" -- a black bit of the Milky Way located next to Sagittarius. Some argue this intersection is precisely why the Mayans -- who were brilliant astronomers -- ended their calendar when they did. But other astrologers believe that this conjunction will usher in a great shift in consciousness.
Timewave Zero
And then there's counterculture thinker Terence McKenna, whose Timewave Zero theory -- drawing off of elements from the "I-Ching," the teachings of philosopher Alfred North Whitehead, and modern fractal mathematics -- determined that 12/21/12 is, you guessed it, the exact date of a profound change in world. Roughly speaking, the Mayans, astrologers and McKenna are all predicting global doom or the dawning of the Age of Aquarius.
Sunspots and Pole Problems
So if the apocalypse is set just in time for holiday shopping season three years from now, how exactly will the world end? One theory that actually has some traction in the scientific community is that a solar flare will cause a sudden shift in the magnetic orientation of the Earth's poles, causing all kinds of planetary problems like volcanic eruptions and earthquakes. NASA is predicting strong solar activity around 2012 and there's evidence that the magnetic poles are slowly weakening, something that reportedly presages a reversal. Of course, most scientists think that this reversal will take centuries, not days, to occur.
So how does Roland Emmerich end the world in his upcoming epic "2012"? "Pole reversal," he said in an interview. "All kinds of stuff going on. But it's basically major earthquakes and volcano eruptions which kind of cause this global flood."
"We found this obscure theory of 'Earth crust displacement,' written in the '50s by someone called Professor Hapgood. Albert Einstein wrote the foreword to his book. It pretty much [says] every X number of years the whole Earth's crust shifts, all together. We thought that that was a great underlining theory that can explain why there can be a flood."
And what is the director going to do in preparation for that fated date? When asked he said, "I'm a pretty down to earth guy. Even [though] I made movies about aliens, I don't believe in aliens. And I don't believe that the world will come to an end in 2012, but it's a great scenario."
'2012' – movie review
As if we didn't already have enough to worry about, now we have to brace ourselves for 2012, the year the Mayan calendar reaches the end of its 13th cycle – i.e., doomsday. Or something like that. I'm only going by the press notes for "2012," which reveal that numerologists, astrologers, and geologists (which geologists exactly?) are likewise freaked out about the impending date, which makes Y2K look like a stroll in the park.
By preparing us for the coming cataclysm, the filmmakers of "2012" have performed a public service and should be given, if not the Nobel Peace Prize, then by all means an Oscar. The fact that "2012" is an epic clinker is irrelevant. Who has time for art, or even entertainment, when Earth's tectonic plates are about to be fired by neutrinos? Or something like that. It's time to save the world – or at the very least, Hollywood, which has lately been racking up less than boffo grosses. Who better to fix things than the folks who perpetrated "Independence Day," "The Day After Tomorrow," and "Godzilla"?
Director Roland Emmerich and his co-writer Harald Kloser – I use the term "writer" here very loosely – have teamed with an arsenal of computer geeks and destructionists to give us a Valu-Pack of disaster scenarios: earthquakes, tsunamis, falling high-rises, buckling freeways, careening airplanes, cute puppies in peril, volcanos at Yellowstone National Park, trapped giraffes – am I making this sound like more fun than it is? Sitting through this movie is like being pressed flat by a trash compactor. Every cliché, every bad idea, every thudding line of dialogue, is redolent of other earlier epic clinkers. There's a certain cozy familiarity in all this but paychecks aside, you wonder how the filmmakers could summon the energy for such an enterprise. There's even a suggestion of a sequel at the end. Maybe the world isn't going to end in 2012 after all.
The plotline has something to do with the fact that solar fires are about to microwave the planet's core, a fact known only to the top Washington brass who have been covertly planning an impending Noah's ark-like evacuation of the best and brightest aboard a jumbo vehicle parked in remote China that's about the size of Duluth. This covert operation business seems a bit silly, since everywhere from Las Vegas to the Vatican is already splitting open, but let that pass.
I'll say this much for "2012": It features one good blowout early on, when L.A. – that favorite target of destructo scenarios – comes apart. It also has better aerial sequences than "Amelia," although this is like saying that "The Polar Express" is better than "Disney's A Christmas Carol." John Cusack, one of many fine actors reduced to rubble here, plays an underappreciated novelist, Jackson Curtis, who remains a doting divorced dad to his two hyperadorable children. By day Jackson is the chauffeur for a bulbous Russian billionaire (Zlatko Buric), a plot device cooked up, no doubt, because a black stretch limo looks better than an ordinary clunker while vaulting tectonic fissures. Jackson's heroic counterpart – once things start, literally, cracking – is the president's chief science adviser Adrian Helmsley, played by Chiwetel Eljiofor in a continual deadpan huff. He looks as if he wishes he was acting in "Airplane!" instead. I wish he was, too.
Danny Glover, at his most sotto voce, plays the president. Since "2012," according to those trusty press notes, was written during the run-up to the 2008 presidential election, it's worth noting that the role was originally written for a woman – until the Iowa primaries. Oliver Platt plays the president's chief of staff and doesn't remind me of anybody except Oliver Platt, a mixed blessing. His character has the surname Anheuser – a not-so-subliminal plug for Budweiser?
In general, though, given the shamelessness of the venture, the filmmakers are remarkably restrained when it comes to product placements, perhaps because no corporation in its right mind would want to see its company logo buried in an avalanche. (I could be wrong about this.) But wireless phone companies missed a golden opportunity here. No matter how high the devastation, no one in this film ever fails to place a call. My favorite moment: In the midst of a biblical-size storm, an astrophysicist in East India buzzes Adrian in a D.C. bunker and gets right though.
It occurred to me that Emmerich and Co. might be playing this whole thing for laughs. It probably occurred to them, too. Just to be on the safe side, they periodically lampoon their own handiwork. This way, if people start giggling in the wrong places, the filmmakers can always claim they were the right places. I'm pretty sure that most of the time that I was laughing, it was during the wrong places. Except maybe when that cute puppy teeters over a precipice on its wobbly way to the mother ship. That wasn't meant to be serious. Was it? Grade: C- (Rated PG-13 for intense disaster sequences and some language.)
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