We should thank director Roland Emmerich for his service to humanity by warning us what’s going to happen in 2012. Having already taught us how to survive the inevitable alien invasion (Independence Day), attack by giant radiation lizards (Godzilla), the coming Ice Age (The Day After Tomorrow), and even what to do if our prehistoric village is attacked and our friends sold into slavery (10,000 BC), we can now prepare ourselves for the upcoming ultimate apocalypse. After all, if the Mayans set December 21st, 2012, as the end of their 5,125 year, long-count calendar system, there can be no doubt that it will be the actual end of days. What more proof do you need?
Actually, to be honest, there doesn’t seem much point preparing for our upcoming doom, because according to the film we’re pretty much buggered. The best advice I can offer is that when it gets to 2012, if you see John Cusack, run.
Roland Emmerich has said 2012 will be his last disaster movie (barring his plans for Independence Day sequels), and so the organising principle of the film seems to be trying to ensure it packs in so many different types of cataclysm, that anyone trying to make a disaster movie from now on will look like they weren’t really trying.
The person tasked with giving us a human link to all this apocalyptic madness is writer Jackson Curtis, played by John Cusack, who in true ‘I suppose we ought to have a human plot here’ fashion, sort of reunites with his wife and children, while actually just using a selection of vehicles to escape varying disasters, from LA falling into the ocean during a gargantuan earthquake, to the destruction of Las Vegas, to the entirety of Yellowstone National Park turning into a massive exploding volcano. Curtis certainly has an impressive knack for being in the wrong place at the wrong time.
Alongside Curtis being the everyman we’re meant to identify with (although the fact the character (and Cusack for that matter) have the initials JC, isn’t a coincidence), there are also the other stock characters, from scientist Adrian Helmsley (Chiwetel Ejiofor) trying to get info to those in authority, to conspiracy kook Woody Harrelson, who turns out to be right after all. However all this is window dressing, and even the reasoning behind the disaster seems to be slightly irrelevant. While it tries to give things a pseudo-scientific sheen about solar flares, the earth's core warming and plate tectonics, in truth ‘because the Mayans said so’ (although they didn’t) would be just as good a reason.
No, this is about the special effects and endless destruction rather than anything more insightful, and $260 million will buy you an awful lot of chaos. The vast majority of the movie involves special effects of one type or another, and the makers have certainly gone all-out in presenting as much cataclysmic calamity and ridiculously close call chaos as possible (if at all possible, Curtis will always wait until he’s milliseconds from doom to escape).
You could complain about the ridiculous and relatively threadbare plot that constantly tries to get you to care about barely-drawn characters, or the fact that it sort of seems to suggest (as Emmerich’s other disaster movies have) that the death of billions is okay, as long as it helps one family get back together, but those sorts of arguments are self-defeating, because 2012 was never meant to be anything more than what it is – audaciously silly but fun entertainment. Nobody is going to line up for this one expecting great acting, profound insights into humanity or a sensible plot. In fact if it had those things, a lot of the audience would probably be disappointed.
The trick is that it’s aware that it’s silly (while still being oddly earnest), and although John Cusack may seem an odd choice for this sort of thing, he’s very good at seeming almost as bemused and incredulous about what’s going on as the audience, which makes it far easier to just give in and go with the flow. Even when people are spouting noble end of the world sentiments and saying supposedly profound things, it’s difficult to know whether the film is genuinely trying to be serious, or whether it’s got its tongue stuck firmly in its cheek. Either way it’s amusing, whether it’s meant to be or not.
A bit of judicious editing wouldn’t have gone amiss, as at two-and-a-half hours, 2012 stretches its welcome close to breaking point – particularly in the final few ocean-going reels – but it never gets boring, no matter how ridiculous it gets. Actually, although I say it’s ridiculous – and it is – I’ve seen serious docu-dramas that have dramatised some of the disasters in 2012 (such as the LA Earthquake and Yellowstone explosion), that are supposedly 100% based on scientific evidence, but which have had more ridiculously convenient plotting and nonsensical human involvement than 2012 does. So if those docu-dramas can do it in the name of science, why can’t Roland Emmerich do it for the sake of entertainment?
Ultimately this is a film that has to be applauded for its audacity. It’s full of ‘did they just do that?’ moments, from an massive ship riding a tidal wave into the White House, to its blunt religious symbolism (although Emmerich deliberately avoids destroying anything specifically Islamic, suggesting maybe it is indeed the true religion and was therefore spared the apocalypse, although I suspect Emmerich avoids it for less spiritual reasons), but it’s difficult not to just smile and go along with the fun.
2012 is purely an excuse to bring together every disaster movie that has come before, and create a film that’s so over the top and covers so many different times of cataclysm, that it feels like it’s trying to say, ‘now just try and out-disaster that!’ It is an utterly pointless, immensely ridiculous movie, with no reason to exist other than sheer visual spectacle, but by not taking itself too seriously (and no audience member is going to be able to take it seriously at all), it is a guilty pleasure and far more entertaining than perhaps it ought to be.
Overall Verdict: The fact 2012 is ridiculous, pointless, stupid and over the top are both the best and worst points of this nonsensical but entertaining riot of guilty-pleasure CG destruction.
Reviewer: Phil Caine
