Director: Roland Emmerich
Starring: John Cusack, Chiwetel Ejiofor, Amanda Peet, Oliver Platt, Thomas MacCarthy, Zlatko Buric, Thandie Newton, Danny Glover, Woody Harrelson
Running Time: 158 minutes (plus trailers)
"When they tell you not to panic... that's when you run!"
An unkind person might accuse director Rolland Emmerich of making the same film over and over again. It’s certainly true that movies like Independence Day, Godzilla, and now 2012 have a lot in common, be it in the destruction of world landmarks, the heavy reliance on CGI or the repeated use of some variation of the line “oh my god…that’s impossible”. There is little doubt that Emmerich is one of those filmmakers who has found his niche and stuck to it, and one should never expect to see anything new or groundbreaking in his movies unless of course it is the latest and greatest in computer generated devastation. However, it’s probably unfair to say that 2012 is just another Roland Emmerich movie; if anything, it is the Roland Emmerich movie to end all Roland Emmerich movies, featuring such absurd levels of destruction that we can only wonder where he will go and what he will destroy from here.
2012, for those of you who haven’t seen the trailers, is about the end of the world. More specifically, the end of the world as it was prophesized by the Mayan calendar, scheduled to take place on December 21st of the titular year. Chiwitel Ejiofor, in rough correspondence to the character Jeff Goldblum played in Independence Day, or the character Dennis Quaid played in The Day After Tomorrow (another Emmerich gem) plays the scientist who discovers the phenomenon. With only a short time to prepare for the coming apocalypse, the world’s governments put into action a plan to ensure that the human race and much of its culture survives, even if the planet does not. John Cusack plays a novelist turned limo driver and father of two, generally dissatisfied with his life now that his wife has left him and his career is going nowhere (two parts Will Smith in Independence Day, two parts Matthew Broderick in Godzilla).
Once the ground literally starts crumbling underneath them, a newly invigorated Cusack (turns out the end of the world was all he needed to get him motivated) swears to protect his family at all costs. And, with the help of a series of completely unbelievable coincidences, be they in the form of his business relationship with a Russian billionaire, the fact that his wife’s new boyfriend knows how to pilot a plane (something that comes in handy on no less than three separate occasions), or a chance encounter with a kooky conspiracy theorist played by Woody Harrelson (shades of Randy Quaid in Independence Day…just saying) he might just be able to succeed. Of course, I’m not going to tell you whether they make it or not; I wouldn’t want to spoil the ending.
If you paid to see 2012 then there is absolutely no reason why you should be dissatisfied with what you saw. Because if ever there was one, this is a movie that delivers exactly what it promises. Shit. Gets. Fucked. Up. Alongside Michael Bay (Transformers, Bad Boys), Emmerich is the undisputed master of carefully choreographed CGI mayhem, and the special effects here truly are jaw-dropping. The action isn’t all that exciting because you already know which characters are going to live and which are going to die (hint: the adorable children are going to be okay), but it never the less holds your interest; it’s not about tension but about spectacle, and I would cite the Yellowstone eruption in this movie as one of the most awe inspiring disaster sequences I have ever seen.
Perhaps somewhat unfortunately, the movie isn’t just scene after scene of things blowing up and unnamed civilians perishing in their millions. Sadly, as I’ve already made clear, the characters themselves aren’t exactly original. Likewise, the dialogue and the story itself was passable but hardly inspired. But on the plus side the acting is generally of a very high caliber; John Cusack is solid as always, Woody Harrelson is entertainingly nuts, Oliver Platt is believable as the pragmatic government official and Chiwetel Ejiofor has genuine charisma as the noble scientist; the poor man should really consider taking on a more pronounceable screen name, as he certainly deserves to be more famous than he currently is.
And while the movie never really does anything spectacular with its story, I did like how no one is really painted as a direct villain in 2012. Characters like the Chief of Staff or Yuri, while selfish and sometimes unkind, are not fundamentally bad people. I liked how those characters, who in other films might simply to confined to the role of personality lacking antagonist, are shown to be human here, albeit very briefly. It’s interesting that the “bad guys” in Emmerich films are rarely people; it’s always nature or some other outside power that forces humanity to come together as one. It’s cheesy, but it’s also kind of nice to think about the sort of oddly unifying power of annihilation; the president being made to wait by a paramedic, the wealthy people who buy their safe passage, only to point out that if you had the money to save your family, wouldn’t you?
Of course any profundity that might have been trying to poke through the surface here is quickly lost by the time we reach the next scene of a plane trying to take off as the runway collapses behind it. And that is essentially what this movie boils down to: fleeing and collapsing. As that, it totally works, although admittedly it works for far too long. At over two and a half hours, 2012 needed some serious time on the editing floor, especially with so many scenes, subplots and even whole characters (cough*presidents daughter*cough) ripe for removal. The movie, for all its likeable actors and impressive visuals, was not engaging or original enough to sustain my interest for the entire runtime and by the time the end credits rolled I was certainly ready to make my way out.
With 2012 Emmerich has done what he always does; create a flashy, entertaining, somewhat exciting but ultimately pretty forgettable film about a bunch of shit that explodes in very high resolution. So if that’s what you want to watch then go right ahead, you’re definitely going to get your money’s worth. The best part of the movie for me was probably seeing the Avatar trailer that played before hand – not high praise I know. But ultimately I did like this movie well enough, and yes I’ll probably go and see whatever disaster porn the man puts together next. I can’t imagine what he has left to blow up though...do you think destroying the Australian Houses of Parliament would have the same resonance as the White House? Probably not.
2012 is in cinemas now; see it before Roland Emmerich blows them all up.
P.S. The following trailer is not the official one, but I feel that it gives a far better representation of what the movie is actually like. Plus every time I was it I laugh hysterically. Enjoy!
Starring: John Cusack, Chiwetel Ejiofor, Amanda Peet, Oliver Platt, Thomas MacCarthy, Zlatko Buric, Thandie Newton, Danny Glover, Woody Harrelson
Running Time: 158 minutes (plus trailers)
"When they tell you not to panic... that's when you run!"
An unkind person might accuse director Rolland Emmerich of making the same film over and over again. It’s certainly true that movies like Independence Day, Godzilla, and now 2012 have a lot in common, be it in the destruction of world landmarks, the heavy reliance on CGI or the repeated use of some variation of the line “oh my god…that’s impossible”. There is little doubt that Emmerich is one of those filmmakers who has found his niche and stuck to it, and one should never expect to see anything new or groundbreaking in his movies unless of course it is the latest and greatest in computer generated devastation. However, it’s probably unfair to say that 2012 is just another Roland Emmerich movie; if anything, it is the Roland Emmerich movie to end all Roland Emmerich movies, featuring such absurd levels of destruction that we can only wonder where he will go and what he will destroy from here.2012, for those of you who haven’t seen the trailers, is about the end of the world. More specifically, the end of the world as it was prophesized by the Mayan calendar, scheduled to take place on December 21st of the titular year. Chiwitel Ejiofor, in rough correspondence to the character Jeff Goldblum played in Independence Day, or the character Dennis Quaid played in The Day After Tomorrow (another Emmerich gem) plays the scientist who discovers the phenomenon. With only a short time to prepare for the coming apocalypse, the world’s governments put into action a plan to ensure that the human race and much of its culture survives, even if the planet does not. John Cusack plays a novelist turned limo driver and father of two, generally dissatisfied with his life now that his wife has left him and his career is going nowhere (two parts Will Smith in Independence Day, two parts Matthew Broderick in Godzilla).
Once the ground literally starts crumbling underneath them, a newly invigorated Cusack (turns out the end of the world was all he needed to get him motivated) swears to protect his family at all costs. And, with the help of a series of completely unbelievable coincidences, be they in the form of his business relationship with a Russian billionaire, the fact that his wife’s new boyfriend knows how to pilot a plane (something that comes in handy on no less than three separate occasions), or a chance encounter with a kooky conspiracy theorist played by Woody Harrelson (shades of Randy Quaid in Independence Day…just saying) he might just be able to succeed. Of course, I’m not going to tell you whether they make it or not; I wouldn’t want to spoil the ending.If you paid to see 2012 then there is absolutely no reason why you should be dissatisfied with what you saw. Because if ever there was one, this is a movie that delivers exactly what it promises. Shit. Gets. Fucked. Up. Alongside Michael Bay (Transformers, Bad Boys), Emmerich is the undisputed master of carefully choreographed CGI mayhem, and the special effects here truly are jaw-dropping. The action isn’t all that exciting because you already know which characters are going to live and which are going to die (hint: the adorable children are going to be okay), but it never the less holds your interest; it’s not about tension but about spectacle, and I would cite the Yellowstone eruption in this movie as one of the most awe inspiring disaster sequences I have ever seen.
Perhaps somewhat unfortunately, the movie isn’t just scene after scene of things blowing up and unnamed civilians perishing in their millions. Sadly, as I’ve already made clear, the characters themselves aren’t exactly original. Likewise, the dialogue and the story itself was passable but hardly inspired. But on the plus side the acting is generally of a very high caliber; John Cusack is solid as always, Woody Harrelson is entertainingly nuts, Oliver Platt is believable as the pragmatic government official and Chiwetel Ejiofor has genuine charisma as the noble scientist; the poor man should really consider taking on a more pronounceable screen name, as he certainly deserves to be more famous than he currently is.And while the movie never really does anything spectacular with its story, I did like how no one is really painted as a direct villain in 2012. Characters like the Chief of Staff or Yuri, while selfish and sometimes unkind, are not fundamentally bad people. I liked how those characters, who in other films might simply to confined to the role of personality lacking antagonist, are shown to be human here, albeit very briefly. It’s interesting that the “bad guys” in Emmerich films are rarely people; it’s always nature or some other outside power that forces humanity to come together as one. It’s cheesy, but it’s also kind of nice to think about the sort of oddly unifying power of annihilation; the president being made to wait by a paramedic, the wealthy people who buy their safe passage, only to point out that if you had the money to save your family, wouldn’t you?
Of course any profundity that might have been trying to poke through the surface here is quickly lost by the time we reach the next scene of a plane trying to take off as the runway collapses behind it. And that is essentially what this movie boils down to: fleeing and collapsing. As that, it totally works, although admittedly it works for far too long. At over two and a half hours, 2012 needed some serious time on the editing floor, especially with so many scenes, subplots and even whole characters (cough*presidents daughter*cough) ripe for removal. The movie, for all its likeable actors and impressive visuals, was not engaging or original enough to sustain my interest for the entire runtime and by the time the end credits rolled I was certainly ready to make my way out.With 2012 Emmerich has done what he always does; create a flashy, entertaining, somewhat exciting but ultimately pretty forgettable film about a bunch of shit that explodes in very high resolution. So if that’s what you want to watch then go right ahead, you’re definitely going to get your money’s worth. The best part of the movie for me was probably seeing the Avatar trailer that played before hand – not high praise I know. But ultimately I did like this movie well enough, and yes I’ll probably go and see whatever disaster porn the man puts together next. I can’t imagine what he has left to blow up though...do you think destroying the Australian Houses of Parliament would have the same resonance as the White House? Probably not.
2012 is in cinemas now; see it before Roland Emmerich blows them all up.
P.S. The following trailer is not the official one, but I feel that it gives a far better representation of what the movie is actually like. Plus every time I was it I laugh hysterically. Enjoy!
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