2012
I’m not giving anything away when I say that 2012 is about the day our world ends. No stakes could possibly be higher. It’s not just human civilization (though there’s some of that being lost certainly) but the whole freaking planet. By now you have seen some of the spectacular previews with crumbling freeways and mind-boggling floods. What you didn’t see is all the other amazing spectacle that 2012 has to offer. I was desperately in need of some wanton, effects driven fun that also doesn’t piss me off, and 2012 was just what the doctor ordered. Now, my enthusiasm for 2012 is not because I think it’s high art with an important social message. Screw that – this movie is about pure spectacle, and it pulls that off fabulously.
Director Roland Emmerich has wreaked big-scale havoc before, most successfully with Independence Day and The Day After Tomorrow. This movie is both of those and more: Volcano/Dante’s Peak/Deep Impact/The Core/Airport/Earthquake/The Poseidon Adventure/Towering Inferno/Evan Almighty/Titanic/Independence Day/The Perfect Storm/Independence Day with a little splash of moral rectitude compliments of the Planet of the Apes. So basically, if you liked any of these, you will enjoy 2012, because it does them all one better. You know billions of people are getting killed, but it’s so spectacularly amazing, so realistic, you get distracted with just the incredible details.
Remember in Titanic, when the (spoiler alert!) ship is sinking, and the deck tips upwards so extras go crashing down its surfaces like so many CG mannequins? In this film, every casualty really looks like an actual person, like they took the time to shoot one extra getting thrown from a car off a bridge onto a crumbling chunk of freeway just to be crushed by another car. Every screaming person who is crushed or dropped or flung or washed away is fully detailed. Every structure scatters debris, every geologic feature collapses with regards to its internal structure and seeming permanence. The effects are phenomenal, and frankly it’s worth seeing just for that – which is of course the point. It was made just for that. Gone are hapless attempts to reverse the cause – no Powerbook can upload a virus to stop the earth from collapsing into itself. We’re just here to ride along with John Cusack and his family as they try and survive. The science is more sound (or appears to be based on something actually sound) but the world events are so unprecendented, most computer models would implode trying to run an accurate simulation anyway. Screw the science – look out for that aircraft carrier!
The score is exciting, the cinematography lovingly depicts entropy large and small, and the overall race against time is pretty fun and intense. We have some characters, they’re not super richly realized but there’s enough there for the good actors in their shoes to make something of them. Oliver Platt and Chiewetel Ejiofor need to be in another movie together where they aren’t upstaged by dissolving continents. They had a great complementary energy that buoyed their scenes above “No YOU listen to ME” panic and posturing. Cusack’s character has written an unsuccessful novel involving a grand doomsday scenario, and Emmerich hits us over the head a few times with Cusack’s “I told you so” attitude about human altruism in the face of immense disaster. You actually hardly notice because he beats us much harder and much more relentlessly with the That Was Lucky stick. One inch in almost any other direction and our heroes would be so much sidewalk jelly like the others, and this happens about once per script page. We know the dog will make it, we know which character will complete his destiny and who will get a giant scene, we know the insufferable bastard will get his just reward. That’s OK. We need that kind of reliable trope so we aren’t distracted from the freaking incredible technical wizardry that really pulls apart our entire planet (with daubs of irony here and there).
2012 has got it all – Man versus Man, Man versus Nature, and Man versus Himself, even Art versus Commerce. I haven’t been this impressed with CG work since Titanic, and that was 11 years ago. It’s the biggest summer movie of the year, and not a moment too soon. Go, have fun.
MPAA Rating PG-13
Release date 11/13/09
Time in minutes 158
Director Roland Emmerich
Studio Columbia Pictures
