"It’s not the end of the world." We tell ourselves such things when we burn our toast or spill our juice or get D’s on our semester projects. It’s a comforting thought: No matter how badly we mess up today, we have a chance to wake up and make it better tomorrow.
 And even if it really is the end of the world, well … there’s still a bright side. That D suddenly doesn’t look so bad, for instance. And, really, why worry about the status of your toast when you’re toast yourself?
Jackson Curtis, a part-time novelist and full-time chauffer, isn’t thinking about toast of any sort as 2012 gets underway. He’s thinking about a trip to Yellowstone National Park and how much fun he and his children will have there—especially if he remembers the bug spray. He’s thinking about how his ex-wife will kill him for showing up late to pick up said kids. He’s thinking about what terrible timing his SUV has, stubbornly deciding not to start when it surely knows full well that he’s already running late. He’s thinking about how silly it’ll look, going camping in Yellowstone in his boss’s limousine.
Ah, well, at least it’s not the end of the world, right?
But, of course, it is—or, at least, close enough. For at that very moment in Washington, D.C., a handful of clued-in politicians are wringing their hands over the cataclysm to end all cataclysms. The earth’s core is wigging out, and in a matter of days (or hours or minutes), it’ll turn Yellowstone’s Old Faithful into Old Vengeful, then touch off massive earthquakes and mega-tsunamis while unhooking the very crust of the earth itself.
But it’s not the sort of thing that can be easily fixed with, say, a stimulus package. So the world’s in-the-know leaders decide to keep their collective mouths shut. They have for years now—all the while building massive "arks" to carry humanity’s remnants (the smartest, the strongest and the richest) to start a new life … somewhere.
Jackson, not being particularly smart or strong or rich, has no idea that his vacation will be cut short. Not until, that is, he tries to visit a lake that has boiled away and meets a crazy, end-times radio show host with a penchant for pickles and a map to those arks.
:: Review
Roland Emmerich has, in his most popular films, destroyed the world in many colorful ways: through aliens (Independence Day), through climate change (The Day After Tomorrow) through Japanese monsters (Godzilla) and, now, because an ancient Mayan calendar told him to. In terms of sheer body count, Emmerich makes Jason Vorhees look like a pacifistic boy scout.
He says that 2012 will be his last disaster flick: "I know I can’t destroy the world again," he told The New York Times. "That would be kind of a joke." I don’t believe him.
Emmerich wrecks the world like 10-year-old boys wreck Matchbox cars: with a childlike sense of innocence. So just because I callously compared him to the Friday the 13th serial killer, don’t think that he’s doing it all just for the sake of viciousness. Just because he treats the death of 6 billion people as a ghoulish circus doesn’t make him heartless. Because through the mayhem, Emmerich seems to always try to explore humanity’s best inclinations.
In that respect, 2012 is Emmerich’s most positive film. I don’t mean wholesome; it has too much bad language to be that. And I’ve already talked about the circus-style attentiveness to carnage. But while character development is kept to a bare minimum—just a skeleton on which to hang spectacular CGI effects—the themes here still pack a punch: We can be better than we are. We need to care for others. We are family.
Most of Emmerich’s characters gallop through the worst days of their lives with dry eyes, set mouths and humorous quips at the ready. Little 7-year-old Lilly, however, sees the true horror. And she cries for the unnamed billions. Despite the fact that disaster movies like this are consistently used to "entertain" us, hers is the more relatable response. As 2012 star John Cusack told USA Today, "If it were reality, we’d all be weeping all day."
There’s an old Greek myth about a little girl named Pandora and a mysterious box she finds. In the story, she opens the box and lets loose all manner of plagues and horrors upon the world. But once the box’s terrible residents fly off to deal out destruction, one last beautiful fairy flutters out—a thing called Hope.
In 2012, Emmerich opens Pandora’s box and lets loose catastrophe. But in the midst of all the CGI destruction we see the flitting wings of a thing called Hope.
» Post Comment
» 2 Comments
1"we should not be afaired"
at Monday, 21 December 2009 17:48
as Gods' people we should not be affair of those movies they are only for entertainment.although God is not happy, because the whole world is full of sin we do not know whether the world might end in this way we are shown on the 2012 movie
2"...Nyc One.."
at Tuesday, 22 December 2009 14:20
..It's a gret movie..tho the theme isn't thaaaat new...we've seen it in moviez lyk Independence Day..n tha lyk ..but it's a gret movie...meks u sit on da edge kabisaa....kwanza its looooooong..waaaa...but its nyc..esp that ka Russian..LOLLEST..!!
|
In 6th century Persia, life isn't easy for your average street urchin. And if that's your lot, you generally don't want to draw much attention to yourself. But when a Persian captain of the guard...
Paradise Falls has seen better times. Check that. For all we know, these might be the salad days for Paradise Falls—which boasts neither falls nor paradise. Little more than a gas station positioned...
Robert Downey Jr. is Sherlock Holmes this go-round, keeping London safe through hand-to-hand combat skills, a week’s worth of stubble and, of course, his dazzling powers of deduction. Show him the...