2012: The End is Nigh!

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Written by Henry Mouat

Grade: C+

Roland Emmerich loves to end the world as we know it. He blackened cities with alien invasions in Independence Day, he drowned nonbelievers with global warming in The Day After Tomorrow, and he threatened the entire British colonial enterprise with Mel Gibson in The Patriot (you know it’s true). Emmerich returns now to deliver 2012, in which the earth itself is threatened by a cosmic conspiracy involving the Mayans, the Sun, and the Universe. As with most of Emmerich’s films, plot and substance take the backseat to allow more room for the rampant destruction of global landmarks (uninteresting places like Nebraska are presumably left untouched), but that isn’t to say that the film doesn’t have enough dopey fun to keep you amused and awed.

It wouldn’t take a Mayan to predict that the story would flop. The plot centers on Jackson Curtis (John Cusack) a writer/chauffer struggling to connect with his kids and his divorced wife. Little does he know that his greatest problems have yet to come, namely in the form of Mother Nature having what can only be described as a mid-life crisis. Also at the heart of the story is a brilliant scientist (Chiwetel Ejiofor), who foresees the coming doom and tries to move the president (Danny Glover) into action.  His biggest obstacle is not a tsunami from hell, but a snobby bureaucrat (Oliver Platt), who for all intents and purposes should hold the title “Secretary of Villainy” in the White House, as his job is apparently limited to being a megalomaniacal jerk. These two plots rarely meet or interact at all with one another, but merely serve to provide different angles of the aforementioned chaos.

Cusack and Ejiofor both make likeable protagonists, although in Cusack’s case it is mostly related to his ability to bond with his audience rather than any given quality of his character. There are about 100 supporting actors who round off the cast, and about 90% of them are wiped out over the course of two and half hours’ worth of destruction. Most actors are talented, but as they charge across the screen trying to save their lives and the story, the effort is in vain. The script is generic and cheesy; it most often goes back and forth between screams of excitement (“We’re running out of time!” or “Let’s move! Let’s move!”) and worthless sentimental reflection (“If we do this, what will our children think?”). The only character completely at ease in the film is a lunatic hillbilly, DJ (played by Woody Harrelson, who most of us saw last in Zombieland). His character is the only non-Mayan and non-scientist to foresee our doom; similarly, Harrelson appears to be the only actor who has accepted that the story is going nowhere special. Ironically, he delivers the best overall performance in the show.

Once Emmerich gets through all that “plot material”, he finally enters his comfort zone—specifically, mass chaos. The special effects are amazing, to say the least; scenes like the escape from L.A. and the subsequent escape from Yellowstone achieve levels of disaster only seen in movies like Michael Bay’s Armageddon. The sequences are breathtaking, and easily trump the devastation left behind in Independence Day and The Day After Tomorrow. Oddly enough, it serves the movie’s purpose that the characters are so stupid, as it can often lead to some visually dazzling moments (case in point: an ‘amateur’ pilot flies his plane under two falling buildings, rather than banking to the side and flying over the ocean). The reason to see this film is to watch the earth’s annihilation in a most beautiful display of movie technology. If Emmerich had taken out his characters and added Transformers, this could’ve been the ultimate CG disaster porn.

By the end, you’ll be exhausted, and probably satisfied, if you know what you came for. The plot isn’t quite a disaster of its own, but the only good reason you want to watch this film is revel in the ruin. And boy, that can be fun.