2012 (2009)

Director Roland Emmerich decided to outdo his own The Day After Tomorrow (2004) with the ultimate apocalyptic disaster picture. There was misdirection in the marketing and previews about some planet getting close to Earth, making me think this was a remake of When Worlds Collide (see the Golden Age of sf cinema). However, the premise has to do with the long foretold prophecy of the Mayan calender, which ends in year 2012. Basically, our planet undergoes severe changes every few tens of thousands of years, a cycle, and there's nothing we can do about it. So, in this case, our part in global warming, for example, is irrelevant; this says that it's way out of our hands.
The film piles on the scenes of devastation, fairly early in, and does seek to out-disaster all previous disaster films, presenting itself as the ultimate disaster epic. Unfortunately, most of the characters caught at the center of all the apocalyptic imagery are either simpletons or caricatures. This is nothing very new in disaster films; such films usually fill the screen with cardboard characters. But 2012 advances on this, taking it a step further, until I was hoping some of the characters would be killed off earlier rather than later.
It's not good when the lead (John Cusack) is one of these weak characters. A key moment occurs at Yellowstone National Park, at that small air strip. A trailer van has begun falling inside a crevice, with Cusack inside, literally seconds from doom; he's searching for a map; when he finds it, he takes the time to yell "A-ha!" with glee, which should have doomed him. But, this film reveals itself as having this silly side half the time and Cusack makes it to a moving airplane anyway. There were similarly frustrating scenes in The Day After Tomorrow, in New York City, when a character busies herself with some trivial matter for crucial minutes (!) and should have drowned.
Amanda Peet plays Cusack's ex-wife; she's mostly alarmed or worried. The primary simpleton is Peet's current beau (Thomas McCarthy), who keeps insisting he cannot pilot airplanes, even though this means doom for him and those he supposedly cares for. He spends crucial seconds arguing and distracting himself with details at every opportunity, usually when he and those near him are seconds from death. They keep surviving anyway. Danny Glover plays the Prez; he's mostly apprehensive and dazed. His Chief of Staff is played by Oliver Platt, who gives the most entertaining performance. He's callous but, some would say, the most pragmatic. The resident expert geologist is played by Chiwetel Ejiofor; he's the film's voice of compassion, but it came off as plain whining to me for much of this. Thandie Newton plays the first daughter, a nothing role. George Segal and Blu Mankuma play a couple of older traveling musicians on a cruise ship, which, like most places, is not a safe place to be. And, Woody Harrelson plays a goofy conspiracy nut who, we find out, fantasizes about being annihilated by a cataclysm.

There is some semblance of real world issues presented: those with the most money - the billionaires - are the ones who have an escape clause from this worldwide death sentence. Much of the plot involves the richest Russian guy (Zlatko Buric) and his small retinue as they make a beeline for the possible loophole created by the various nations (mostly U.S. and China) to continue the species. The film lives up to its promise by presenting the audience with multiple scenes of Armageddon - the gigantic tsunami near the end are probably the highlight. Where in other films the destruction of Hawaii would be the entire film, here it's a few seconds of throwaway; the fall of Japan is just a few seconds from inside an apartment. But, to the very end, silly characters and their silly actions dominate the tone: Cusack and his group are responsible for sabotaging this planned escape for the several hundred lucky ones; yet later, everyone waits with bated breath to see if Cusack survives, as if only his survival is what's really important. I shake my head...    as the world shudders... BoG's Score: 6.5 out of 10