There’s a reason they call it “disaster porn.” You don’t want anyone to see you going into the theater, and you certainly don’t want them to know you had yourself some cheap fun while you were in there. Though if we’re going to be specific, Roland Emmerich’s 2012 is more than just disaster porn—it’s a disaster orgy. One held at the End of the Worlds of Fun amusement park.
Emmerich of course has made his career on destroying things, but where your Michael Bay likes to blow up cars and buildings and giant robots, Emmerich aims higher in films like Independence Day, Godzilla, and The Day After Tomorrow: he’s not happy unless he’s bringing the whole world down around your ears and then giving you a lecture about how we aren't going to let ourselves get pushed around by aliens, or giant lizards, or cold weather!
This time the Earth is getting some serious indigestion from solar flares and rogue neutrinos. Having just written that sentence and you having just read it, can we just agree to stop caring about the why’s and how’s of cinematic global destruction? Who cares? Emmerich and co-writer Harald Kloser could have said the world was going to end because someone dropped a giant Mentos into the Earth’s core and the film would still work. And if the measure of a disaster movie is how good it gets stuff blowed up, 2012 is a resounding success: like a fat man at a Vegas buffet, the flick grabs a little of this, a little of that. Earthquakes and volcanoes and tidal waves, oh my god yeah.
In the tradition of, oh let’s say every disaster movie ever made, the plot proceeds to introduce various and diverse characters, most of whom will spend the next few hours trying to outrun fiery things. On the government side there’s the earnest scientist (terrific actor Chiwetel Ejiofor), the noble U.S. President (Danny Glover), the President’s smart-and-sexy daughter (Thandie Newton), and then Oliver Platt doing what he does best: being sneaky and sly, but with such self-aware charming bluster that you almost forgive him when he takes your ice cream cone and kicks you off the bus. Oh and there’s Woody Harrelson, playing a conspiracy minded radio host as Art Bell by way of Gary Busey and a bag of weed.
Warned ahead of time that those rat-bastard neutrinos had turned on us, the world governments have been secretly building giant arks in the Chinese Himalayas. Because when you’re planning to save human civilization, you want your massive ships to be stamped “Made in China.” Just don’t lick the lead-painted walls, kids. My quibble with this whole Chinese Arks of Salvation thing is that the only world figure we see being saved is Queen Elizabeth, alongside her Corgis and Prince Philip. Really? Prince Philip? We have a chance to reboot human civilization and we make an effort to save Prince Philip? I’m surprised we didn’t also see Paris Hilton slinking aboard.
(Actually, there’s an even more cynical reason for this plot angle: Sony/Columbia wants 2012 to do big business in China, hence the Sino-centric plan and a nice, positive spin on the nation’s altruistic participation. Oh and yes, according to the film, Tibet is part of China. Shut up and go home, Richard Gere and The Beastie Boys.)
But since few viewers besides me want to see Oliver Platt presiding over the End Times, 2012 needs an Everyman central character. Enter John Cusack, acting out a flawless demonstration of Art for the Heart, Trash for Cash. (Before anyone starts bemoaning Cusack Selling Out, remember this is not the first time Lloyd Dobbler has slathered himself in box-office bait: Con Air? Serendipity? Must Love Dogs? America’s Sweethearts? Runaway Jury? Those are the paydays that keep the little films like Max, Grace is Gone, and War Inc. coming.) Cusack is a struggling novelist living in L.A. (where all struggling writers wind up, since it’s always nicer to struggle in the sun) who ends up going all Joie Chitwood thrill driver in order to get his estranged family (including ex-wife Amanda Peet and her new boyfriend, Tom McCarthy) out of town while there’s still a town to get out of.
As you can see, that’s a lot of talented actors standing around saying things like “You’ve got to see this!” and “We gotta leave right now!” Ejiofor gets to spend most of his time furrowing his brow over scientific computer read outs telling him how dirty the Mentos, er neutrinos are gonna do us, while Cusack gets to have all the fun. 2012’s best section revolves around Cusack and kin using cars, planes, RVs, and Russian cargo jets to outrun some of the most gleefully horrifying devastation CGI effects money can buy, while the narratively less fortunate masses go out with one long Wilhelm Scream.
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