2012

[Johann]

GET IN THE FUCKING CAR!!!!!


2012


Jaw-dropping special effects laden extravaganza.
Best apocalyptic/end-of-the-world movie ever made.
Bravo Roland Emmerich.
You've atoned for your previous sfx behemoths.
This one is the MOTHER.

I just saw it and I'm almost at a loss for words how amazing it is, in terms of sfx and doomsday ratcheting.
Awesome. Simply awesome.
I'm gonna see it again to give a better "review", but for now let me just say that I was comforted seeing Danny Glover as President of the USA and struck dumb with how terrifying the end of the world might look. As far as prohesising the End of Days goes, 2012 is a beautiful rendering of complete and total chaos. Bravo. I sat bolted in my seat, no matter the cheesiness or cornball obviousness. This is what spectacular entertainment is all about. 2012 ROCKED MY WORLD, YO.

Loved every minute, even though you can fire some critical rockets at it. I'll see it again and post more later.
But for now,

HELLA YEAH HOMESLICE.....

[Johann]

2012 is simply incredible.
It's incredible for the special effects, yes, but it's also incredible for giving us an idea of how chaotic it would be if something like that ever occured.

It's a long movie (it pushes three hours) and I wasn't bored one minute. There are definite cheesy/corny elements but you can ignore those things simply because of the scope of the drama.
The special effects or CGI are going to win an Oscar.
Without question.
The effects are so believable and awesome it boggles the brain. I'm talking about the actual destruction scenes, the scenes of the onslaught of the earth's crust breaking up.
Now, it may not be believable that the airplane that John Cusack's family manage to get into when death is breathing down their necks like a molten inferno can escape toppling skyscrapers and lift off from a disintegrating runway, but hey, it's a MOVIE, paco.
A blockbuster at that. That's what blockbusters are for- sensationalism. I thought to myself after that mind-blowing sequence in Yellowstone park with Woody Harrelson jabbering on about the "Super-Volcano" that I got my money's worth for this movie in that time.
Seriously.
I could've walked out after that sequence utterly amazed and content with the experience. Just a half-hour. That's it.
30 minutes in and the movie ticket is justified.
You know going into this flick what you're gonna see.
If there's anything you need to know about Roland Emmerich's movies, it's big-scale sfx knocking you sideways.
Independence Day and Godzilla anyone? I wasn't a fan of those two movies, but I'm 1000% a fan of 2012. I'll be buying the DVD opening day.
It kicks absolute ass. That's the bottom line.
You want spectacular special effects?
Sweet Jesus this movie's got 'em.
I was in total awe of the special effects.
Hand out twenty Oscars to the teams who rendered this shit.
It's absolutely awesome how they made the world collapse.
Sorry for my raving, but it's the only way I can express how I feel about the movie. It just rocked out with it's cock out...LOL

Man, those fireballs that Cusack is dodging while driving his camper...you literally say to yourself "HOLY FUCKING SHIT!!", as if you were right there, in this hail of hellfire from God-knows-where.
How would you react to that kind of danger?
That's right, you would be shouting HOLY FUCKING SHIT!!! We're gonna fucking die!!!!!

Wow.
One of the best moviegoing experiences I've ever had.
And I'm pleasantly surprised that I'm now a fan of a Roland Emmerich film. I've always felt he was a great failure even though most of his movies have made a lot of money. I felt he didn't make films for people like me. He made one for EVERYBODY to gawp at now...

Grateful to see a disaster epic that delivers in spades and then some. Just have a few beers, smoke a big-ass blunt or cuban and sit back. This one should have you engaged in a very cool way. And if not, then you are one apathetic, jaded, too-snobby-for-me goof.
This film is pure drama.
Can't get a better storyline than the end of the fuckin' world!
No way no how!
Ask yourself: How would I make a movie about the end of the world?
Easy: take an American family, introduce them, have them escape the danger in a gotcha-by-the-balls sfx sequence that has no peers, include the worldwide ramifications, the Mayan prophesy and have a team of the best digital effects peeps on the planet render the destruction as montrously and poetically as possible and VOILA!
2012
Best disaster movie ever made.
Don't analyze it too much.
You'll ruin the experience.
Just go with it. Roll with it.
Believe it. That's what it's about.
Thanks Roland Emmerich.
This movie is a landmark in cinema history.
And look at the worldwide box office numbers.
Hell yeah Baby.

[oscar jubis]

Thanks for these passionate posts. I shall catch 2012 soon! This is a movie you watch in theaters, not your PC!

[Michuk]

I watched it just because my friend wanted to see it. Allright, I wanted to see it as well. Just to see the end of the world. Couldn't help it :)

Like in other Emmerich features, it's stupid, pathetic and... boring. Yes, boring. Too long, too much dialogue, too exhausting, I wanted to pee...

Nothing against long movies or good dialogue. But 2012 is just simply silly, couldn't help laughting out loud when it was the time to be serious...

Well... the effects are great :)

[Johann]

It's not boring when your buzzed! heh heh...

I admit that the movie's sole strength is the special effects.
Everything else is just there to set up/frame the SFX.
It's not high brow. It's high tide!
High enough to flip the U.S.S. JFK onto the White House!
Huzzah!

[Chris Knipp]

I agree with Oscar, but the kid who works at the grocery store told me he's bought a 50-inch TV and surround sound and is going to get a bootleg copy of the movie that is "perfect!" So for him, it's a movie you watch at home. Blow up your living room! Big fun!

[Chris Knipp]

GET IN THE FUCKING CAR!!!!!


2012You're encouraging people to consume crap --and you want them to waste fossil fuel in the processll!?! How about

JUMP ON A FUCKING SUBWAY TRAIN!
CATCH A FUCKING BUS!

[Johann]

It's a line from the movie Chris. Shouted by John Cusack at his family.
You've unsheathed a sword today. Any reason why?

I'm encouraging them to consume amazing special effects.
Who doesn't love special effects?
The movie itself may be crap- someone could successfully argue that, but the SFX?
BEAUTIFUL.

[Chris Knipp]

I did not see much beauty in them. We've seen most of them before. There are just more of them.

Okay St. Peter's going down did impress me a bit.

[Chris Knipp]

Roland Emmerich: 2012 (2009)

The law of diminishing returns: why great effects don't make great drama

Emmerich is a specialist in rah-rah actioners with a penchant for global disaster. He tried alien invasion in his 1996 Independence Day, a world suddenly become uninhabitable via climate change in The Day After Tomorrow (http://www.cinescene.com/reviews/catharsis.htm), and now -- what? 2012 cynically trades on a superstitious belief that the Mayans were right to predict the end of days in that year. But that's really just a come-on for cultists that's quickly dropped. The arc of the script is more a high-tech replay of Noah and the Flood. While Independence Day was sci-fi hokum, and Tomorrow was just dubious science, the explanation behind Emmerich's latest planetary doom is pure mumbo-jumbo. Obviously this director doesn't care how he gets to his effects, and he inserts the same sets of weepy vignettes and touching family reunions every time.

Emmerich and his Austrian co-writer Harold Klosser borrow a popular (but groundless) doomsday myth that an alignment of planets could touch off disaster -- this time, by making the sun's fires flare up. That in turn makes neutrinos start to heat up the earth's core so tectonic plates divide all over the surface of the planet. No matter to these guys that neutrinos, tiny neutral particles that go through the earth in unimaginable quantity all the time without harm, are the least likely cause of tectonic shock disaster. No matter that the theory of a resulting "crustal shift," derailing the earth from its axis and making the continents slip into new positions, has long been discredited as a real possibility. 2012 isn't sci-fi; it's bogus science, far more completely bogus than Day After Tomorrow's -- and the latter, hokey as it was, was a far better movie than this unrestrained and utterly dumb blockbuster.

Much of the physical action concerns a little broken, and soon happily reunited, family, headed by Jackson Curtis (John Cusack), and consisting of his estranged wife Kate (Amanda Peet) and their kids, Noah (Liam James) and Lily (Morgan Lily). Kate has been shacked up with Gordon (Tom McCarthy), and Noah has transferred his loyalty to this fellow. But that's going to change! Gordon will die a sad but quickly forgotten death and Jackson and Kate will be kissing and Noah and Jackson bonding in an hour or so. Then there's the noble US President (Danny Glover), who elects to go down with the ship, and his high-minded daughter (Thandie Newton), who's been preserving the world's art treasures, or the Louvre's, anyway. A French official spills the beans on this and his car explodes in the same tunnel where Lady Di died: what about that!

Jackson is a hero, and a miraculous survivor, through a multiplication of the kind of narrow escapes that motivated the "Perils of Pauline" serials in the silent era. I'd call this the "Ya doob" effect, using the Egyptian dialect phrase meaning "just barely." In his review of 2012 Anthony Lane put his finger on the basic element Emmerich uses as "the binding rule of melodrama, which decrees that all escapes shall be narrow, no more than the breadth of a hair," or, putting it another way, "The best thing about time is the nick of it." This effect is used so relentlessly for Jackson's exploits that they lose their suspense completely and just become shticks.

Equally tired is the nobility of Danny Glover and his cloyingly upright daughter Thandie Newton. The inevitable, discreet romance that develops, with daddy dead and the world half saved, between Ms. Newton and the top US scientist, played with largely wasted dash by the talented Chiwetel Ejiofor: how wearying it is to watch this! George Segal and cohort Blu Mankum do saccharine turns as cruise ship musicians trying to reunite with estranged offspring via phone at the edge of doom. A doom that takes far too long to come, and is dragged out with underwater sequences stolen from Cameron's Titanic. Bad idea to remind us of a really good disaster movie!

The superstitious and paranoid (and above all naive) in the audience will also have much to cluck over when it comes to the plan to "save" a small part of the planet's population, and the way the elite's knowledge of what's coming is cunningly hidden from the masses of humanity. Isn't that just the way? Except that it's not, and if there were truth in any of this, it would have been all over the Internet. The parts of this movie that are hokiest and least able to survive scrutiny (though none of it survives that long) are those related to global knowledge of the impending disaster; who arrived at it, how it was dealt with, and what the timetable was.

But in all this tiresome nitpicking I've been bypassing the big fun for the audience, and in the view of some, the malicious delight of German-born Mr. Emmerich, in what Variety reviewer Todd McCarthy calls his "lip-smacking smorgasbord of global annihilation" -- the way we get to see California sink into the sea, the White House smashed by a giant Navy warship, Michelangelo's frescoes in the Vatican drop to earth as St. Peter's in Rome crumbles, the Eiffel Tower floated away, Rio's Christ the Redeemer statue disintegrated, and Las Vegas, Yellowstone Park, all of Tibet, exploded from below and turned into toast. Woody Harrelson, in a wild-eyed caricature of himself and draped in long fake beard and elaborate hair extensions, gets to go down in a kind of kitsch grandeur of a Gotterdammerung atop a peak in Yellowstone.

Well, yeah, wow! But without a believable plot or interesting characters, who cares? And frankly, no matter how good the CGI has become, an unbelievable event still looks unreal because I know it's not real. If 'Less is more,' then more is indubitably less; and more-and-more ultimately adds up to just that much less. It's the law of diminishing returns. More effective than all this as a haunting image of the planet's destruction was the beach with a piece of the Statue of Liberty peeking up through the sand in Planet of the Apes. I liked the Russian gangster billionaire, Yuri Karpov (Zlatko Buric), with his boorish, chubby little twin boys Oleg and Alec (Alexandre and Philippe Haussmann), who buys his way onto one of the three hi-tech modern arks (don't ask) for, you guessed it, a billion -- euros. He's welcome because you don't have to feel sorry for him. And I don't think we have to feel sorry for Roland Emmerich either. He's laughing all the way to the bank.

[Johann]

But did you like it?

[Chris Knipp]

No, I did not.

I found it wearisome and kitsch and cliched. If you mean the special effects, the exploding or sinking cities or landscapes were beautiful or amazing for a few seconds at a time, and the collapsing St. Peter's in Rome made an impression on me; I'd never seen that and it looked real -- with the reservation I expressed that events I know are fabricated on computers don't ultimately look real to me.

I liked Yuri. I forgot to mention Annhauser (Oliver Platt, in an unusually boring role for the character actor). I forgot to mention the product placements -- most obviously Sony Vaio for all the computers.

Were I not committed to writing a review, I might have left after about an hour or so. I'd gotten the idea by then.

Just the images of the world's destruction knitted together by themselves, a sort of Koyaanisqatsi of apocalypse, might have been beautiiful and awesome, but knitted togehter by the hokey pseudo-science and the corny over-familiar drama of noble (or selfish) leaders and noble (or selfish) citizens vying to find a place on (or off) the ship of death, it all became part of an experience we've expressed done better before.

[Johann]

Ebert gave it 3 and a half stars, a half star less than his highest rating. He explains why it's FUN, how it's not a masterpiece by any stretch yet the thorough destruction of the earth is worth it.
He took the right perspective I think.
It's meant to be cornball with large bombast
Who cares about the story?
No one, I gather.
That's not the point.
The point is it's just sheer sfx carnage.
Of the earth being shook up. That's awesome, especially after a few beers...
No need to slap-chop the movie with criticisms.
We know it's shlocky. We know it's cornball.
The Day After Tomorrow was far better?
I don't know about that...

[Chris Knipp]

You give yourself away when you reveal you had to have a few beers to find it "awesome." In the cold light of day, the alternately preposterous and hackneyed story line does matter, and brings down the film more quickly than exploding neutrinos.

It's easy enough to cherry-pick Ebert's almost always overenthusiastic comments.

As to rating Emmericah's efforts relative to each other, general critical opinion puts them pretty much on a par overall; he fared better with THE PATRIOT, as I'd agree, and DAY AFTER TOMORROW and 2012 run almost neck and neck, but INDEPENDENCE DAY, which had the benefit of a better cast ncluding Will Smith, Bill Pullman, Jeff Goldblum, Judd Hirsch, Randy Quaid, Harvey Fierstein, and Adam Baldwin to provide more fun, fared best of the disaster series. More CGI in the new one, but that only makes it rate higher if you consider films to be technique, rather than art; spectacle, rather than narrative. As I said, as a detached Koyaanisqatsi-style spectacle, it might be quite impressive. But corny dialogue and trite narrative break the spell. Had Koyaanisqatsi been interrupted by Perils of Pauline cliff-hanger corn, people wouldn't have wanted to watch it.

METACRITIC:

INDEPENDENCE DAY (1996) -- 59
GODZILLA (1998) -- 32
THE PATRIOT (2000) -- 63
THE DAY AFTER TOMORROW (2004) 48
10,000 BC (2008) -- 34
2012 (2009)-- 49

Emmerich did not write THE PATRIOT. And it's not a disaster flick.

Ebert gives 2012 an 88 in METARITIC'S assessment, but Mick LaSalle of the San Francisco Chronicle, a dodo if ever there was one, gives it 100. You don't want to plaay this game. There are some pretty sterling authorities, including some big guns from the New York circle, who rate the movie in the yellow or red range. Listen to what I'm telling you: THE DAY AFTER TOMORROW is scientifically hokey, but it has a simpler, more coherent and more relevant pseudo-scientific basis and its special effects cohere more sensibly and specifically with the characters and the story line and therefore feel more significant as they occur.

FUN? I follow story when there is one to follow, which there emphatically is here, and when that is preposterous (but not bad enough to be so bad it's good), and the scenes and characters are hackneyed, and it goes on for two and a half hours, that is NOT "FUN." Maybe if you've had enough beers, but not straight.

[Johann]

The only story you need to follow is "Earth Go Boom".
ANY story framing the end of the world is subject to serious critical bullets. But you're missing the point. It doesn't matter HOW it happens (meteorite, shifting plates, Dubya forming a thought) that fact is it's happening.
Who cares about the people? Not me. I've got a little misanthropy in me. Especially when I think of Marlon Brando's line to his son Kal-El: They can be a great people Kal-El. If they wish to be. The human race doesn't wish to be.
Humans are for the most part ignorant and selfish, which is on full display in 2012. The exact kind of "survival/saving your ass" behavior would be going on if those events occured.
I'd probably be like Woody Harrelson's character in that I'd embrace my less-than-central existence at that moment and go out with my arms outstretched on a mountaintop, thinking to myself "I had a good time, I'm ready".

Who cares how the end of the world happens?
The point is it's happening.
And while it's happening you won't have time to think about how or why it's happening. You just run for your life.
That's what's shown in 2012.
That's what would be happening. People would be feebly trying to flee in their cars, feebly trying to fly out of there, even with no pilots around! Which is also shown in the film. It would be a mad scramble. Which is shown. It's pretty plausible in that respect.
The actual causes of the disaster are irrelevant, because you can't change that anyway. It's forces beyond your control.

Beers or not, this film is FUN. Fun to watch, fun to experience.
That's why I rave about it.
I think you went into it with a robotic mentality Chris.
This is Roland Emmerich, not Al Gore.

[Chris Knipp]

I hope I don't approach any movie with a "rotoitic mentality." I come into an action movie with the same little boy mentality you express here (though your misogyny is that of a disillusioned adult). However, when 2012 appeals constantly to me as an adult but gives me corn I am turned off. Your appeal to misogyny isn't appropriate: this is a soft-hearted movie, not a misogyistic one


It would be a mad scramble. Which is shown. It's pretty plausible in that respect. Yes, but what is not plausible is how the main character dashes through it all unharmed. That's totally implausible. Not a scratch.

You're ignoring 3/4 of the movie, which plays upon sentiment and caring about connections, sacrifices, raises objections to elitism in the escape from the disaster, etc. Who cares? Evidently Klosser and Emmerich do, or at least they figure the audience does.

I get what you mean about the setup: Emmerich doesn't care how he gets to his doomsday,so long as he can get to it, fast. That he has shown over and over in his movies. But this time the whole setup is particullarly implausible and silly, and how can you enjoy the earth going boom for absurd and impossible reasons? Why not make a movie that would be upsetting to you and me and Al Gore all at the same time?

I'll grant that the CGI images provide good mock-ups of planetary disaster. But unfortunatley there's a whole lot besides that you choose to ignore but nobody reviewing the movie can. As many have pointed out, including Michuk earlier in this thread, there is way too much dialogue. And the more it goes on the cornier and more tedious it all becomes. I would accept your finding this FUN if it wasn't so tediously LONG and talky.

A movie can be spectacular and also smart. This one isn't.

[oscar jubis]

I don't quite understand the reasons for the exchange (debate?) about 2012. I watched it yesterday. Of course it is not plausible that the protagonist "dashes through it all unharmed". Of course 2012 is not "smart". Who claims it is? But there were more than enough awesome, sensational action setpieces to keep me entertained. And the actors do their best to look like they bought into their characters. How does 2012 rank among disaster movies? Would you rather be watching Earthquake or Airport?

[Johann]

What misogyny? I said misanthropy. Two different things.
And "rotoitic?" Who called you rotoitic? Is that even a word?

"Little boy mentality" is good: children are the flotsam and jetsom of adults; in this movie EVERYONE and EVERYTHING is flotsam and jetsom. But I don't know many little boys who sit in their theatre seat contemplating neutrinos...I've talked to two teens who fell asleep during the movie- they hated it. They can't follow this movie at all. It's over their heads. I guess I'm that rare viewer who can look past the bogus jargon/scenarios and just enjoy the ride. I can compartmentalize a movie I like or don't like. I can separate/cut up a film in my head so that I appreciate it in specific ways. In no way can I defend 2012 in sum total. I love it in a specialized way.
Of course it's not plausible that the main character dashes through it all unharmed. That's why it's a movie. "Only in the movies...." Cusack is a little like an accidental Indiana Jones (with no bullwhip).

If this movie had terrible, laughable special effects, I'd be saying what you're saying; I'd look for other weaknesses and criticisms. I'd be tearing the director a new one. Because I can agree that the story is not smart. At all. A better script/story could have made this film a classic. It's not a classic, but it sure is the best disaster movie I've ever seen. Just on the strength of the special effects.
(Which should win an Oscar).

[Chris Knipp]

Sorry about the verbal slip of misogyny for misanthropy.

In some ways this is your most persuasive advocacy of the movie yet. Interesting hat you say about teens. Maybe they're onto something. Can't follow it, eh? With good reason.

Yes, you certainly do compartmentalize. I see movies as a whole. Though not a huge fan of Indiana Jones either, I feel that what Cusack is doing in this movie is less admirable. I can't help wondering what terrible debts he must have to take a job like that. Imagine, an actor who was in Sixteen Candles, Stand by Me, Say Anything, The Grfifters, The Thin Red Line, Being John Malkovich. It should have been called "Play Anything." From The Grifters he's become a Drifter into playing anything. With 1408 you can see he'll jump into a movie that's all special effects, and with stuff like Grace Is Gone and War, Inc. you see he's makng lousy choices, for all different reasons.