2012 PG 13
Well it's better than 'The Day After
Tomorrow' but not by much and definitely improved over 'Godzilla 1998', but for
the special effect eye candy it only gets 2 stars. The rest is conspiracy nut
hokum that wants to believe in several theories and crackpot ideas at once. Not
a single character's name is memorable, having just seen it yesterday. Cusack
plays a down and out author turned limo driver who has to take his kids to
Yellowstone for a camping trip while ex wife and new boyfriend are caught in
'the big one' in Los Angeles. It seems 3 years prior to this Cusack was a
research scientist who actually met with the biggest top scientists when they
learned that 'solar flares' were going to melt the earth's core and cause a
'crustal fissure shift', (cue unintended laughter). Uh, okay. The President,
who is Morgan Freeman apparently (because the female President was rewritten at
the last minute in post production when Obama won), and he is sad that he is in
this train wreck. So not only is Morgan teetering on losing his credibility in
Hollywood, the planet is about to crack like an eggshell and bits of it will
soon float about like chaff to the wind. (Again cue unintended laughs). Limo
driver man rescues wife, kids and boy friend after narrowly escaping the
decimation of LA (including the studio that produced this. Poetic justice)?
They coincidentally will run into a boxing promoter from Russia (as Emmerich
loves stereotypes going back to Rocky sequels, and super intelligent Indian
scientists, and Americanized Chinese and Tibet monks in for good measure). The
only mention of Mexico or Brazil is a reference to some of it being devastated.
And Africa gets mentioned too. How does author turned scientist limo driver
know all this stuff? How does he have all the luck in the universe on his side?
How does it relate in any way to Mayan prophecy we have misread to mean 'solar
alignment means end of days'? If you're looking for real answers, do not see
this fantasy film. If you're looking for thrilling eye candy effects and dismal
nonsense plot, this is your film. Based loosely on some of the conspiracy
stories about Yellowstone volcano, (it is inactive), Mayan end of days stuff,
crustal displacement theories and solar flare and ozone depletion, pole
shifting theories and more. He manages to toss in every nut job conspiracy over
the past ten years. Now that is a feat of daring film making. Too bad the story
and script suffer from it and the acting is laughable, dreadful and terrifying.
And it's too freaking long! Well it won't put you to sleep but it will make you
think nut jobs are truly crazy. Woody Harrelson's character ranting was the
only good dialog because he was clearly a reflection of the source material.
Science BS ideas would have doomed it. First of all, giant solar flare hits
Earth, we die instantly. As for pole shifting, well that would destroy compass
headings and disrupt the magnetic field, cooking us. Plate shifting that
rapidly? There is no record of that happening since the breakup of Pangeaa 60
million years ago, and even then it took millions of years for the crust to
shift to present conditions. If it happened in a day, we would be dead.
Everyone. No way out. even if Yellowstone erupted (as it did before the last
great ice age) the ash and debris would decimate the northern hemisphere for
years, and would not trigger other volcanoes. And the core heating, melting
deal? Umm, it is like motel rock slag under the crust. It doesn't melt. there's
a mantle of pressurized liquid rock and then an inner mantle and core of molten
iron. Magnetic fields do not just swap and turn off because of solar flares
either. Turn off maybe. Toasted earth. But still the most egregious decimation
of theory is that 2012 'prophecy'. First of all, the Mayans weren't afraid to
finish their accurate astral dating system, more accurate than our modern
calendar. They just stopped. Nobody knows why. Maybe the chronicler died.
Furthermore, even though theirs was a solar calendar and ours lunar, and
extrapolation is possible they've tossed in 2012 even though the Mayans were
not thinking of Roman dates at all (as in they were long before the Romans and
had no knowledge of them). And as for the 'galactic alignment', the Mayans did
not know there was a 'galaxy'. All they saw were stars in a band across the sky
and calculated the solar alignment with the central bulge of the star mass. They
had no idea what it was. why they're extrapolating our calendar into theirs and
have come up with 2012 remain a mystery. And if the film makers believed it was
happening, they wouldn't be filming movies but would head for the hills.
Review by Adam Browne
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