2012 Movie Review

2012

2012 [Blu-ray]


Director: Roland Emmerich
Written By: Roland Emmerich & Harold Kloser
Starring: John Cusack, Amanda Peet, & Oliver Platt



Last night I found myself sitting in a theater preparing myself to watch the movie 2012. I can honestly say to this very date I am not blown away by any of the previous work from Roland Emmerich. Those of you who are unfamiliar with writer/director Roland Emmerich by name alone you may want to try and remember some of his past work such as Independence Day, The Day After Tomorrow, and 10, 000 B.C. I would like to state for the record that of Emmerich's past works that Independence Day was his closest thing to an enjoyable movie and yet it my opinion it still falls incredibly short of anything remarkable. The only thing impressive about what Emmerich accomplished in the past was the visual effects of Independence Day for their time were quite impressive. I ask myself though that how is it some thirteen years later that the general movie going public are still impressed by the visual effects and can overlook any storyline quality what so ever?

With all this being said let me direct the attention back to our movie at hand. 2012 is much like the previous works of Roland Emmerich, all show with no substance. 2012 which attempts to revolve itself around the Mayan Calender and the end date predicted by the Mayan people. The said date is in place for 12/21/12 which has many theories behind it, most of which the movie never manages to draw any attention to at all. The idea of the Mayan Calender is briefly mentioned on a television news report in the movie and then all attention is immediately drawn away from that. This causes much talk and speculation amongst online social net workers and radio talk show personnel about the end of the world in 2012 like this movie tries to showcase. The problem is that the theories regarding 2012 really do not dwell upon the end of the world at all, in fact any end of the world reference tends to fall along the line of "The End Of The World As We Know It". This is a statement that can be related to a great change in our world, the next step of human evolution, it also relates to astrological changes as well. The Mayan people carefully viewed our skies and created their calender based mainly upon astrology itself and so their end of their calender is likely more in reference to where one era changes over to another, rather then the entire world coming to an end.

It is easy enough for me to pick apart the faults of 2012 for not relating to any true theories of 2012, just like it would be easy for me to pick apart all the historical mistakes made in Emmerich's last work 10,000 B.C. I however want to focus more on the film itself now regarding the acting, subplot, and visuals. The visuals themselves looked fairly impressive and I am sure the average movie goer is going to sit through this movie and be amused by the never ending destructive images across the screen, I for one did not find any amusement in seeing the exact same visuals that were used in The Day After Tomorrow all over again.

As fr the subplot and the acting again they are absolutely nothing to be desired. Much like the scripts of previous work that Emmerich has done you find characters risking their lives in times of trouble and assuring that they will have a dragged out scene of telling their loved ones how much they love them. Never once in this entire film did I feel for any of the characters involved, ever when they were being sent to their own doom I found myself yawning at the screen rather then feeling involved with the characters. Also I was not impressed by John Cusack who I do find to be quite a good actor most of the time, only here he is left with a paper thin script and even he is unable to save it from its own impending doom. I did however figure out that in the face of danger John Cusack can survive every possible disaster and never obtain even a single scratch on his body. I have also never seen a white shirt on a man stay so incredibly clean after outrunning earthquakes, volcanoes, and tsunami's.

Roland Emmerich is in my opinion equivalent to Michael Bay in the fact that they are like five year old kids who never grew up. Emmerich just like Bay enjoys when things go BOOM, BOOM, POW rather then getting themselves lost in an epic story. The tagline for 2012 reads clearly "WE WERE WARNED" only I wish that this had been true about the film itself rather then in reference to the disaster the film revolves around. In closing I recommend that people save their money and see something with more substance and plot.

My Rating: 5%