What does one really expect going into a Roland Emmerich(Day after tomorrow, Independence Day) film like this? Well, you know you'll get a lot of spectacular, $150 million dollar CGI driven panoramic, sweeping effects. If we're lucky and the filmmakers understand minor details like pacing, plot, character arc, we will root for the protagonist who grabs us by the hand and heart and whisks us through the roller coaster. If it combines effects and story and character it can be a thrilling event.
So how does, 2012 do? Okay on the first, a simple fail on the second.
The latest in the German director's end of the world films, 2012 stars Jon Cusak, as some kind of writer who drives limos for a buck, and Chiwetel Ejiofor as geologist Adrian Helmsley . The limited Woody Harleson, is a wacko Yellowstone radio show host who has discovered the conspiracy to cover up the fact that the world will end soon. See, Adrian, two years earlier had discovered that the sun's rays are heating up the earth's core and the continents will soon make like mobile homes and get... err, mobile, which will cause your garden variety quakes, tidal waves, volcanic eruptions, etc. The government scientists have calculated that they have until 2016 until all hell breaks loose. But things happen more quickly than forecast in order to make the film's title work.
In the meantime, secretly, the world governments have made a list of who gets to survive to keep the string of humanity alive. This is the conspiracy Woody has discovered, and, boy is this whole story line contrived. Cusak, who's divorced from Amanda Peet,(is every protagonist divorced by rule nowadays?) takes his kids camping only to discover that the lake they were headed to has evaporated. So he retreats to a campground where Woody has a mobile home radio station. Of course, he thinks Woody's nuts, but later as California slides into the sea, reasons he might have something.
The plot unfortunately slides into the sea also about here. Events intensify, and Cusak hears that the governments are shuttling VIPs to a group of arcs somewhere. So who has a map where the arcs are? Woody! So we go to his mobile home, you are getting the whole MOBILE theme here, right, ransack it to find the map and hope it's right, I guess, then get to the arcs, and hope they'll take us.
And some of these sequences are spectacular, their plane diving under collapsing skyscrapers- you see all the little people inside, trying to hold on, even their paper, the larger scale set pieces of California breaking away, then sinking are very well staged and there's about a half hour here that doesn't make a lot of sense but is awesome to look at.
Then we come to probably one of the stupidest ideas put on screen this year. The Arcs are huge metal ships. Built in the Himalayas. Say what? How can metal ships at 25,00 feet save our heroes? Answer, the scientists, the very same scientists who had figured the earth had until 2016, have figured, through complex mathematical calculations, that the seas will rise, on huge tidal waves, to 25000 feet and gently knock the ships free to float around in peace and happiness.
I mean, seriously?
Where's all that water coming from, are the oceans bone dry? And with whole continental shelves flipping, how did they figure this one little area will be safe? And how, on earth can you forecast that water would even reach this one little cave way up in the mountains?
Guys, why didn't you just write the arcs as a big spaceship that would either go somewhere, or orbit the earth until things calm down? Would have made a lot more sense, I think.
The arc-part of the movie is tedious and predictable, with all kinds of preachy messages and Oliver Plath set up to represent all that is wrong with selfish people. Good role selection, Oliver.
Ratings:
Plot: 19 probably too generous
Character: 21 Cusak tries to do the best he can
Presentation: 31 Visually first rate
