2012

Roland Emmerich has been trying to eradicate mankind for his entire film career. His latest, 2012, is an apocalyptic disaster picture based on the Mayan calendar's prediction* of the end times. Previous to that, he gave us The Day After Tomorrow, a climatic auger of doom based on the global warming scare. In 1998, he resurrected Godzilla to trample the earth to death. Aliens threatened the annihilation of the planet in Emmerich's UFO hooey Independence Day in 1996. And in 1992, Herr Direktor showed us a glimpse of our suicidal bellicosity while simultaneously destroying our will to live by teaming Jean Claude Van Damme with Dolph Lundgren in a single film called Universal Soldier.

Why does this man despise humanity so? I know the Germans have always trended toward mayhem and carnage, but this is just ridiculous.

People have been fascinated with end times mythology and crackpot messages of doom since our first ape-like ancestors struggled out of the mud and began drawing characters on the walls of their caves. The evolution of these cataclysmic prophecies has progressed little to this day as ape-like creatures with brains of swamp gas (John Hagee) still act as “Chicken Little” harbingers of Armageddon. They’ve just conveniently thrown the Jews and “Destroyer Jesus” into the mix.

This is not to say that certain omens prognosticating the horrific fall of mankind cannot be seen in recent events. The specter of a possible, if unlikely, Palin presidency still haunts the American political conscious. Surely, that would be an omen of impending catastrophe. How about the persistent popularity of rap music (how long, Oh Lord, how long?) for a glimpse into unfortunate foreordination? What about M. Night Shyamalan still being allowed to make pictures? Can anybody reassure me that inevitable suffering and calamity does not await a species that allows the “Big Red” cinnamon gum jingle to be resurrected for a mobile phone company? And personally, the increasing unavailability of X-Factor Lemon-Lime Strawberry Gatorade in the 32 ounce jug as a balm for my crippling hangovers must hold a clue as to our ultimate demise.

I’m not saying the signs aren’t out there. I’m just skeptical that an advanced tribe of bloodthirsty, cocaine-addled Mexicans correctly envisioned the fall of man. Coke and human sacrifice are good for a lot of things (including very lively Saturday nights), but predicting the future isn’t one of them. On the other hand, if the Mayans could have foreseen anything as insidious as a Roland Emmerich film, they likely would have portended our ruin.

*Disclaimer: the Mayan 2012 calendar kafuffle is really a misunderstanding. The “end time” date represents transition, not destruction. But as you know, Hollywood prefers destruction. “Transition” is a theme for filmmakers who have a budget of $10,000 and can only snag Felicity Huffman as a lead - and only if she works for scale.

With that in mind we will dispose of the typical format for film reviews today because 2012 is so appallingly bad, so utterly devoid of merit, so stained on its very soul that conventional structures of prosaic mockery will not suffice. Its flaws (like its target audience) must be addressed in sound bytes and heaps of ridicule.

My observations:

1) In my initial screening of the film I dropped some acid and tried to sync up Rush’s 2112 with it - in the same spirit that Pink Floyd’s Dark Side of the Moon supposedly acts as a surreal soundtrack to The Wizard of Oz (it doesn‘t). All I really garnered from the experiment was that when Geddy Lee’s voice is combined with the disastrous vision of a German filmmaker, it only seems like the end of humanity is at hand. I also discovered that Rush is an absolute downer when you’re tripping balls. The whole “Temples of Syrinx” thing seemed like a sure bet.

2) It’s a little premature (and naive) of Hollywood to depict every future U.S. President and 40% of his cabinet as African-American going forward. This seems to occur exclusively in disaster pictures. There’s some ironic liberal cynicism in there somewhere.

3) Actors playing scientists spouting theories on neutrino counts and their effects on the earth’s core would be a lot more believable if they had not formerly appeared as a drag queen in a British comedy or a douchebag martial arts instructor in a rare David Mamet failure.

4) With the world literally falling to pieces, where were Dick and Liz Cheney blaming it all on Muslims and the attorneys who represent them?

5) If the apocalypse ever does come in my lifetime, I’m heading over to Amanda Peet’s house to hide out in her eyebrows.

6) George Segal has fallen a long way from his Oscar nomination for Who’s Afraid of Virginia Woolf?.

7) The credibility of this film comes immediately into question when the screenwriter makes the hero (John Cusack) a writer. Writers are never heroic. They drink a lot and write about heroism. And they’re selfish assholes.

8) Additionally, on the far-fetched front, Woody Harrelson plays a heroic blogger/conspiracy theorist/survivalist. Not that bloggers or tin-foil-hat nut jobs can’t do good deeds, but everybody knows Woody Harrelson can’t read or write.

9) How the hell did the Russians emerge as evil again? Sounds like my Randroid, Libertarian, Reagan worshiping brother-in-law wrote the screenplay.

10) If your hot ex-wife has to fuck a nerd, make sure he’s seeking a pilot’s license.

11) Turns out John Cusack is the greatest driver in the world.

12) I still can’t believe that Thandie Newton is the same charming actress I was introduced to in Flirting back in 1991. What the hell happened to her?

13) Hollywood has turned on Arnold Schwarzenegger here with a diegetic TV aside, proving that politics does ruin everything and that even hulking Austrians cannot escape the wrath of limousine liberals or the Republican Party.

14) The screenwriters shamelessly and lazily rehashed a line from Jaws thinking that either the audience was too young or too dumb to notice. After our protagonist family barely escapes the smoke-billowing, earthquake shattered devastation of L.A. via a twin engine, a character observes, “We’re going to need a bigger plane.” Aargh. 

It was here, at the one hour and five minute mark, that I began cheering for the chaos - rooting on the nuclear meltdown of the earth’s very core. I could take no more. If one more precocious child actor quipped, if another archetypal character was introduced, if there were any more last second rescues from the brink of sure death, if Amanda Peet remain clothed, I was sure to lose my mind.

I snorted my final line of coke, placed my cat on the stone altar, plunged my hand into its chest and pulled out its beating heart. The DVD player switched off. The movie was stopped. The gods had been appeased. As, finally, was I.