Movie Review: 2012

Boil It Down:  Roland Emmerich hates humanity (again) in a CGI spectacle with a plethora of recognizable talent but relatively little to say about humanity or its argument for survival.

2012 actually starts in 2009 when geologist Adrian Helmsley (Chiwetel Ejiofor) is summoned to India.  It seems as though a solar flare is helping to push neutrons past their normal, benign use up in the sky.  In short, they are turning into microwaves, cooking the inside of the Earth, eventually causing earthquakes, tsunami and global mayhem.  Into this impending mess are an ensemble of characters, ranging from a divorced couple (John Cusack, Amanda Peet), the president (Danny Glover) and his daughter (Thandie Newton) to a conspiracy theorist radio host (Woody Harrelson) and a Russian billionaire (Zlatko Buric).  All have one singular thought on their minds: survival when the world is literally coming apart at the seams.

More than any of writer/director Roland Emmerich's previous disaster films (Independence Day, The Day After Tomorrow), 2012 is an ensemble film like the classic The Towering Inferno or The Poseidon Adventure.  The film spends a good 45 minutes right off the top introducing all the main players and their various relationships; more than anything, this is why 2012 lasts a seemingly-obscene 158-minutes.  This allows the remainder of the story to focus on the running and jumping, shouting and chasing from fireballs and explosions and tidal waves and earthquakes and anything else Mother Nature can throw at the planet.  In that respect, the finished product is entertaining, but lacks the "wow" factor that came with the White House exploding in Independence Day, for example.  (An argument can be made that disaster-level special effects are so commonplace today that it will take an awful lot to amaze an audience these days.)

To say 2012 has script-level problems in an understatement.  What can anyone truly expect, though, from the movie?  A grand discussion on the moral implications of a small fraction of the human race surviving?  Ruminations on familial rifts?  The right or wrong way to tell a child the world may very well be coming to an end?  At the end of the day, 2012 feels like a generic disaster film with Mayan calendar doomsday information inlaid at various points.  Aside from a slight nod to history from Harrelson's Charlie Frost (quite possibly the most annoying personality on screen), the Mayan's aren't mentioned at all.  There's lots of talk, relatively speaking, of the crust heating up, alignment of the continents changing and neutrons frying us from the inside out.  The script even skips out on the potentially riveting conversations world leaders have about the impending disaster and how to work toward securing the species.  At one point, President Thomas Wilson (Glover) announces the issue to the G8 and, in the next, a massive plan in underway, including what is called a "dam."  Art work is being removed from museums, people are dying in fireballs...but the press and average citizen has no idea what's going on.  In that sense, Deep Impact is a much better story, opting to show the ELE from all sides.  In the place of all these decisions are a wide swath of "people" scenes, designed to get the audience to care about which characters live and which don't, overlaid with more computer generated destruction than possibly any film in Hollywood history.

Does any of that really matter, in the end?  Not really.  Emmerich populates his movie world with reputable, honest-to-goodness actors all taking pages right out of Disaster Film 101.  Ejiofor,who deserves to be a household name by now, breathlessly butts heads with Oliver Platt's Carl Anheuser, his boss, over what it means to be human time and again.  Cusack maintains a straight face each and every time he's forced to run from a massive ocean wave bearing down on him or put in front of a green screen.  Their names, faces and considerable talent give 2012 legitimacy it might not otherwise have had.  Even with that legitimacy comes gaps in logic or, worse, actions taken to advance the plot rather than from a place of honesty.  There's no way to rationalize the president not evacuating the White House in this kind of emergency, regardless of how much he might protest or want to stay where he is.  This is the president of the United States, the leader of the free world, the man who put this entire international operation together.  And he's going to stay behind because, in his words, the new world will need more young fresh minds (like Helmsley) and less old politicians?  Sorry, excuse me.  Secret Service evidently doesn't know what their job is; however, this decision sets up one of the major conflicts in the third act.  The reasoning is dubious at best, incompetent at worst.   

It is odd, though, to see movies and TV jumping on the proverbial bandwagon in regards to non-white American presidents.  Deep Impact had Morgan Freeman, the series 24 had two black presidents and now 2012.  Okay guys, enough.  While we're on the subject of diversity, the casting director and script should be lauded for not being Caucasian- or American-centric.  Heck, there are people of every age, a multitude of ethnicities and cultural backgrounds, marital statuses, professions and every other category you can imagine. Except one: not a single gay character.  How do we know this?  For starters, almost every character has a romantic interest of some kind, past or present.  Not a one mentions a same sex partner.  In the grand scheme of the movie, this oversight isn't terribly important.  But when the Curtis storyline comes from California and makes a pitstop in Las Vegas, there should be at least one homosexual character.

At a certain point in the third act, the entire endeavor gets a bit...boring.  Maybe that's the wrong word for it.  A more apt one might be overkill or tedious.  After watching the talking heads bounce back and forth about the coming disaster, the various participants moving heaven and earth to reach a certain location and then a power struggle, there's still big, bold action sequences to go.  At some point, enough is enough.  The film could-and probably should-end without the final half hour with all its speechifying (think Bill Pullman's "Today we celebrate our Independence Day!" monologue), CGI and Titanic-ish water-based drama.  Emmerich can't seem to help himself though; to be fair, this portion of the film does complete the story in a conventional way.  The problem is, at this point, the audience has already witnessed so much carnage and destruction, they're almost as drained as the characters.  Remember Murphy's Law?  Where whatever can go wrong will go wrong?  2012 revels in taking it to the Nth degree.  The planet is realigning?  Oh good.  The world's monuments are crumbling, millions upon millions of people dead?  We'll deal.  Our main characters have to solve every single problem almost single handedly?  But of course.  Especially when they're normal, everyday folks forced to become engineers, security officers or pilots.  I guess that's par for the course, average citizens doing the incredible.  Even if it involves outrunning a tidal wave or speeding a limousine through a crumbling city.  Or flying a double engine plane 15 feet off the ground...

Hey, no one said 2012 was based in reality.