Review: 2012

     There are many varying beliefs that the world will end catastrophically. The Mayans in particular believe that the end of the world starts with a cosmic alignment of the sun with the center of our Galaxy, which happens to be in December of the year 2012. The cosmic alignment will cause the sun to have wild solar flares which will emit neutrinos that will act like microwaves on the planet's inner core, heating up the center of the earth until the crust begins to melt and the tectonic plates shift and cause massive earthquakes and eventually tsunamis, wiping out the inhabitants of the world. The question is: how are we going to survive it?
    That is what Roland Emmerich's newest disaster movie 2012 bases its action on. Several families across the face of the earth must survive the ensuing earthquakes that split the earth and kill billions. Emmerich, a native German, has been making disaster movies for years. Independence Day (1996) was about aliens attempting to destroy the earth, Godzilla (1998) had a giant lizard destroy Manhattan, and The Day After Tomorrow (2004) saw the side effects of pollution cause massive global warming to the point of human destruction. Each movie bears its own set of cheesy families fighting for all of humanity.

The Tsunami pours over the mountains...

     According to Robin Wood and Christian Metz, these families are what the American public wants to see. John Cusack plays Jackson Curtis, a divorced writer still trying to save his family, both literally and in the sense of the ideological family. This ideological family is the two parents (of opposite sex) and two children, one son and one daughter. The family starts out broken, a divorce separates the parents and the children seem more privy to their new dad, Gordon (Thomas McCarthy) who dotes them with cell phones and attention. But, in the end, it is the ideological family that wins out, and the audience cheers when the mom and dad get back together again.

The Curtis family's first plane flies through two falling buildings.

 

     Another, not so prominently featured part of the American Dominant Ideology theory is the male dominance in the film. Of course, the scientists who discover that the world will end in three years are all males, and they bring the information to male politicians who see to it that they are saved. Also, when John Cusack's family is in an airplane flying to China with a family from Russia, Gordon (who is forced to pilot the massive cargo plane on just two flying lessons) comes to the cargo hold to ask the two men to come look at the issues they will be facing. In essence, it is the men who will protect and save the women, and who willingly give their lives to save their families.
     Robin Wood's Ideological film theory claims that the American public believes in the Rosebud syndrome (as from Citizen Kane, 1941). The Russian family flying with the Curtis family are billionaires, having payed billions to be saved. But clearly, money cannot buy you happiness. The Russian family seems broken, money having bought the father's new girlfriend, who isn't the brightest. The sons are two brats ready to cut down their American family counterparts.

Yellowstone explodes.

     Lastly, the ideological theory calls for a resolution of current pressing issues. Our current pressing issue is the ticking timeclock the Mayan calandar layed out for us. Only three years away, December of 2012 is an oddly pressing issue for many people today, and they're all wondering what we're going to do to survive it. 2012 offers that wildly outrageous solution for us. The billionaire Russian family has recently paid billions of dollars to get tickets onto an ark. The bigtime male politician to whom the scientists brought the information of the end of the world, have used the money from the tickets to build seven enormous arks (like from Noah's Ark in the bible) to store the people when the tsunamis come and flood the planet. Thus, only the rich can survive... but, being human is to care for each other, so they open the gates to the arks to let in all those who are in the vicinity, including the workers who helped build the ships.
     The movie cost $200 million to make, most of that money going to the immense amounts of CG (I swear that 85% of the film was CG). Although the film has already earned that money back and then-some (although 75% of its gross so far has been from foreign box offices), it really has nothing to offer its audience outside the satisfaction of the dominant ideology. The Movie was shot on a Panasonic HD camera, probably since most of it was going to be going through the computer to be CGed up, making the whole movie seem a lot more fake to me. HD cameras just aren't good enough yet for me to enjoy watching a 2 hour and 40 minute movie recorded in it.

Escaping from the ensuing disaster... a sight seen more than once.

     The movie really lasted too long, and there were so many cheesy moments I wanted to gag. I found myself throwing my hands up in the air at every syntagma (plot point), angry either with the poor CG (or at least its overuse) or with the poor design of the story, or with a decision the characters made, or with some outrageous moment, or something else, OR SOME OTHER STUPID THING! Really, there is no need to see this movie, unless you want to know just how much CG one can actually fit into a "Live Action" film... It gets me real excited for Avatar!

Revisited: Armageddon

I have not seen Michael Bay’s 1998 film since theatres with my cousin and aunt as a naïve and wide-eyed child. The past few years have had me plagued with a curious desire to rewatch the movie that I remember as epic and amazing. Imagine my disappointment. Granted, the past 11 years have seen my film education multiply infinitely but regardless of such fact, this film, er movie, would fail miserably.

In the vein of Bay’s previous film, The Rock, it is a hard-hitting and implausible adventure. However, this time the entire world is on the line and the only people to save it are an amalgamated list of A and B stars who all suffer from bad acting. Not that much more should be expected. And much akin to Bay’s feature length epic-music video set on Alcatraz, it is a nauseating and flamboyantly disorganized experiment in what David Bordwell might call hyper-intensified continuity. If the camera doesn't move that we hardly see the cut long enough to decipher such. And if nothing is exploding or ticking down or going wrong, or even if it is, then it will likely be basked in a cold blue or green light. And if the shot isn’t of the entire city being wiped out by a meteor chunk than its someone’s cringing faces as something else goes wrong. This movie’s pace slows not, even for tender moments between father and daughter as he is about to save the world from the inevitable Texas sized meteor.

I really hate to call Bay an auteur because it suggests an artistically and tonally motivated appearance of his oeuvre, but fast cuts, flying cameras, silhouetted helicopters, and ridiculous plots are evident in practically all his films. I can’t wait to see what the next Untitled Jerry Bruckheimer/Michael Bay project entails. But lets reflect on the one hint of possible quality of this film; the belief that we as humans have the ability to save ourselves from extra-cosmic events far beyond the scale of our strengths. Giant meteor? Nuke it. The film almost tries to deal with the inevitability of death and human place among the stars but falls to the commercial explosions, action, and patriotism. It’s surprising that the bomb wasn't painted as an American Flag.

What’s wrong with this movie? Its like watching an exhausting and poorly constructed trailer for over two hours and coming away with even less of a message than could be packed into a two minute teaser. The biggest event of mankind is played off like another Roland Emmerich movie. I should clarify that I was not disappointed with this movie; I certainly didn't want to like it. So if anything it should be complete satisfaction. At least in a way.

Upcoming Feature. 2012.

I have not prayed since junior high but I pray tonight that Roland Emmerich’s “epic adventure about a global cataclysm that brings an end to the world and tells of the heroic struggle of the survivors” is the coolest movie I have ever seen. I cannot think of a more fitting film for our day and age than a plot-less thrill fest starring John Cusack. I will make sure I bring my barf bag along when I don’t attend the premier. And who knows, perhaps fortune will smile on the man who brought us an A-list of instant classics. 10,000 BC, The Day After Tomorrow, Godzilla. Need I continue? (Mad props to Independence Day.) The ultimate in movie promotion would be for the chronicled events to come true, as is prophesized: the final realization of life imitating art with Emmerich as the finest artistic craftsmen the world has seen. I hereby predict that 2012 will be the epitome of filmmaking prowess and testament to cinematic virtuosity. Emmerich, literally, has the hands of God and any and all things he touches turn to motion picture gold.

Now, I should not discount the credibility of this film just yet. The star studded cast and flawless visuals should carry this masterpiece to the Oscars and back, arms loaded. If you have not checked out the trailer yet, do so, music courtesy of The Shining. And when you’re done, don't miss five minutes of the film. The visuals here will knock your socks off, the arc of each character is present from the first frame, is this real or fake? To get of sense of how mind blowing this story is and how Emmerich and his team captured the verisimilitude of this event, see it without the subjective, eyewitness footage.

I feel that with this film American Cinema will reach the pinnacle of its artistic and socially-conscious success. Take every important and concerned documentary, fuse it with the richest and most beautiful art films, and inject it with the availability and universal acclaim of a child’s film, and what is the product? Roland Emmerich’s 2012. This film is not only a prophecy as to how the world will end, it is a prophecy as to the future of American movie making. This is a future concerned about the world, where everyone is lent a helping hand, and where no one is left on the top of a mountain to be killed by a tidal wave.

Not only will this film be a social and historical achievement but also, and theorists and critics would agree, it will be a technological achievement as well. Straying from the much overwrought digital drawing and graphics that afflict many modern films, Emmerich returns to the roots with good old-fashioned stunts and extras. A cast of tens of thousands of extras showed up to help, free of charge, with the film. Stunts took place in and around both New York and L.A. Extras hurled themselves from falling skyscrapers, jammed cars on collapsing highways, and dove headfirst into bottomless rifts. And the most wonderful evidence of this film as a true social force, the Mother Teresa of movies, the Ghandi of the silver screen, is the expected $2 billion dollars of profit will go to feed the poor. So, be American. Help others. Lend a hand by supporting local cinema and go spend that dollar on 2012 if it's the last thing you do.