2012 - Movie Review

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2012
***--

I'm not sure where Roland Emmerich draws his inspiration from, but if he's anything like me I assume the man begins a new game of Sim City and spends the next three hours just slamming the keyboard with open palms and hitting random disaster buttons until every residential home and park is flattened, flooded, and burned. The film 2012 is basically the same experience, except this version of Sim City resembles something off of a gaming system a decade ahead of us. A gaming system that allows you to play with John Cusack as the lead character.

If only the future were right now...

It should be noted that Roland Emmerich has assured me that all of the events that take place in 2012 will in fact take place in the year 2012. Considering he also made a similar assurance with The Day After Tomorrow, I think we're in for a rough three years. Live it up.

The movie itself is about what you'd expect. The world begins to blow up and in the process John Cusack gets the one chance he never had to get back in touch with his estranged wife and kids. The man is also a writer, and Roland Emmerich makes the interesting point of noting that whatever copies of literature we have carrying around with us when Earth starts rattling might just be the last books humanity has left. I take this to mean that there's an underground bunker somewhere that Roland Emmerich has stored up with spare copies of Stargate, The Matthew Broderick version of Godzilla, and 10,000 B.C. ...God help us all.

The movie is long. Does it really take two and a half hours to destroy every continent? I don't think so. It only does because Roland Emmerich is clearly a man of science and is kind enough to stoop to my level and show me scenes of scientists looking at computers and saying "The world is exploding. I know. I'm a scientist." He also is kind enough to throw in all sorts of character development, including extraneous characters who are clearly only established so that the narrative has a reason to show a part of the world getting punched in the baby-maker.

That said, some of these extraneous characters are quite fun. I would've just appreciated more focus. For example, the two elderly cruise ship lounge-singers were just great. Imagine how awesome, creative, and innovative this movie would have been if they were the only central characters. That's something I would have really enjoyed. But then again, I suppose that's not why I invested in this ticket. I wanted to see destruction, and really, some of this is just glorious.

I must admit, I really didn't know how 2012 would end. For all of the mass destruction, I really did want to see John Cusack to pull through and save the day. Was this due to good writing, or just John Cusack being John Cusack? I'll never know.

Point is, you could do worse with your movie cash than check this one out.