Director Roland Emmerich has carved a mini-film empire as a purveyor
of high-tech disaster movies. Emmerich’s films are in the spirit of
’70s-era disaster flicks, with sprawling, cameo-packed casts inhabiting
flimsy characters who are secondary to visual spectacle.
A master of the new technology, Emmerich isn’t content with mere
capsized ocean liners or burning skyscrapers. Only computer-generated
global cataclysm will do.
These films — 1996’s Independence Day, 2004’s
The Day After Tomorrow, and now 2012 — have
emerged as pure formula: An unexpected assault — whether alien or
environmental — threatens mankind. A group of broadly drawn,
relatively multicultural, and far-flung characters are established via
early crosscutting and finally brought together midway through the
film. An Everyman who Understands What’s Happening overcomes obstacles
and doubts to find his place beside the primary decision makers.
Fantasies of mass destruction are indulged. Humanity comes together and
survives to start anew. And so it goes with 2012, its title a
reference to a Mayan calendar prediction about the date of the end of
time.
Independence Day is still beloved in some quarters while
The Day After Tomorrow was an impressive spectacle soon
forgotten, a fate likely to befall 2012 regardless of whether it
recoups its budget.
Independence Day is more the crowd-pleaser for several
reasons: It had some human interest in the form of enjoyably blustery
performances from the likes of Bill Pullman, Will Smith, and Randy
Quaid; by contrast 2012 gets by with an overplayed Woody
Harrelson cameo and a subdued John Cusak (and I can barely remember who
was in The Day After Tomorrow). The alien-invasion angle
provides a villain to fight against and more of a sense of distancing
fantasy. In the other films, the villain is simply nature, and the
specter of environmental devastation, however wildly exaggerated, hits
too close to home to serve as simple popcorn-movie escapism. As a
result, these films try to be more serious but are too clunky and
cartoonish to earn the gravity they aspire too.
2012 is essentially the same film as The Day After
Tomorrow, only with a Great Flood replacing a new Ice Age. The film
opens in 2009 with the discovery of “the biggest solar eruption in
human history” provoking a secret global initiative to plan for
planetary upheaval and the preservation of the species. Later, a
struggling writer and divorced dad (Cusak) is taking his kids on a
Yellowstone camping trip when they wander into a military installation
studying a disappearing — and steaming hot — lake.
Soon, the special effects destruction revs up: Californa collapsing
into the sea is the backdrop to a high-speed thrill ride, like
something from an Indiana Jones movies. Iconic creations such as the
Washington Monument and the Sistine Chapel are pulverized.
There’s something interesting in the film’s sci-fi speculation about
what a (slightly) futuristic Noah’s Ark would be, but 2012 is
built on the spectacle of watching the world collapse over nearly three
hours, with little redeeming value in terms of story, characterization,
or thoughtfulness.
