Nobody is better at blowing shit up than Roland Emmerich. For years he sat uncontested, first with Martians in “Independence Day,” then with weather in “The Day After Tomorrow.” But then Michael Bay came around with the “Transformers” franchise as if to say, “Hey Emmer-bitch. I’m going to blow shit up with robots,” and made millions of dollars. “2012” is Emmerich’s clear response of, “Good try, Bay. But I’m going to blow up the world.”
Emmerich makes it immediately clear that he hopes to incorporate every adventure story clich? since the birth of Jesus. Protagonist Jackson Curtis (John Cusack, “Igor”) is the classic estranged father, divorced from his wife (Amanda Peet, “What Doesn’t Kill You”) simply because he loved his job too much. Also included is an epic president who cares more about humanity than his legacy (Danny Glover, “Down for Life”), a crazy conspiracy theorist who turns out to be right (Woody Harrelson, “Zombieland”), a White House bureaucrat who seeks to preserve the lives of the rich rather than the deserving (Oliver Platt, “Year One”) and an enormous Russian man who we know is a villain because he is enormous and speaks Russian (Zlatko Buric, “Milo’s Wheels”). Ostensibly, the movie is about Curtis’ courageous attempts to save his family but as an audience, we all know what the movie is really about — watching shit blow up.
Is the dialogue in the movie good? No, the majority of it is laughable. In one scene, Jackson attempts to obtain the shelter of a massive ark in the Himalayas. When the man guarding the gate refuses, his mother responds, “We are all children of the world.” This is all it takes to convince him. Are the characters realistic? Of course not. Emmerich knows a charismatic lead character and some adorable children is all it takes for us to care.
A common trap of popcorn movies is that they hide under pretenses. Emmerich’s own “The Day After Tomorrow” made environmentalism, not awesome explosions, the central theme of the movie, and all it did was underscore the movie’s significant artistic weaknesses. Every movie is judged by what it presents itself to be, so when a movie that is primarily about watching people get owned by weather masquerades as political commentary, it sets itself up for failure.
Emmerich does not repeat this mistake in “2012.” From start to finish, the movie frames destruction with a creative relentlessness that throws out constraints like “character development” and “the plot of the movie.” There is a kind of calculated intensity to the movie that suggests Emmerich has mastered the disaster movie format — scenes of an entire neighborhood being torn asunder are interlocked with the struggles of Curtis trying to overcome an oblivious old lady driving with groceries.
Every scene in the movie feels like three disaster movies combined into one. Most movies may be content with the hero barely avoiding either an exploding truck or an exploding gas station; in “2012,” the hero jumps a ramp while a truck flies over him into a gas station. These are just the skills you pick up as a fledgling, divorced writer. In a later scene, the president wakes up to see that both a tidal wave and an air craft carrier are coming toward him. Also, the Washington Monument. The movie’s climax throws together a third of humanity hurtling towards Mount Everest, a medical procedure, a young child’s risk of drowning and a giraffe. It is inspiring to see a movie power through reality with sheer brute force of will.
But the power of “2012” is that it realizes its limitations. One of the reasons people come to movies is to escape, and “2012” allows that to happen by defying all conventions of realism. In an age where movies are forced repeatedly to confront the cynicism of a generation without innocence, it’s both inspiring and ironic that a movie about the end of the world should be so optimistic.
Proponents of Michael Bay claim he can explode your mother and make you think it’s cool. In “2012” Emmerich ups the ante by one step: He can create a movie devoid of realism, depth or relevance, and he’ll make you like it.
4 1/2 out of 5 stars.
