Roland Emmerich. A man who's name, and work, should be familiar to anybody who, like me, has even a glancing interest in cinema. Independence Day and Godzilla (1998) are arguably his most well known films but for me it was 2012 that was really his defining moment. The moment he went from "that guy who directed Independence Day, and that shit Godzilla movie," to "Roland Emmerich". That might be a unfair assumption, for what it's worth 12 year old me really enjoyed Godzilla '98, but I honestly believe it was 2012 that defined Emmerich as the "apocalypse guy". His name is now synonymous with over-produced disaster movies featuring lots of shouting and crying, and cities getting blown up or destroyed in spectacular fashion, and you can bet your ass I'm talking my girlfriend into going to watch Moonfall with me, but the point being: there was only ever one movie I wanted to cover for my first post of 2022. And it was this one: the painfully, excruciatingly long disaster porn experience that is 2012.
It's 2009 and Adrian Helmsley (Chiwetel Ejiofor) is in a re-purposed Cooper Mine in India where he learns that particles from solar flares are heating up the Earth's core... travelling immediately to Washington he crashes a party being held by Carl Anheuser (Oliver Platt) - the White House Chief of Staff and presents him with a report that immediately get's him an audience with The President... fast forward to the G8 Summit 6 months later, and President Thomas Wilson (Danny Glover) delivers a shocking indictment to the rest of the Summit to confirm that "the world as we know it will soon come to an end."... Fast forward again to, uh, 2012 presumably and Jackson Curtis (John Cusack), a divorced writer in California is almost bang late picking his children up from their mum, Kate (Amanda Peet) but makes it in time for them to go camping, in Yellowstone National Park, of all places... meanwhile after Laura (Thandiwe Newton), the Presidents daughter, learns of the death of the Louvre Museum Director, she bursts in on her Dad having a meeting with Adrian and Carl where Mr President, presumably, tells her that the world is basically about to end... and Adrian proceeds to make his way to Yellowstone where, after Jackson and his kids 'accidentally' trespass into restricted area and get arrested by the US Military, he meets with Jackson and after discovering he is a writer that he's a fan of, ensures that they are released and escorted off property, but his good mood is short lived as when he returns to a call with his colleague Satnam Tsurutani (Jimi Mistry) he learns that the Earth's crust is de-stabilizing much quicker than expected. Meanwhile Jackson and his kids are on the way back to the car when they are ambushed by Charlie Frost (Woody Harrelson), a conspiracy theorist who believes that government is hiding things, because naturally, and later as they bed down for the night Jackson just so happens to notice Charlie delivering his indie radio show from a nearby camper. where he pretty much just actually describes everything that is about to happen in this movie to Jackson, who naturally doesn't believe him. Meanwhile Adrian gives the word to Carl that they should begin evacuation procedures despite it being far too soon and at a meeting of world leaders, the President gives the order. Meanwhile after a mini-quake hits California, almost wrecking a supermarket, Kate asks for Jackson and the kids to come back home early and after dropping them off he immediately reports for work as a limo driver, collecting Russian oligarch Yuri Karpov (Zlatko Buric)'s brat children and when they make a flippant remark about "going to a big ship and living," Jackson suddenly realises that Charlie was telling the truth the whole time. Frantically booking a jet he races back to Kate's house just in time as all of California starts going to shit. Frantically racing through town as all manner of things explode and fall apart, Jackson, Kate and this kids with Gordon (Thomas McCarthy), Kate's new partner make it to Santa Monica Airport and just manage to get in a plane and off the ground before most of California is swallowed up by an enormous sink hole. After Adrian has a tearful exchange with his Dad who is onboard the "Genesis" Cruise Ship (yeah, that's what they named it...) we are back with Jackson et al, who land in Yellowstone, with Jackson immediately running off to find Charlie whilst Gordon refuels the plane, finding Charlie and his camper but unable to convince him to come with, Jackson flees with his camper and his stuff just as Mount Big Horn goes up and half of Yellowstone erupts like a nuke has just gone off. Managing to make it back to the runway Jackson is just able to retrieve the map - a map of sites where citizen preservation spaceships will be apparently taking off - and make it back on to the plane before most of Yellowstone gets swallowed up. Back with Adrian and after a mild tiff between him and Carl, with Adrian believing the people have right to know what is happening whilst Carl is more concerned about evacuating the government safely, Adrian and President Thomas have a heart to heart with the President essentially vacating his seat on the spaceship, and after Adrian arrives at Air Force One to deliver the news to Carl, he makes a judgement call that they should take off immediately, which doesn't go down well with Adrian but he is overruled with Carl essentially admitting that anybody who knew the truth "had to be taken care of" including the former Director of the Louvre Museum... After a tearful phone call with his daughter, Laura, the President confirms the worst to the rest of the world, watched on in Las Vegas by Jackson and his family, who after hooking up with Yuri and his family board a Russian plane; an Antonav 500. I... have no idea if that is a real plane or not. But it's huge. And they just escape as the Yellowstone ash cloud envelops most of Las Vegas. After planning to land to refuel before continuing to China the crew discover their landing... country... is now basically a vat of molten lava and smoke... After a peppering of scenes basically showcasing the complete and total destruction of, well, everything; The President finally meets his maker as a huge tsunami washes an actual Aircraft Carrier into the White House, the Genesis Cruise Ship is swallowed up by a tsunami, and the earths crust shifts some 1,500 odd miles, back on board the *checks notes* Autonav 500, the planes engines begin to cut out due to fuel exhaustion. Fully expecting to be over ocean, the crew prepare to evacuate only to discover the entire area completely frozen over. Making a snap decision to vacate the plane using Yuri's Bentley they leave via the cargo hold as the plane crashes over a crevice and explodes. Yuri and his sons are then collected by a Chinese helicopter, they just so happened to be passing by evacuating zoo animals... but leaves Jackson and his family, and Yuri's girlfriend Tamara (Beatrice Rosen) behind, however they are later collected by Nima (Osric Chau), a Tibetan Monk who is making his way to the spaceships with his Grandmother, as he has a promise of safety on there by his brother who has been helping build them. Also arriving in China at roughly the same time are Adrian, Carl and Laura who learn that the spaceships, or more specifically; Ark's, as they aren't spaceships at all but giant boats, are mostly ready except for Ark 3 which has been damaged by the disasters. Boarding their own Ark, Ark 4, Adrian becomes increasingly frustrated with the bureaucracy and hypocrisy of the whole project, only more amplified when he receives a goodbye call from Satnam who tells him that the evacuation helicopters never arrived. But it's via Satnam that they learn of a huge tsunami less than half hour away from the launch side, and moving fast. Back inside the hanger, when it becomes apparent that Ark 3 is leaving without its crew Yuri leads a revolt against the guards, breaking through the security, whilst Nima's relative sneaks him, his family and the Jackson family all inside. However Yuri and the crowd are unable to make it onboard and after rioting outside, and after an impassioned speech by Adrian, the countries unanimously vote to open up the Arks to the crowd outside and let them onboard. But as the gates begin to open, Jackson and his family are still not fully safe inside and in the resulting panic, Gordon is crushed as he falls into the rotating gears and back on the docking platform Yuri is unable to make it on board after saving his sons and plummets to his death. After the closing of the gate doesn't fully complete, thanks to a blockage, Adrian and the others discover the Jackson family and the Nima family in the Zoological department and Adrian and Laura, with some assistance, scramble to their rescue. Meanwhile with the Ark door not completely closed the Ark begins to take on water and initiates an auto lockdown procedure, locking the families apart in different sections, slowly filling with water... Arriving at the Zoological compound, Adrian tells Jackson that they have to get the Ark door closed to lift the lockdown, so volunteering on essentially a suicide mission Jackson dives below the water to get to the door blockage but is unable to free it himself until his son joins him to help. Finally freeing the blockage the gate cycle completes and seals the Ark and they are able to fire up the engines to just narrowly avoid slamming against the north face of Mount Everest, as Jackson emerges from the deep alive. Fast forward some 27 days later and we learn that Adrian and Laura are now an item, that Jackson and Kate are now back together and that the African continent, having survived the disasters mostly unscathed is the new destination for all surviving humanity.
PHEEEW! That was a long one. I feel almost like I've been trying to escape with the Jackson family myself! That might be the longest body of text yet for a plot rundown, thank you if you made it this far down and you're still reading. I purposely picked 2012 as my first movie of 2022 as I wanted to open with a turn of the year disaster movie and as aforementioned 2012 was the movie where Roland Emmerich became that guy. There was alot that this movie got right, and it got really right, but there was also some huge, gaping aspects of it that really damaged the overall experience of the movie.
Let's start with the largest problem; the length. This movie clocks in at roughly 2 hours 28 minutes not counting the credits sequence at the end, and to give the movie it's due it crams alot in to allotted time and I guess you're covering the complete and total destruction of the entire known planet so uh, alot of material to work with I guess, but it is just too long. It goes beyond being just a movie and dangerously into, I don't know, disaster opera territory or something. I don't feel like there is any needless filler necessarily, most of the content in this movie, when it isn't spectacular disaster set pieces is at least driving the narrative of the plot, but there should have been some sacrifices I think to bring the run time down as it just feels like an epic.
The second largest problem for me, is that you have to take this movie with an extremely large helping of suspension of disbelief. Jackson, Gordon, and the others go through absolute insurmountable challenges to make it to the Ark at the end and these are just scenarios that regular normal human people would just not be able to make it through. They outrun the collapse of California, the eruption of Yellowstone and a fucking tsunami. The unrealism of whole situation, at times, does border on almost unfathomably ridiculous. And yes; I'm being harsh - this is a disaster movie, you want to see your characters become the heroes and survive at the end, and I am ok with that. But you absolutely have to go into this movie with that pre-conception. That what you are about to watch is going to - in every good way - be a complete insult to your intelligence.
Thirdly there was some real borderline moments in this movie where they had to steer away from the disaster narrative for the moment to try and phone in some moralistic plot points and almost try to communicate a greater message. There was certainly an undercurrent of a commentary on illegal immigration here and of course the rich and the powerful only wanted to look after themselves but our hero (Adrian) wanted to open up opportunity to everyone and he - of course - eventually got his wish. I genuinely don't believe the real world would work like that in reality, and if Coronavirus has taught me anything it's that the rich and powerful and the powers that be will only look after themselves and - fuck I'm doing it myself now aren't I?! But uh, yeah it didn't really need it. And it did bring the movie down on a couple of occasions to the point where I genuinely rolled my eyes when they opened the doors to Arks to let everybody else on. That would literally never happen. But maybe I'm just a cynic?
But those negatives aside and focusing on the positives now; the special effects in this movie were outstanding. Unfaultable... uh pardon the expression... in almost every way. There was the very odd moment when it was a bit sort-of obvious that there was some green screen filming going on, but maybe I'm semi-trained to look for it now, aside from that, absolutely first class. And rightly so, because it's this movie's biggest selling point. If it doesn't look realistic when a humongous tidal wave carrying an Aircraft Carrier slams into the White House, or when several sections of Greater California are collapsing to the ground then why even bother with the movie at all? But it was really, really awesome and for the most part, despite the almost ridiculousness of the whole scenario it looked completely realistic.
Secondly; the acting. Chiwetel Ejiofor as Adrian is outstanding, and quickly becoming a favourite of mine. But he was equally as good here as anything I'd seen him in. Oliver Pratt also did an excellent job of being the Protagonist and definitely deserved to go on to bigger roles after this one. I didn't so much care for John Cusack who I felt was fine, and decent enough but I honestly think you could have substituted any other White, Male, Hollywood actor into that role and it wouldn't have totally, negatively affected the film. Other than that, aside from some odd moments of silliness, mostly everybody else did a pretty decent enough job with what they had to work with.
And thirdly, despite clocking in at a hefty 2 and half hours, I have to at least commend the film for constructing a narrative and a plot that found content for those 2 and half hours. Oh sure, so there were good portions of the film that were just things exploding, things collapsing, things getting destroyed by earthquakes, tsunami's e.t.c but around that there was a narrative, or narrative's; Jackson and his family making it to the Ark, Adrian struggling with the politics of the situation as he evacuated with Carl, the other little sub-plots that I didn't really touch on with Nima and his family, Adrian's Dad and his friend, and some of the other bits. This might have been an epic film, but it wasn't short on plot development and it was a hefty novel of stories that it packed into it's run time.
I'm exhausted. To be honest! It usually takes me 3ish hours to cover a movie, sometimes less, tonight we are boarding on 4 hours, but I'm really glad I was able to cover this to launch Popcorn into 2022. 2012 as I mentioned at the beginning is a complete disaster porn. You know what to expect going in; it's going to be a little thin on the deep and meaningful stuff, but there is going to be explosions, chase scenes, national landmarks getting demolished, all that juicy good stuff, and 2012 gives you all of that in spoonfuls. It is the 5 course meal of disaster movies. Garnished perfectly and impressively with some absolute first rate special effects, and some genuinely admirable performances from some of it's main cast. However it really begs the question that if, when going for a disaster movie meal you really want those 5 courses, or if you'd much prefer something cheaper and cheerful instead? And it's in the construction of it's intended 5 course run time that sandwiching in the moments where the movie has to get all preachy to communicate a message and composing a meal entirely of completely insurmountable challenges that the whole meal itself starts to become something of a deception. But if you're happy to tolerate that and happy to go along with the ride, 2012 is nothing short of enjoyable and I genuinely felt satisfied when I made it to the end. The snobby film critics might have lampooned it for whatever reason, but is it a "bad movie" by definition of the word? No. Absolutely not. But regrettably it's never going to be talked about in the same sentences as The Godfather, Green Mile, or Shawshank Redemption. And you know what? I think that's actually ok... actually. Strong 3 out of 5.
