2012 – Just when you thought the world had about ended…
For those of you who did not sense a pattern in Roland Emmerich’s repertoire, the guy likes to put his characters through a lot of permanently changing scenery. Starting small with […]
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For those of you who did not sense a pattern in Roland Emmerich’s repertoire, the guy likes to put his characters through a lot of permanently changing scenery. Starting small with […]
For those of you who did not sense a pattern in Roland Emmerich’s repertoire, the guy likes to put his characters through a lot of permanently changing scenery. Starting small with the brainless blockbuster, “Universal Soldier,” he and his fellow auteur Dean Devlin convinced studios to allow them progressively bigger budgets for progressively bigger movies with progressively mindless plots. To date he has made (with Devlin) “Stargate,” “Independence Day,” “Godzilla,” “The Patriot,” (without), “The Day After Tomorrow,” “10,000 B.C.,” and now “2012.”
To their credit, their movies usually have come in ahead of schedule and under budget. But that’s kind of like saying a fat man walking on the moon is lighter. In the interests of full disclosure, I have seen each of the above movies, except “B.C.,” and I plan on watching it when I can work it in.
To date, the modern world has ended in an Emmerich film 3 times now. “Independence” (known as ID4) trailers came on in quite a shocking manner. Seeing the Empire State Building and White House obliterated was memorable. For the first time. By now, there have been any number of movies from “Armageddon”, to “Sudden Impact”, to “A.I.” to “Transformers” I and II, and even last year’s “GI Joe” that have shown no mercy on any number of world landmarks. By the time we reached “The Day After Tomorrow” in 2004, people were pretty bored with this stuff. Even if it does look realistic. By now these movies have all the worn out novelty of those pictures where the oceans have risen over the landscape of some well known city. Cool to look at, until…squirrel!
So, here we are in 2009, and Emmerich is coming out with another end of the world picture. Great. So we already know that we are going to see great looking, if unrelentingly unrelentingly unrealistic special effects. We get 5 or 6 films with great special effects each year now (and one “Avatar”… so far). What distinguishes these films?
All tolled, this movie was fun to watch comedically, rather than thrillingly. The better the effects get, the less realistic it seems. It is a hard thing to pull off, but James Cameron does it magnificently. Maybe that’s because he takes a decade or so between films. Emmerich and Michael Bay pumps these things out with regularity and the effect has been to dull the senses of the average viewer. The result feels less and less like the first time you got that Mountain Dew rush and more like the time you found out Mountain Dew gave you diabetes.
*1/2 out of *****
This movie was so bad it was cute. The only thing that kept me watching was the sadistic satisfaction of seeing cities being destroyed. And, like you, I’ve spotted all the “Emmerich” elements as the movie progressed.
As for the take-offs…I’m an amateur pilot and even I know that those were unreal. I wonder why Emmerich didn’t make a Y2K film…
By the way. imagine watching “2012” in 2015 or so. Its fail factor will have risen by then.
Thanks again. I appreciate your perspective. The fail factor screams so loud for me here, by 2015 I may be deaf in 5 years.