*** Official 2012 Discussion Thread

I'm looking forward to having my bones rattled tomorrow night!

Haha! Roger Ebert really liked it, no surprises there. The one film critic I most often agree with.

It's encouraging that Roger Ebert gave it a good review.

Not sure that's a good review though.  He basically says "for it's audience" it's good, meaning the people that would pay to go see it will enjoy.  I'm sure it will do well, but these movies always drive me bonkers because the characters are such morons!  Arg, I'll skip it, I just want a smart destruction movie.

Yeah, he calls it "Hollywood cheese", which isn't exactly calling it a good movie.

Everyone's expectations are different but that's the best that I had hoped for with this movie.

P.S. Sadly, the projection at the theater I was at sucked. There was some side-to-side shaking going on that softened what should have been razor-sharp special effects. If you can see this digitally somewhere, go for that instead of film.

This thread is now designated the Official Discussion Thread for "2012". Please, post all comments, links to outside reviews, film and box office discussion items to this thread.

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Crawdaddy

That's what I would have thought going into it. But my dad's big into the 2012 end-of-the-world theories but not so much into waiting in line, so we went to the older multiplex in the area which has some larger screens but only a couple that are digitally equipped. For the change, the film projection was reasonably sharp and it was worth trading off digital for a much larger, natively 2.39:1 screen. What an experience.

In terms of sheer spectacle, Emmerich has really outdone himself here. On that front, I doubt he'll ever be topped. From a story perspective, I actually thought this was a lot more ambitious than ID4. Are there parts that are ridiculous? Of course; we're talking about a family that basically outruns the end of days. Emmerich gives the picture just enough of a wink and a nod to acknowledge the ridiculousness and otherwise plays it quite straight. I appreciated the global perspective, with a very "Heroes" season one feel (but with major motion picture polish). Most of the actors are terrific here, considering what they have to work with. John Cusack plays his usual type of character, the kind we've gotten from "Say Anything" through "High Fidelity", which proves very interesting in a completely different sort of film. Danny Glover plays the unnamed president who provides a visual stand-in for Obama but is written to strike a very different note: sort of a non-partisan Jed Bartlet . Glover infuses the role with incredible warmth and dignity, combining the honest wholesomeness of a Jimmy Carter persona with the eloquent authority of a Ronald Reagan. In the second half of the film he makes a decision that serves as probably the least plausible moment in the film but the one we'd like to believe our president would make. That out of the G8 leaders only he and the Italian prime minister make the decision rings far more true. Chiwetel Ejiofor, as mentioned by Will, is fantastic. He was fantastic in 'Serenity', too. A true actor that takes all of his roles seriously. Thandie Newton, criminally underrated (except for her awful impersonation in Stone's awful Dubya biopic), plays off him wonderfully in a role of few scenes. In the wrong hands, the first daughter could have come across as whining and naive. Not in Newton's. Amanda Peet usually drives me crazy, and was the thing I was dreading most about this picture. I needn't have worried; she's a vanilla mom here and leaves more of her irritating quirks at home for this role. Oliver Platt's ambiguous high-ranking White House official sounds like a beer but looks like Bill Richardson. He fulfills James Rebhorn's Albert Nimzicki asshole function here, but has a few scenes sprinkled throughout that give his character greater complexity and humanity than Rebhorn's character in that 1994 blockbuster. Woody Harrelson's amazing in everything, so it's not surprise that he makes the stock conspiracy theorist character here amazing, too. The Russian characters are a lot of fun, and generally fleshed out far more than you'd expect for non-American characters. My favorite, though, was the Russian pilot played by Johann Urb. who knew the intimidating Russian heavies could be more entertaining as good guys than bad guys? Cusack's character's son is played by Liam James, seen weekly as young Shawn in the 1980's flashbacks that open every episode of "Psych". He's really effective there and he's quite good here. You see him work through his conflicting impulses toward his father, instead of being all jerk or all loving. Anyone who has seen "Henry Poole Is Here" should not be shocked that Morgan Lily is terrific as Cusack's character's seven-year-old, bed wetting daughter. She has to be vulnerable and terrified here, and she does both very, very well. There's a surprising amount of good character stuff here, which is mostly built from cliches but tweaked just enough to be effective. Most of the science builds off or plays with real science, at least enough that the technical explanations seemed coherent and mostly plausible.

Not bad for a 3-day gross.


http://news.yahoo.com/s/ap/20091115/ap_en_mo/us_box_office

I'm going to see this digitally tonight at the 10:00 showing.  I didn't like his last couple of films so I wasn't expecting much so it's nice to hear some positive comments about this one.  The SFX in the previews look top notch which is why I wanted to experience this on a large screen instead of waiting for the rental. 

I enjoyed it quite a bit. It was long but didn't feel overly long. There are really only 3 major set pieces, but with enough "destruction minis" thrown in to keep it interesting. There is a thread on here about what does it take to make you go "oooohh" from special effects these days...well the entire Yellowstone sequence fits that bill for me. Incredible stuff. The LA destruction was great, but it was Yellowstone that gave me goosebumps (and before Woody Harrelson ;) )

There is a preview on the Godzilla Blu-ray and the quality is spectacular. I can't wait to see this on Blu. I bet there are a ton of easter eggs hidden in the LA destruction as well.

I always look forward to movies like this to see how they explain what is happening and why.  To me, the science was in no way plausible.  They mixed the conjunction and solar radiation cause -- first mistake.  Neither is plausible.  Conjunctions happen all the time and there is no evidence that they can cause harm.  It's merely mentioned in the film.  Solar particles are another story.  Even in the peak years of solar eruptions, the particles released cannot heat up the core of the Earth.  If the neutrinos were that powerful, they would have devastated the living biosphere of the planet long before microwaving the core, which is about 6000 degrees anyway.  It's over 6000 kilometers from the surface surrounded by a layer of molten Iron and Nickel 2000 miles thick.  The mantle is thicker than that and made of dense rock.  No particle I know of can penetrate that deeply -- so the writers conceived of a new type of particle to explain it away.  It's ludicrous.  It's lame for another reason, too.  Our planet is surrounded by a magnetic field that blocks high-energy solar particles.  If it didn't, our planet would be as barren and lifeless as Mars.  Our atmosphere would be stripped away and we would have no protection from the deadly radiation coming from the sun.

Even given it's shortcomings in terms of science, I enjoyed the hell out of the visual spectacle of the destruction. 
Edited by Brett_M - 11/30/09 at 9:03am

I don't think you understood how extremely low my standards are for plausibility from these movies are. If it even makes sense on its own terms, I'm happy. If it references real science, all the better. I don't expect it to get the real science it references right, since I feel like that's too much to ask from a Roland Emmerich picture.

neutrinos actually pass through the earth - they are almost totally non-reactive, (nearly) massless particles that could travel through a light-year's worth of lead without interacting with it. the absurd part in the movie was when it was suggested that the solar neutrinos suddenly "changed" and began interacting with stuff - you might as well make a movie about how lead just suddenly changes into gold, or oxygen into cyanide.

but whatever - i just ignored it and enjoyed the spectacle of the destruction.

Unnamed?  He had a name: Wilson.  Definitely not an unnamed character.

And other than ethnicity, I don't see Glover as a "visual stand-in" for Obama - the two look nothing alike, and Glover is 14 years older than Obama.

As an aside, I don't think Danny Glover would ever be elected president because of that damned lisp of his!  He'd get on people's nerves during speeches and debates.

As for the movie... it was okay.  Absurd, and too much of the dialogue consists of people saying "my God!" but it had some good action pieces.  Not as exciting for me as "ID4" but enjoyable enough.

BTW, am I wrong, or was there a big continuity goof at the end?  When everyone emerges from the ark, the obnoxious Russian boys give the dog to the little girl.  Didn't she already HAVE the dog?  IIRC, she cared for the pooch when the Russian babe bit the dust, so it makes no sense the boys ended up with the pup...

Wow. I went the entire movie without catching that. Every reference I remember was "Mr. President", "Sir" or "Daddy". My bad.

I was hoping the Russian woman survived, but the dog in the care of the weird twins sealed the fact that she did not. She had good genes. Or at least pretty genes. She should have survived.

I was surprised that they killed off the step-dad, after going through so much trouble to establish that he really was a good guy.

 I really enjoyed this movie.  It provided exactly what I wanted, sheer spectacle.  I went in not caring about the science, the characters or the plot holes I knew would be there.  I actually ended up liking some of the characters, which was just icing on the cake.

I chuckled to myself when the crack in the Sistine Chapel went right between the fingers of God and Man, even though I knew it was coming.  Emmerich really does love to be heavy handed.

And they show Vatican City destroyed and the Pope getting killed but apparently they cut a shot of a Mosque being destroyed

It's apparent that the movie gives you your money's worth on the level of effects and destruction and I enjoyed it on that level. I just wish that at the same time they could just create a film that avoids total cliche and hack writing. For example, Cusack's son in the movie is named Noah, and it becomes abundantly clear why that is later in the film. Bet the writer thought he was so clever on that one. Typical characterizations indicative of any number of these types of films: Absentee, borderline loser, divorced father who will reconnect with his kids by the films end and reconcile with his ex wife (which is why I was not surprised that the other guy didn't make it) - Check. Bleeding Heart, good guy Scientist who has everything figured out but is only wrong on how much time they have - Check. Pragmatic Government guy who is made to look like an asshole - Check. (And by the way, I was completely on board with Platt's character at the climax of the film and wanted to throttle the scientist. Any thought that letting all those other people in with mere minutes before the waves came could have possibly gotten more people killed in the long run? Like all those people will just orderly file in when the gates opened. Not to mention that food, water and other supplies would be limited.)

The escapes in the light jet bothered me a bit as well. I know films like this don't always conform to the laws of physics, but I imagine that plane would be tossed around like a finshed beer can flying that close to all that destruction and explsions. Not to mention that the plane is engulfed by volcanic ash and instead of the engines being completly trashed from that, the plane flies out like the Millenium Falcon out of the Death Star in "Jedi" and comes out spotless.

It may have been a great effects film, but a lot of unintentional comedy as well.

It's been a few days since I've seen it, and I think as far as cliched character movies go, there was much more suspense in the Tom Cruise version of the War of the Worlds. I could see watching WotW again, but not 2012.

Yeah, I noticed all of those things but decided not to care about them.  I knew if I put more that 2 seconds of thought about them I'd start rolling my eyes and wouldn't enjoy myself.  I swore I'd turn off my brain for this movie and enjoy the disaster porn.

Oh, btw, I completely agree with you about Platt's thinking.  There's no way I'd open the doors.  Yes, those people would die but the greater risk is losing the ark, which jeopardizes the entire species.

Saw this yesterday. I wasn't going to make any comments, you guys all said what I was thinking. It was spectacular lunacy!

However, I was thinking about the original When Worlds Collide from 1951. It was interesting for me to watch how it was essentially doing the same thing as that film. But it shows the difference in depicting how people are essentially the same, 1951 verse 2009. The stoic scientist, who is so naive to think that people will stand up and do the right thing, the rich people who will do what it takes to be saved because he knows when it comes down to it, we'll do what it takes to claw our way onto the ship, the lovers who come together. To me, it was the remake of When Worlds Collide. It even has the last shot of the door opening to show the new world. All that was missing was the dog having puppies!

Yeah, but picking out all of that stuff is part of the fun for me. My brother and I were making jokes to each other through the entire feature and laughing through all the riduculous.


Also, having Africa being pretty much the last place standing came off pretty hacky to me as well. I just kind of reeked of Polictically Correct sentiment to me. Didn't "The Day After Tomorrow" do something similar as well where after the storm, Mexico was the only habitable place in North America, and the United States had to forgive all their debt or something like that.

ok, i gotta chip in (just watched it Sunday):

1. This should've been titled: "Two Days After Tomorrow"

2. Normally, a film director foreshadows plot points/characters using complicated symbols and devices to further the story/characterizations. Roland Emmerich's version of foreshadowing is in the beginning when the Indian kid was playing w/a toy boat in a monsoon and the car ran over it. Roland is foreshadowing a visual effect ('pre-viz' anyone?) that comes later on in the film that adds nothing the story/character/plot.