2012

** SPOILER WARNING **

I went to see the disaster film 2012 earlier.

I'm a sucker for disaster films. In my top five favorite movies of all time, the great scientific boo-boo Armageddon is included. Don't ask why, but the sight of landmarks getting thrashed and whole cities going into flames are things that morbidly fascinate me. They are just so.. preposterous.

Then comes 2012.

The movie brought together just about everything that could go wrong with the planet. Earthquakes? You got it. Tsunamis? On just about every continent. Volcanic eruptions? How about Hawaii disappearing under lava? The movie is probably the zenith of all disaster movies ever made, and for sheer disastrous-ness, I personally give it an 11 out of 10.

As on my previous paper on musicals where I touched on the CGI-fed audiences of today, 2012 is also probably the most CGI-blasted movie of all time, and what CGI it had! My favorite digitally made scene has to be Californian cities getting eaten up by earthquakes. It was a literal feast for the eyes; I suggest watching the movie or YouTube these particular scenes. Amazingly horrific. The Oscars for effects should go to 2012 by default!

Then comes the plot and characters. Don't even bother looking for a cohesive plot; the cliches of disaster movies are everywhere. The most sickening scenes for me were the 'limo escape' and the 'little airplane escape'. A limousine handling like a souped up Nissan R34 being driven by a divorced author (with his family inside) while driving through the broken and disintegrating landscape of Los Angeles (I think it was LA) AND escaping relatively unharmed was.. let's just say "WTF?" was running through my head. The CGI were pleasantly distracting at this point. The characters had no development whatsoever as well; an RV-residing prophet foretelling the impending doom of humanity? Come on! I suppose the characters were there mostly just to show people in the movie. After all, it was two hours or so of effects anyway. Even the 'touching scenes' looked a little too scripted to be touching as well. At least the goodbye scene in Armageddon was intense and very heartfelt. In 2012, all the goodbye scenes would make you go, "um.. okay?"

I also found the language very technical and scientific. I was pretty glad of my science background as this enabled me to understand quite a bit about what was happening in the movie. I doubt many understand the technicalities with plate tectonics, magnetic pole reversals, and neutrinos. If you do, however, you would appreciate the movie a teeny bit more.

Oh and the "Noah's Ark" thing..? Too much. Way too much.

I appreciated the film mostly because I took it literally as an entertainment; nothing more, nothing less, and nothing else. If one would ask one's self, what has this to do with the Mayan calendar crap, I would say next to nothing. It's a movie for those seeking pure time-burners (which was what I did) and not for those who want to be watching a gripping plot.

7/10

Jay~