Independence Day Meets Noah's Ark: Visually Stunning Epic Distaster Film, Entertaining But Lapses Into Rather ClichÃ© Storyline

Rating: 6/10 (14 November 2009)

The writer Christopher Hitchens once said that clichÃ© is simply writing what has been written before, and writers should avoid it. Afterall, isn't writing about creating something new? About two or three scenes into "2012" I started noticing how much it parallels "Independence Day". At the beginning there is a scene in which some scientists are contemplating something astonishing that we can't see and one of them says something to the affect of "Oh my God". Next the film quick cuts to Washington DC. In this case, someone says to someone else "You're about to meet the president." Then another quick cut to a suburbanite (John Cusak) in mundane suburban America where he is late picking up his kids from his ex-wife. Wasn't there a similar series of sequences in "Independence Day" at the beginning? When the film finally get's going and decides on which people it is going to focus, there are two main groups of characters coupled with a lot of little side characters from different corners of the globe. Doesn't this ring of deja-vu all over again? Like Independence Day, there is the US President and his adviser-officials (sound familiar?), a group of suburban American nobodies led by John Cusak, some scientist characters who discover the "castastrophe", and a few characters who know these characters. Of course all these groups of people are all interrelated, and the two main groups actually converge. Seems to me this happened in Independence Day, although I think there were three groups of characters instead of two. In both films, the groups come together at a single location.
The basic plot is simple yet global. The entire earth is about to suffer a global catastrophe in which the continental plates of the earth will break loose and start shifting on a massive scale. This will be the end of civilization, including K-Marts, twinkies, McDonalds, Burger Kings, Bank of America and AIG. Not even the Trump Palace will survive. Is this a catastrophe or poetic justice? This is the largest devastation since a comet hit the earth 65 million years ago to end the reign of the Dinosaurs, or at least since the inauguration of the 43rd President of the United States. The governments of the world have known about this for 3 years (since 2009) and have enacted a secret plan to save some of the world's elite, but kept this undercover from the public. Of course the only guy in the world to figure this out is a crazy coot living in the California-Nevada desert, played over-the-top by Woody Harrelson as your quintessential conspiracy theorist. He has even made a little 2-D YouTube video that explains the whole cover-up. As expected, for the movie's sake, he's right. Harrelson was my favorite character of "2012".
The real star of "2012" has to be the visuals. The destruction of the planet in different parts of the world is probably worth the price of admission, especially to experience on the large screen. The first to fall is, you guessed it, Los Angeles. They always obliterate Los Angeles in these movies. Maybe there's some poetic justice in this. Probably the best sequence is Cusak et al navigating a limo through the streets of Los Angeles, avoiding collapsing offices, government buildings, DMV buildings, IRS buildings, and Hollywood studios. Many other cities around the world have the same fate and it did get a little repetitive after awhile.
When the reality of the disasters is fully explained, I thought the script took a bit of a downturn. Cusak is back with his ex-wife, his kids, and his ex-wife's boyfriend (you have a feeling that either Cusak or the boyfriend will survive but not both) trying to save his family. Some of the acts of heroism reminded me of several other movies I had seen. There's the main presidential adviser, played by Oliver Platt, being just as you expect him, the amoral adviser who willingly sacrifices millions for the sake of a few. There's also the high Russian dignitary whose not only vain but selfish and over-indulges his twin sons. And the scientist that every one takes for granted, played by Chiwetel Ejiofor, was again a bit predictable. I thought one unexpected moment of the film had to do with the US President, played by Danny Glover.
And maybe more unexpected moments is what this movie needed. Aside from the catastrophes and the plot itself which were very unpredictable, the characters never do anything outside the box of how they're defined. The likable characters, like Cusak, are heroic. If they are selfish or amoral, they get their just desserts. Only the US President and Woody Harrelson's character behave unpredictably. American movies of this type are grade A in the visual and effects department, but grade about a C in the character and storyline department. I didn't know where the characters would end up and why, which is good, but I always knew what they would do. And that made it too predictable. I just knew, somewhere in this movie from the get-go, someone was going to make a speech about humanity, using this film as a soapbox. Please not again.