'2012' is so last Century.

Rating: 6/10 (16 February 2010)

If you take every disaster movie from the past twenty years and role them into one film, what would you get? 2012. Roland Emmirich's latest apocalyptic offering is fueled with as much references to previous disaster epics as it does with fire and brimstone – and there is a lot of fire and brimstone.
Taking direct cues from his recent offering The Day After Tomorrow and last century's Independence Day, 2012 is a literal tour de force of exploding cities, country engulfing tidal waves and mass death on a biblical scale. The story is mind numbingly simple: The world's governments learn of an extinction level event due to take place in the very near future and its up to an ensemble group of characters (which for a Hollywood movie are uncharacteristically mostly African American) to find their way to safety and lead mankind to its new epoch.
Emmirich seems to take pleasure in milking the world's pre and post millennial fears of the end of civilization by constantly dishing out end of the world scenarios that can give even the most optimistic amongst us nightmares. And why does he make these films? Because we as the audience will continuously lap them up.
In the run up to the year 2000, popular media thrived of the world's Millennial anxiety with a series of films and TV shows based on the destruction of mankind. Then it was the X Files, Armageddon, Deep Impact, The Matrix and even the 'factual' Y2K scare. If it was not for the September 11 attacks in 2001, in all likelihood the Western World's preoccupation with the extinction of the human race would have itself, died out. However in the last decade we have had the Dawn of the Dead remake, 28 Days Later, Terminator 3, The Mist, War of the Worlds and Knowing, all echoing the social fears that came to light on that day. Those fears can be summarized under the mantra that we will all meet our Maker one day; the question is how we will meet Him?
At the core of these films including 2012, is not the many spectacular ways we can all die, but of how we choose to survive and move on, even after society itself has ended. And that's what gives this genre a little gravitas. Although 2012 is nothing more than a paint by numbers CGI filled disaster epic, there are lessons of humanity that can be learned from this and other similar films. That lesson is that the real threat to the end of humanity does not come from aliens, viruses, self aware computers or even Mother Nature herself, but it comes from other humans and how we treat each other when faced with a world ending crisis.
However, is it necessary to go into to this movie understanding the philosophical issues it raises? No. 2012 is equally enjoyable as CGI porn and nothing more. Turning your brain off and resigning yourself to being simply awed by the sublime images of Mother Nature reaping her destructive revenge on mankind, is enough to enjoy this film. 7/10.