Truly Spectacular in Scale - and Disappointment

Rating: 4/10 (5 October 2019)

If you spent any time online in the late 2010s, you doubtless caught wind of the great 2012 apocalypse scare, when thousands of people became convinced the world would end in December of 2012. I suppose it was inevitable that somebody would try to make a movie about the phenomenon. Roland Emmerich took a shot in 2009 with the silly, disappointing, and ultimately pretty forgettable disaster film aptly (and not-very-creatively) titled "2012."
The first issue with the film is that it makes no use of the 2012 story itself. The entire doomsday theory was inspired by the Mayan calendar, which ran out in 2012. You might think the calendar would play into the movie somehow? At least, you'd think that the Mayans would be involved in some way? But aside from one or two random mentions, the Mayans and their calendar have nothing to do with the story at all. The doomsday scenario in the film is triggered by an increase in the Sun's neutrino emissions, which somehow destabilizes the Earth's crust, causing unprecedentedly vast earthquakes that swallow cities whole. The tagline for the movie reads "We were warned," but that tagline doesn't make sense in context: who warned us of this event, exactly? Instead of capitalizing on the mythology behind the 2012 scare, Roland Emmerich just made a generic natural disaster extravaganza in the vein of "The Day After Tomorrow." What wasted potential.
Still, Roland Emmerich is no stranger to disaster extravaganzas, and I've enjoyed many of his past efforts because, in the end, it can be fun to turn your brain off and thrill at watching stuff blow up. And that's what films like these should be: FUN. Sadly, though, 2012's not much fun either. As odd as this sounds, there IS an art to making a mindless action spectacle like Independence Day work, and 2012 screws up several fundamental details.
See, while the appeal of films like Independence Day is mainly the action (because that's the fun part), character actually DOES play a role. If you've seen any Roland Emmerich film, you know his characters aren't deep. But they don't need to be: what they DO need to be is charismatic. Steven Hiller in ID4 is the perfect example: a charming, all-American go-getter, a proper action star who fights the aliens with bravado, played by Will Smith at the height of his career. The characters in 2012 can't hope to compare. John Cusack plays the same divorced father character you've seen in countless films: estranged from his wife, down on his luck, spending a day with his two kids who both openly dislike him and would rather be with Mom. The set-up is tired, but the film plays it more or less straight. Stock drama between bitter divorcees and their bratty kids doesn't get me in the mood to see cities blow up. In fact, these characters are pretty unlikable; they get me in the mood to see THEM blow up. A film like ID4 would have anticipated that and used these characters as alien fodder. But in 2012, this dysfunctional wreck of a family is what I'm meant to care about. Not good.
With 2012, Emmerich is clearly hellbent on making the destruction bigger than in any film he made before it. But bigger does not equal better. For sure, the scenes of destruction in 2012 outdo movies like Independence Day in scale, but not impact. Take the collapse of Los Angeles, for instance: as our "heroes" evacuate the city, despite the cataclysmic upheaval all around them, they themselves never seem to be in danger. The land around their car, or the air around their plane, is strangely free of damage or debris; the catastrophe seems to always be just behind them, not quite able to touch them. The destruction of LA is so over-the-top, with so much debris all over the screen, that it causes sensory overload: you simply can't take it all in at once, separating you from the action. Later scenes like the eruption of Yellowstone and the Washington tsunami have the same problem. Contrast this with the alien attack on New York in ID4, which was pretty straightforward: a giant fire wall of death, slowly spreading through town. If you're caught in its path, you're dead. It was easier to follow. Less can certainly be more.
2012 occasionally takes a break from the destruction to add some moral drama into the mix. But action spectacles, by design, cannot do this convincingly. ID4 made this mistake in its second act, with President Whitmore discussing whether it was right to use nukes against the invaders. Why is this action movie trying to have a serious discussion about nuclear ethics? Get outta here. 2012 invokes a similar dilemma, as world leaders meet to discuss whether or not they should just let whole cities perish for the "greater good." Make no mistake, moral dilemmas like these are poignant and can make great drama, but 2012 was not sold as a drama. Serious talk like this harms a mindless actioner because it invites the audience to engage the plot intellectually - in other words, turn your brain back ON - and once you do that, the plot falls apart.
Basically, Emmerich's action films are at their best when they focus on the action, with charismatic, fun characters to guide you through it. 2012 is too bogged down with unlikable characters and misplaced drama to shine as the action spectacle that it's really trying to be. Mr. Emmerich, in the future, when you market your film as a silly actioner, just give me a silly actioner. It's what was advertised, and it's what I paid for.