How did they take the Mayan calendar paranoia and turn it into this awful movie?

Rating: 6/10 (14 March 2010)

I gave this movie a 1 out of 10 because it really doesn't have a great story, I mean, the Mayan calendar ending in 2012 is a great story in itself and you'd think with that for inspiration this would have been a very disconcerting and scary look into the future. But no, it is just a bad disaster movie.
SPOILER ALERT How many time can a person outrun the earth shattering and quaking beneath them? Apparently, John Cusack can do it about 6 times, and on the 3rd time he was in a plane that just narrowly made it off the ground and just narrowly missed buildings that were collapsing around it, well, I was talking to the screen by then and saying "seriously? again?" And can I just say the special effects weren't that great either, I have definitely seen better, and once you have seen one city crashing to the ground and one tidal wave, it's time for something new.
I love John Cusack too - HE was the reason I wanted to see this movie, and to be truthful he was the only reason I watched until the end because his character (2 dimensional though it was), was the only one I actually cared enough about to see what happened.
George Seagal (spelling may be wrong here!), but he was actually in this movie - no idea why, he had a trivial little part as an entertainer on a cruise ship. SPOILER COMING NOW - the cruise ship is in dock (right at the beginning of the movie), and it starts to rock wildly and in a very scary fashion before it leaves harbor - why would you not get off the boat? Seriously, no one in their right mind would stay on the boat after that, but no they stayed. There was some other trivial little aside where George calls his son who he doesn't speak to, but who really cared at all about that, it was inconsequential.
SPOILER AGAIN - they wiped out LA at one point, but there didn't seem to be too much concern in other parts of the USA at that point, or the rest of the world, so it was all very emotionless at times, and that isn't what a good disaster movie is supposed to be about.
In Independence Day we cared if the darn dog made it into the side tunnel - we cared about the crazy drunk crop spraying pilot - we cared about the president, etc.
Danny Glover was wasted in this movie, as was Oliver Platt - they were almost cartoon like, cardboard characters with no depth at all.
They should have concentrated on John Cusack's character and had him find out about the conspiracy theory (Woody Harrelson's cameo side story), find out about the arks, work at it that way and give you small pieces of the rest of the story and show the horror from his family's POV as they saw what was happening to the world.
Instead, what we got was a hodge podge of set pieces, with so-so special effects (nothing we haven't seen before), a groan-worthy script, and a whole load of great actors who got hung out to dry by a director who seemed more concerned with destroying buildings, and blowing stuff up to make loud noises for the Dolby sound, than he was concerned about making a darned good story.
Deep Impact was not a particularly good movie, and unfortunately 2012 is on the same par. I don't blame the actors, it's all Emmerich's fault and I hope someone else comes out with a movie about the same topic, since it is still relevant, and makes a real attempt to construct a story that will at once be terrifying in its possibilities and thoroughly entertaining.
This is one movie definitely more deserving of a Redbox rental than a box office ticket!