2012 viewed by the 1970s viewed by the 1500s.

Rating: 10/10 (6 April 2019)

'The curse to live forever' in '12 anticipated the incoming hyper age, and how our computer immortality would make us comfortably numb, trapped, and complacent inside our mental coffins. See this family rotting away completely detached from the outside world, the living ones carrying the burden of ancestral expectation, same as humanity itself, in a way carrying the very same fate as Collins.
McDonalds as 'Mephistopheles' meaning streamlining as the anti-Christ. A very 70s attitude that could only be brought out via an outsider ancient being. The film is 2012 viewed by 1970s viewed by 1500s.
'12 was the vampire time in culture, a final peak in destructive yuppie romanticism, as the Mayan prophecy brought our new age of 'life online'.
As streamlining took wing in the 70s it contrasts revolution-individual, the real reason the film chose this period: the sexual revolution. The personal inside streamlining of industry is an interesting study. Plus gothic because 'humanity's ghost.'
Look at Angelique's (Eva Green) BDSM sub-dom romance with Collins, where she derives sexual fulfillment over centuries knowing he is below in chains, driving her to dominate business by owning her sexuality.
Even for him being owned feels right as repentence for his crimes in love; this all somehow keeps him sane below ground so when he returns he goes on this orgy of murder.
Compare to the arid sexuality and frustration with matriarch Elizabeth (Pfeiffer) and Roger (Miller). Tutor Miss Winters is chaste and vacant as we learn fulfilled in some lesbian union binding with the ghost. Carolyn (Moretz)'s werewolf secret parallels getting stoned to Pink Floyd or conjuring entities through LSD; making her parents boomer hypocrisy and teen angst bearable.
"A woman doctor? How strange." Then she brings him to life with blood transfusions and tests his virility making him see the use in that.
The film's sexuality brings a sort of nasty context but it's not shy about it.
The 21st century would look like this, as within great events of change periods of 'nothing' follow awaiting a life to be lived. This is a bored humanity. So much written on the 70s, the happenings were a cure for 'nothing happening.' The drugs conceding inside was the last journey. The same freedom enabling sexual revolution knew our incoming uselessness being streamlined. So march with pleasure to your doom.
The film is saying everything changes but you're not missing anything. Then the vampire introduces freshness or actual living by being of the past: we form our own reality identity not through consumption but through our own heightened theater. Meaning, the answer is in tradition-dignity not debasement.
The best scene by far was Collins by the ocean side walking with Miss Victoria and there it approximated an actual beautiful film. The patriarch brought in to add a dose of healthy masculinity and conservatism balancing this bored and lost clan. The tutor overwhelmed by the changing of the guard, a generation so divided every single generation after was a chess-move reaction against it. The pair join by nature, hopeless yet found peace and ease against the chaotic clashing waves. If only Tim Burton subdued the blockbuster mechanics and gave us more of this sort of gentle romantic theater.