By: Austin Takahashi
Rating:
Face it – everyone likes to see stuff blow up. And in 2012, things just don’t blow up, they get caught up with the wind, fall to the surface, catch on fire, melt on the ground, and slide to the ocean. If a kid with a box of matches can set a building on fire, imagine what a grown-up like Roland Emmerich can do with a diploma in film school, a Mayan end-of-the-world prediction, and a production budget of 250 million dollars?
2012 Movie poster
Well, you get the longest, loudest, and the most destructive disaster film since Twilight temporarily demolished the name of Hollywood. For those who are not familiar with the film’s director, Roland Emmerich is a one-genre kinda guy. If Martin Scorsese specializes with all things Mafia, and if Alfred Hitchcock excels in making suspense films, Roland Emmerich is the guy who ends the world as a hobby.
Take a quick look at his resume and you’ll see what I’m talking about. He uses nuclear radiation and a lizard named Godzilla to trash Manhattan, he calls up some aliens and makes use of their laser cannon to blow up the White House, he goes back to Manhattan and adds a few sucker-punches using rogue climate in The Day After Tomorrow. He even takes a time machine all the way back to 10,000 B.C. and kicks some ancient butt.
Being a person who has a clear idea of what Emmerich was solely capable of; it would foolish of me to buy a ticket to 2012 and leave the theatre complaining about a rip-off. In terms of plot, characters, and just about all the elements of a film before CGI was invented, 2012 is nothing more than scrapbook of all things anti-Earth and have someone hit you with it continuously in the side of the head for 150 minutes.
It’s ridicoulous beyond reality. Yet, I didn’t get pissed. The sight of global landmarks and major cities getting annihilated was a big enough force to turn my brain off and ignore the tsunami of plot holes smashing me on the face. Hawaii turns to a giant volcano, and Hollywood gets torn down faster than the falling apart of Donald Trump’s hair.
The graphics are surreal
No self-respecting Mayan should watch this because Emmerich has turned their prediction into an excuse to obliterate Earth once again. But regular folks who bought a ticket to see this had probably nothing else to do on that day anyway.
After going all the way with this, I can’t really see Roland Emmerich return for another round of Earth-devastation. But I have a feeling that his plan is to destroy the whole solar system. I hope not. At least not yet. He still hasn’t had the chance to destroy the Philippines.
