Aah, those Americans...
Big bangs (more bangs for your buck)...
Spectacle...
Happy endings (-ish...the hero and his buddies survive, but most of the human race gets wiped out) (by the way, if you want to experience a bitingly intelligent American movie that deals with/to the Hollywood ending, watch Robert Altman's The Player - it messes with your head in the nicest possible way).
Chases (volcanic eruptions and tsunamis chase our escapees across mountains, deserts and of course LA or somewhere generically similar).
What's wrong with this picture?
Stereotypes, stereotypes, stereotypes (which begat corny one-liners, which begat happy endings, which begat even less pro-active viewing from "the great unwashed").
Criminal misuse of John Cusack (a terrific actor, witness High Fidelity, who should be using his time less materialistically).
It's been done before (even by the same director, in The Day After Tomorrow, which is slightly better and more fun)...
Criminal misuse of the first 2 digits of "2001" (a genius movie).
A waste of money (spend the movie company's money on movies like District 9 - chilling, clever and very exciting).
4/10.
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But The Day After Tomorrow fundamentally didn't make sense. Why did the guy bother setting off cross-country at all? The rescue helicopters arrived in New York only minutes (!) after he got to his son and in those few minutes he didn't do anything the others couldn't have done themselves. Pointless!
ReplyDeleteAnd in 2012 having an aircraft carrier land on the president has got to count for something.
I see that for you the movie was justified or not by its scientific rationalism or special effects spectacularity.
ReplyDeleteMe, I was just looking for a tipping yarn or a character I could believe and who was 3D (NO - NOT Avatar!!)
Not scientific rationalism; I know that pyroclastic flows travel faster than a Cessna in flight does, is absolutely horrible for engines, and from its heat alone that plane would have been toast. For me 2012 went into make-believe or heaven or something at that point. But it didn't completely wreck the movie. I think of it more as exaggeration.
ReplyDeleteWho really expects scientific perfection when going to a movie, especially a blockbuster like 2012? I don't go to all movies expecting to be impressed visually, but for that one and Independence Day, yes, certainly. That's what they're for, and I think they do a good job of it. Go to any movie with false expectations and you won't be able to appreciate it for what it does do well.
On the other hand, when the basis for a story just doesn't make sense, especially if it's self-contradictory, it can undermine the whole thing. Possibly the worse example I've read (not seen the movie of) is Piggy's glasses in Lord of the Flies. To start fires they had to be convex lenses. For Piggy to need them to see with badly enough for the boys to try to get them back they would need to be concave lenses. It just didn't make sense!
FWIW Steven D Greydanus wrote an interesting comparison of directors Roland Emmerich and Michael Bay here.