- ISBN13: 0043396292215
- Condition: NEW
- Notes: Brand New from Publisher. No Remainder Mark.
Now this is how you destroy the world. Roland Emmerich’s 2012 pounces on a Nostradamus-style loophole in the Mayan calendar and rams the apocalypse through it, gleefully conjuring up an enormous amount of Saturday-matinee fun in the process. A scientist (Chiwetel Ejiofor) detects shifting continental plates and sun flares and realizes that this foretells the imminent destruction of the planet. Just as the molten lava is about to hit the fan, a novelist (John Cusack) takes his kids on a trip to Yellowstone; later he’ll hook up with his ex (Amanda Peet) and her new boyfriend (Tom McCarthy) in a global journey toward safety. If there is any safety. The suitably hair-raising plot lines are punctuated–frequently, people, frequently–by visions of mayhem around the globe: the Vatican falls over, the White House is clobbered (Emmerich’s Independence Day was not enough on that score), and the California coastline dives into the Pacific Ocean. Unlike other action directors we could name, Emmerich actually understands how to let you see and drink in these vast special-effects vistas–and they are incredible. He also honors the old Irwin Allen disaster-movie tradition by actually shelling out for good actors. Cusack and Ejiofor are convincing even in the cheesiest material; toss in Danny Glover (the U.S. president), Woody Harrelson (a nut-bar conspiracy-theorizing radio host), Thandie Newton, and Oliver Platt, and you’ve got a very watchable batch of people. Emmerich hasn’t developed an ear for dialogue, even at this stage in his career, and the final act goes on a bit too long. This is a very silly movie, but if you’ve got a weakness for B-movie energy and hairbreadth escapes, 2012 delivers quite a bit of both. –Robert Horton
Stills from 2012 (Click for larger image)
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Rating: 
(out of 411 reviews)
List Price: $ 39.95
Price: $ 17.87
Related Blogs
- Related Blogs on 2012
- Bloomberg: US Debt to Overtake GDP in 2012
June 7, 2010
#1
Review by Rosemary Thornton
Rating:
So, when the world ends, it’s the politicians and bureaucrats that we’re gonna save, and the writers and the artists and the spiritual leaders are left behind to deal with the apocalypse. That was the most depressing element of the movie. What will the world look like if we only save the “important people” in Washington? Heaven help us. Seriously. If the future world is to be populated with the slimy-dog politicians and their ilk, I think I’ll take my chances with eternal life, thank you very much.
Sitting in the darkened theater watching 2012, I was reminded of “The Bunker” at White Sulphur Springs (in West Virginia). Construction on the 110,000-square-foot bunker was started under Eisenhower’s watch, when we were worried that the USSR might blow us up into lots of radioactive pieces. Turns out, our beloved elected officials were prepared to push The Red Button that’d end the world as we know it, and then turn-tail and run into their bunker, slam the blast-proof door behind them and emerge 90 days later when the danger had passed. And the most amazing part: The Bunker is outfitted with gee-whiz features that’d lead the unsuspecting public to believe the lawmakers were still comfortably ensconced in Washington, DC. In other words, The Bunker was *designed* to perpetrate a fraud on the American people.
Watching “2012″ I thought about The Bunker and realized, this movie is probably right. If and when the world ends, it’ll be the politically important that are given seats on the lifeboats. And it’s probably right that if there is a cataclysmic event, the Powers That Be will not tell the unwashed masses what’s going on, lest they try and steal one of those seats on the lifeboat.
That’s just depressing on so many levels.
But I digress.
This movie is definitely impressive on the big screen, and the soundtrack has plenty of bass (which I like). But the script and the writing was a little sappy for my tastes. And as to believability – well – this movie fell short on that score, too. I don’t want to spoil the plot, but NO ONE can drive a limousine *that* well. On the plus side, the graphics are truly amazing and scarier than anything I’ve ever seen before. I had to turn away from the screen to avoid some of the scary-as-hell images. It’s a pretty intense flick, and it does a good job of drawing you in.
A nice side effect: After watching this movie, I’m a lot less worried about getting those pesky credit cards paid off. Does make you think a little more about enjoying every day, and appreciating the simple beauty in our world.
In conclusion, it’s an interesting flick with awe-inspiring graphics, and it’ll hold your attention – if you can suspend disbelief for a couple hours.
June 7, 2010
#2
Review by Annihilatrix1138
Rating:
I think people judge these movies very unfairly. It surprises me when a movie like 2012 comes along and it’s ripped apart before it’s even released. “This movie’s gonna blow, it’s two and a half hours of things blowing up.” I have to play back the sentence in my mind and figure out what was negative about that concept. These movies are meant to be fun, and usually nothing more than that.
I say “usually” because sometimes you get a movie that has absolutely no other reason to exist than to make things explode and momentarily lower your IQ (Transformers: Revenge of the Fallen (Single-Disc Edition) is out now. Fun movie.) but occasionally you get something like 2012, which not only offers the calculated mayhem that fans of the action genre desire, but it also offers a surprisingly deep philosophical undertone. Go figure, right?
The movie opens with a fifteen minute montage that sets up the events that will eventually transpire on 2012, and gives us a look at the backroom dealings that occur in the wake of this disturbing discovery concerning the fate of humanity. Once that’s over with, the movie picks up rather quickly, introducing us to the main character, Jackson Curtis, his more-than-dysfunctional family and a grab bag of supporting characters. After a botched camping trip, things kick off rather quickly.
What follows are two hours of absolute chaos. The CG in this movie is astounding, and I cannot stress this enough. The action is relentless, creative, and satisfying on the whole. The LA sequence alone will have you smiling, then you will realize you still have a lot more movie to go, and it never disappoints. The pacing is excellent in this regard. I was in awe the entire way through.
That’s the bottom line: If you love action movies or a good old fashioned thrill ride, the disaster sequences alone are worth the price of admission (unless you’re an astrophysicist, in which case you might be crossing your arms and groaning at this film all the way through).
But what I liked the most about this film was its underlying religious theme. People might be quick to pick up on the major references to this, such as (POSSIBLE SPOILER, though it’s in the trailer): the crack forming between Adam and God on Michelangelo’s “Creation of Adam” at the Sistine Chapel, the destruction of Christ the Redeemer, Vatican City, and the Buddhist temple. With these and other biblical references that you will miss if you blink, Emmerich seems to postulate a world in which you don’t need God for miracles, and where everyone is back on even ground again.
Another theme that Emmerich sets up is the social borders that divide us more than we think. In a world that is coming to an end, it’s not the strong who survive, only the smartest and the wealthiest. The film argues against utilitarianism on several fronts, going so far as to say that to embrace such a concept to an outrageous extent, even to save mankind, would result in a race of humans deprived of its humanity.
Now, I could be wrong. I’m not saying that my interpretation of the movie is spot on, but the movie did make me think, and that’s what I found remarkable returning home from watching a film in which I thought I was just going to watch things blow up for two hours.
I walked in knowing that no one makes disaster movies better than Roland Emmerich, but I ended up watching something that entertained me immensely, made me think, and spurred on a very long conversation between my friends and I. THAT’S how a movie more than earns the price of admission.
June 7, 2010
#3
Review by K. Simicevic
Rating:
Wow. Just wow.
I can’t even begin spelling out all the problems with this movie. Bad script? Check! Bad acting? Check! Predictable? Check! Way to long? Check! Two dimensional characters? Check! Silly situations? Check! Overblown CGI? Check! Cartoonish destruction? Check!
This review would be 30 pages long if I started to take this movie apart. But my biggest problem is the science. I know, this IS a sci-fi, disaster movie. I know they had to make something up to make the end of the world seem possible; I have no problem with that. My problem is that it seems to me that Roland Emmerich just took a 6th grade science textbook and threw it out the window, I mean, there’s stuff in here that would make a 10 year old shake his head.
My favorite example: John Cusack’s character is in a car, on an airplane, flying 40,000 feet above the middle of nowhere over the Pacific Ocean, and is playing with the car radio trying to find a station. He turns to his wife and says: “There’s nothing. Not even an emergency signal!”. WELL OF COURSE! YOU’RE IN A PLANE OVER THE OCEAN! HELLO?
To enjoy this movie, you have to know nothing about how anything in this world works, from the government, to airplanes, to even radios. My biggest problem is that these little things don’t let me believe the movie. Nothing in it is plausible. I loved Star Wars because the characters and situations seemed believable, and that movie stretches science even farther than this one. But I can believe it.
I can’t do the same for this movie. It just seems to me that humans can never act the way they do in this movie. Or airplanes. Or radios. This movie is a fraud. I want my money back.
June 7, 2010
#4
Review by J. Forst
Rating:
(Possible spoiler alert though I doubt it)-
Does John Cusak have any good movies left that are pitched to him? To say that this even had a realistic plot is going a far stretch. Outrunning earthquakes and destruction w/ a small airplane? Hopping across broken earth in an RV? Somehow breathing and seeing underwater to untangle cables to save the lives of everyone? I know that movies like this are just CGI-fests for the eyes but this is just too much. Reuniting of old lovers, your kids who ignored you now love you – basically any stereotype of safety net you could put in a movie is here. John Cusak must laugh his butt off on his way too the bank cashing these ‘acting’ checks. Another horrible plot with predictable acting and an even more predictable script. Just like the movie “day after Tomorrow” – you had a good idea that was plagued w/ bad acting and even worse scripts. Yeesh.
PS – Woody harrelson must of needed some weed money to accept a few scenes in this movie. His over the top performance as a ‘hippie dude’ (go figure) is just too much for me in this one.
June 7, 2010
#5
Review by A. Dent
Rating:
There isn’t a lot to say about 2012 so, let me start with the Blu-ray single disk version features and virtues. I will then say a few words about the movie itself.
CONTENTS
This release comes with:
- an alternate ending (not very interesting)
- a picture-in-picture commentary – every now and then a little window opens in the lower right section of the screen and team members discuss various aspects of movie making
- alternate sound track commentary
- MovieIQ – a feature seen in other Sony Blu-ray features, offers access to an online movie database that displays information related to the scene playing. One neat feature allows you to get the MovieIQ info synced in real time and have it displayed on your computer or iPhone.
- 1080p HD at 2.40:1
- 5.1 DTS-HD Master Audio sound is available in English and French
- Subtitles in English and French
TECHNICAL MERIT
Regardless of the movie’s artistic merits, the audio-visual execution is impeccable. Anyone into disaster/destruction thrills should seek this movie. The CGI is realistic to the minutest of details and the surround sound engineers made sure that you will feel the collapse of the Earth’s crust pounding in your tummy – if you play it loud enough.
THE PREMISE
As it was the case with ‘The Day After’ – global warming triggers a new ice age – the 2012 science ranges somewhere halfway between implausible to plain ridiculous. The idea that neutrinos coming out of the Sun “mutate” into a different particle and heat up the Earth’s core (but not, let’s say, the scientists who came up with the explanation) would cause most physicists to either pull their hair in frustration or laugh uncontrollably. And I won’t even touch the mystical aspect (Mayan predictions) which make it all so much confusing: was there some supernatural force that forced the Sun to produce ‘mutated’ neutrinos? We don’t know.
A lot of the movie’s science is ridiculous beyond belief. Overnight thousand-mile shifts of Earth’s crust or the magnetic pole moving to Wisconsin would be outcomes of changes so catastrophic, we would see not mile-high tsunamis but watch (so to speak) the entire planet break into pieces. My impression is that the script writers either had no idea of what they were writing about or maybe they underestimated the audience’s ability to detect nonsense when ‘scientific words’ were used. Quite depressing.
THE STORY
Well… we have two main threads. It’s the end of life as we know it, with billions dying and, equally important, the story of Jackson’s (John Cusack) family that starts as ‘split’ (divorce?) but, by the time the Himalayas go under water, they are reunited and it’s reasonable to assume that they won’t separate again, at least not before the children grow up or another disaster affects the family’s inegrity.
RATING
I will give this movie 2 stars for the picture and the sound effects. And these are not ‘cheap thrills’ given the $200 million budget. Sadly, there’s not much more there. A little bit of humor when portraying a Russian tycoon and an end of the world enthusiast living in a tent at Yellowstone (they both die) and John Cusack’s reliably good performance and not much else.
I’m afraid that many viewers may find watching this movie a waste of their time.