5/10

Folks, I have one major question regarding this movie: “Where did all the money go?”

I ask this because, If it cost over $200,000,000 to make, I’m pretty sure that not that much went to the parade of B-grade actors, writers or editors. I suppose that leaves a lot of lighting engineers, grips, catering staff, best boys, advertising campaigns, etc, but that still can’t be a significant hunk of the $200M.

I personally hope that the writer(s) weren’t paid much. I don’t know how much movie script writers gets paid, but imagine it’s $60,000 per movie (a wild guess that I pick because it’s close to a typical professional annual wage). I could have written the plot of 2012 on the back of an envelope and sent it to Emmerich, and I would have only charged him $60. I think that’s a fair estimate of what the plot is worth.

I presume therefore that most of the budget went on CGI effects, but how much does that cost? You just feed that algorithm for the effects you want into a network of computers and let them churn out the frames and splice them together the way you want. I know it can be a slow process rendering hundreds of millions of frames, but computers and electricity are relatively cheap.

Looking broadly at the whole movie, for such a huge budget, Roland Emmerich has produced a gigantic piece of unimaginative and forgettable pulp, and some of it is quite bad. The only redeeming feature of the movie is of course the eye-popping special effects, but only in three specific parts of the movie: The limo dash to the airport and take off, the explosion of Yellowstone and the escape in the Antonov (although, I did also like the shorter effect where we see JFK return to the White House).

My usual criticism applies to this movie: Did the director have a clear plan of what sort of movie he was making? I don’t think so. We get a really jumbled mix of disaster, science fiction, effects, moral tales, romance, kids, puppies and stereotypes garnished with a few in-jokes and tributes. And it’s far too long. It’s like someone gave Emmerich a cheque for $200M and he didn’t have a qualified accountant to help him spent it wisely, and he didn’t have anyone to help him focus on exactly what sort of movie he was making.

The character development is tedious, the narrative development is more tedious, the characters are boring and forgettable, the dialogue is appalling, the character development is crippled, the storytelling is shallow, the music is crap (especially the end credits song which had people running from the theatre). The ONLY THING that redeems this mess of a movie is the special effects, but I hardly think that’s something to be proud of. Emmerich could have put more effort into giving his audience a more complete and satisfying experience. 2012 is just a series of spectacular special effects knitted together with corny characters and narrative filler. It’s nothing else.

I was personally irritated by the way we are introduced to so many friends and family of the main characters in excruciating detail, then they just go splat and are unceremoniously wiped out and are gone; that wasted a lot of time. Dozens of times during the movie I kept putting my hand out to the screen and flicked my thumb, John realised I was using an invisible fast-forward button that I desperately wished I had in my hand.

Overall, I think in coming years, 2012 will slowly start to enter “Worst Movie” books and lists as people get over the novelty effects and realise just how dreadful it is. I think it will eventually settle into a comfortable position alongside movies like Towering Inferno, Earthquake, Deep Impact, etc.

It’s just a shame that you won’t be able to experience the best special effects outside of the cinema (unless you’ve got High-Def and a 60 inch screen). The race to the airport around (and through!) crumbling skyscrapers and overpasses was just white-knuckle gobsmacking, as were the flying sequences. I got my half price $12 worth of entertainment out of the escape sequence and the Yellowstone explosion. I was impressed scientifically by the Yellowstone “super volcano” explosion, as I swear that if such a thing happens it will look just like the 2012 effect with the debris and clouds rising into the stratosphere with compression rings at the different levels of atmosphere. Whew!

Score: 4½ for the effects
Score: 1 for the rest of the movie

Cheers,
Greg

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