Roland Emmerich creates the perfect disaster.
Artwork by Rebecca Holt
Roland Emmerich does it again. The brand new doomsday film, 2012 hit theaters November 13, keeping viewers hooked from beginning to the end…of the world.
We have all heard the rumors about the Mayan prediction that the world is coming to an end on 12-21-12. The movie begins in 2009 when a scientist, Adrian Helmsley (Chiwetel Ejiofor, Love Actually) visits a research facility in India where a colleague has alarming news about severe storms that have taken place on the sun’s surface and they are seriously affecting earth. Adrian then confronts U.S. President Wilson (Danny Glover, Saw V) about the recent news. Finally, after jumping a couple of years into the future, it is now 2012 and signs of doom are now accumulating, but people are going about their everyday lives completely oblivious to the doom that’s in store for them.
John Cusack (Martian Child) plays Jackson Curtis, a divorced, dad who is a chauffeur/ writer who lives in Los Angeles and is taking his two kids, Lilly (Morgan Lily, He’s Just Not That into You) and Noah Curtis (Liam James, Fred Claus) on a camping trip up to Yellowstone National Park. There they find that the military and government scientists have closed some of the park for reasons they cannot disclose. After they are personally escorted out of the restricted area by the military, they meet crazy Charlie Frost (Woody Harrelson, Zombieland). Charlie is a radio host who believes that the world is coming to an end starting in California spreading to Yellowstone and eventually the whole world. He has the maps to the location of the “spaceships” the government is building to save the human race.
The ex wife, Kate (Amanda Peet, Martian Child) calls and cuts the vacation short because of serious earthquakes. After Jackson chauffeurs his employer’s children to a private jet he starts to think Charlie Frost is right. Jackson finds a plane and pilot and goes to get his family in the nick of time just as California is falling into the Ocean. Realistically, this should have killed the family and sucked them up into the earthquake. However, in this Hollywood film this is not the case; the audience wants action and entertainment, so having the family survive through is absolutely ridiculous. As California is falling to its doom the Curtis’ are jumping over cracks, flying through buildings and trying to make it to the airport in order to get a larger plane so they can further avoid the destruction.
Finding their pilot dead, Kate’s new husband Gordon (Tom McCarthy, Baby Mama) is a beginner pilot and barley knows how to start the plane, but with some miracle he flies the plane like he’s known how to for years. Flying the plane is just as unrealistic as the car ride: while taking off they are falling into the quake and when up in the air they are just barely missing falling buildings as California crumbles right in front of their eyes. Now they are heading to Yellowstone for the maps to the “spaceships” from Charlie. Yet again, another unrealistic situation, as they all survive Yellowstone’s eruption and the family is headed off to China.
When the U.S. Government found out the world was going to end two years prior, they joined forces with the other world leaders and they, along with anyone rich enough and lucky enough to know about it, got a ticket and boarded these specially built ships that can weather nature’s wrath. The lucky few that board the ship will be the ones to rebuild civilization while the not-so-lucky billions are left to perish. The Chinese build these ships to save the human race. The Government knew the whole time and kept it a huge secret from the whole world, and when the time came they told the important ones that were to start civilization over. The ships are like the Noah’s Arks the new millennium.
Even though some scenes were unrealistic, Roland Emmerich did a fantastic job with the special effects. The earthquakes, the tsunamis, and dust clouds looked so real, it looked like it was really happening right before my eyes. This is an edge-of-your-seat, eye-covering, seat-gripping, and special-effects-intense movie. If end-of-the-world predictions terrify you, then this is not a movie for you. But if you like awesome special effects, great acting and an intense story then this movie will thrill you.
By the end of the movie it’s going to make you wonder if you should party till 2012.
