{"id":6644,"date":"2009-11-17T04:04:00","date_gmt":"2009-11-16T20:04:00","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/chekyang.com\/musings\/?p=6644"},"modified":"2018-03-14T11:17:55","modified_gmt":"2018-03-14T03:17:55","slug":"2012","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.chekyang.com\/musings\/2009\/11\/17\/2012\/","title":{"rendered":"2012"},"content":{"rendered":"

\"blog-2012-01\" 2012<\/a><\/em> (2009). 2012<\/em> has been on my short To Watch-list of films<\/a> at the cinema theatre (the next film is James Cameron\u2019s Avatar<\/em>, to be released next month). It\u2019s not because I was expecting the film to possess an interesting story. Rather, when Hollywood spends several hundreds of million dollars creating visual imagery that shows massive destruction, you just got to watch it on the big screen.<\/p>\n

Put in other words: you don\u2019t watch these disaster\/end-of-the-world films with high expectations of story-telling and characters. You watch them because it\u2019s fun to watch stuff blow up real good. In this respect, the film doesn\u2019t disappoint too much.<\/p>\n

Just to get it out of the way: 2012<\/em> is based upon the premise that the Mesoamerican Long Count calendar has an expiration date of 21 December 2012. The film extrapolates on this and that the world as we know will dramatically change because on that date, according to the film, solar flares will cause tectonic plates on the earth\u2019s crust to move several hundred miles. Put in simpler terms, we\u2019ll all die LOL.<\/p>\n

What the film or its viral marketing doesn\u2019t mention though is that the Long Count calendar doesn\u2019t say anything about the world ending. The calendar merely starts on a new cycle. So, I don\u2019t for a moment believe that the world is going to end on 21-12-2012. You accept the film for its hokey story premise: but you still watch it because you expect to see stunning visuals that you can\u2019t see elsewhere.<\/p>\n

You know, stuff like these:<\/p>\n

\"blog-2012-02\"<\/p>\n

2012<\/em> isn\u2019t director Roland Emmerich\u2019s first or even second attempt in directing massive on-screen destruction of the world\u2019s monuments. Heck; after Independence Day<\/em> (1996), Godzilla<\/em> (1998), and The Day After Tomorrow<\/em> (2004), 2012<\/em> is his fourth outing. And boy, is there a lot of destruction going around. Emmerich has stuff in this film that\u2019d make the other Master of Chaos and Destruction a.k.a. Michael Bay green with envy. Where else can you find a film with exploding volcanoes, earthquakes, tsunamis, ships going uplorry, nuclear bomb-esque ashclouds all occurring in the same breadth? 2012<\/em> is like the last disaster film you’ll ever desire – with all disasters under one roof!<\/p>\n

And here’s just a small sampling: in 2012<\/em>, The White House gets blasted by an out-of-control aircraft carrier (though honestly I still found the destruction by alien death-ray in Independence Day<\/em> more cheer worthy LOL), an ocean liner is swept upside down in Poseiden<\/em><\/a>-fashion by rogue waves, the Sistine Chapel comes crashing on the gathering of the faithful, Los Angeles sinks into the ocean, Hawaii gets turned into a burning inferno etc. Reportedly in a news article<\/a>, Islam\u2019s most holy site \u2013 the Kabaa \u2013 was spared off inclusion as Emmerich did not want to offend religious sensitivities and have a fatw\u0101 issued on his head.<\/p>\n

Funnily though, even though I wasn\u2019t even mildly expecting any coherent story or characters you could empathize with in 2012<\/em>, the cast assembled for the film are proven talents that you can\u2019t help feeling it\u2019s all wasted when they\u2019re saddled within a film where the only story resides in convenient plot derivations to get the film moving from one disaster setting to the next. The cast includes John Cusack whom I always enjoy watching, Danny \u201cI\u2019m too old for this sh*t<\/em>\u201c Glover from the four Lethal Weapon<\/em> movies, and Chiwetel Ejiofor from the Serenity<\/em> film. The film\u2019s highpoints are only in its scenes of mayhem, and they\u2019re not as many as the slower moments when the supposed story-telling takes place.<\/p>\n

And as exciting as the very visual scenes are, the film sadly lacks suspense – and anxiety over the unknown just isn’t quite the same thing as getting that adrenaline rush of watching your favorite tourisy spots swallowed up by the earth. Of the cast of both primary and secondary characters, you’d be able to guess correctly who’s going to live and who’s gonna buy the farm. The latter Redshirts<\/a> practically have their fates stamped on their foreheads and serve as disposable fodder only to emphasize how seriously sh*tty is this notion of earth dying.<\/p>\n

Still, it was still worth the $10 per ticket we paid for the viewing at AMK Hub\u2019s Cathay on Saturday morning. I\u2019m certain the next blockbuster we\u2019re catching, Avatar<\/em>, will be a far better viewing experience though, especially considering that director James Cameron has that rare talent of combining amazing visuals with great stories.<\/p>\n

\"\"\"\"\"\"\"\"\"\"<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

2012 (2009). 2012 has been on my short To Watch-list of films at the cinema theatre (the next film is James Cameron\u2019s Avatar, to be released next month). It\u2019s not because I was expecting the film to possess an interesting<\/p>\n

Read More 2012<\/span><\/a><\/div>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[6,10],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-6644","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-at-home","category-entertainment","wpcat-6-id","wpcat-10-id"],"jetpack_featured_media_url":"","_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.chekyang.com\/musings\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/6644","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.chekyang.com\/musings\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.chekyang.com\/musings\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.chekyang.com\/musings\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.chekyang.com\/musings\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=6644"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.chekyang.com\/musings\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/6644\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.chekyang.com\/musings\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=6644"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.chekyang.com\/musings\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=6644"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.chekyang.com\/musings\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=6644"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}