[Movie] 2012- Combined Review

Editors Note:

Hello everybody, your favourite film reviewer here. Well… probably closer to least favourite, actually. This post is going to try something a little different. It will combine two different (and both very long) reviews into one. You see, we had two reviews for this one from two people (stone (Peter) and X-Solid (Sean)) and along with posting to separate ones, the powers that be thought it would be a good idea to combine them into one easily read article, and so that task fell to me. So here it goes, two reviews, in one.
Oh, one other point, the two reviewers disagree on the film, so this could get interesting, so to make it easier, the bits by each author will be identified as such. So let’s see how this works. Take it away Sean. –ed.

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X-Solid: Well this is one of my first major movie reviews for this site and well I thought I would start it off with a bang and review for you readers 2012. 2012 is yet another disaster movie following others like The Day After Tomorrow, Independence Day, The Core and others. The concept, as always, is what possible way could you see the world being destroyed, by nature, or by space. I am a big fan of action and explosions and anything of the sort, and disaster movies have always been in my accepting list. What makes 2012 different is there is actual belief behind the movie, making the events that happen possibly true.

The Mayans who lived centuries back made a calendar that ran out on December 21st 2012, many religions believe that this is the end of the world, some say it is a state of change for humanity. But as a disaster film it has to go with the ‘end of the world’ concept, because it’s what hollywood do best. Directed by Roland Emmerich, who, in fact, directed all other disaster movies, delivers what I believe to be his best work, no matter what other peoples opinions on the movie may be.

Movie Poster for 2012

Stone: Birds and snakes, an aeroplane. It is, as the lyrics go, the end of the world as we know it. However I can, in all honesty say, that, having witnessed it, I don’t feel fine. Watching it, I actually felt quite bored. I am talking about that new “world in peril” movie 2012 from Roland Emmerich, yes, another one from that guy.

Now, I may not be able to claim to be a big fan of these movies. I liked I Am Legend, Independence Day wasn’t too bad, there’s worse out there than Deep Impact, but to get the real “end of the world” movies you need to go a bit further back than the mid-to-late nineties. Beneath The Planet of the Apes (1970), The Poseidon Adventure (1972, not 2006), The Day The Earth Stood Still (1951, not 2008) and On The Beach (1959, not the 2000, made-for-TV, version) all stand out, for me, as the real “world in peril” films, the good ones. Did you start to notice something though? I was quoting the originals, not the remakes. For those out there either not aware of the originals, or who have some sort of natural objection to “old films” this may seem silly, but let me explain.

Take Deep Impact. There is a moment, on the beach, as destruction approaches. You know the moment. That is a great part. It lets you see the interesting part of world destruction, the human side. This is what makes On The Beach so special. It’s about people surviving the initial disaster and preparing for the inevitable. How about Poseidon and The Day The Earth Stood Still. Why would I pick the originals over the remakes. Well, it’s very simple, and comes in the form of three letters. C, G and I, and is similar to why I love Beneath the Planet of the Apes so much. In the remakes of these films all the action that was done with models and real people were replaced with some wiz-kid and a computer. Sure it “looks better”, but it does take all the fun out of it. At least for me. As for Beneath the Planet of the Apes, well, if you want to end the world, you don’t need CGI nanobots, you need to fade to white.

X-Solid: The story is pretty simple the sun has a huge explosion on its surface in the year 2009, a scientist goes to India to receive intel relating to its effect on earth. They discover the Earth is heating up rather rapidly and they take their data back to America, it is then passed onto the president. By then it is taking cautious steps in 2010. 2011: We see the famous painting the Mona Lisa being replaced with a fake and the original being stored away for reasons unknown. 2012 comes around and we see a father who has been divorced, played by John Cusack, he lives his life as a for the more famous people. He travels to his ex wifes to pick up the kids and take them to a national park, whilst there he comes across a man who is a bit out of his mind and he states the end of the world is near.

In the mean time America is starting to crack, the reason for this is that whilst the Earth has been boiling, underneath the crust has been destabilizing and then becoming dangerous. He takes the kids back after and gets on with his job, he escorts 2 rich kids to a plane in which they state they will go on a huge ship and live and he will die. He drives home as fast as he can to pick all of them up, as it happens the whole of California where they reside demolishes and falls into the planet. After a hectic struggle to get away they manage to escape by plane and make their way to China where these ships are being constructed. Along the way they go through more events and peril and meet new people along the way.

The point of these ships are that they were made to store important people, books and documents/art, animals and then as much of the general population as possible. These boats are huge and only 7 were made which could hold around 10 million or more people who is enough to re-populate the planet after the events happen. As for the rest of the story, I will leave that to you, as spoiling it would then make you not see it because you will know the outcome. I sat through it being surprised by it actually being something good rather than me thinking it was going to be a dumb hollywood rip off.

Stone: So, that’s enough about other films, let’s talk about the real reason I’m writing this, 2012. The premise of the film, for those not already aware, is that the world is going to end, as the Mayans, and apparently a lot of other people, predicted, due to a rare planetary alignment, causing unusually high solar activity. This means that in 2012, the whole world will super-heat, natural disasters will take over, and the world will be consumed by a flood of biblical proportions. No it isn’t a scientific likely hood, or even a remote possibility, so please leave your sense of disbelief at the door. Please also feel free to leave your memories of any and all previous global disaster films behind, as everything from Poseidon to Deep Impact and Volcano are in here.

The script not only blends all of the disasters from these other films in there, but also ensures that everything you expect from the story is there, the unsuccessful dad, both career- and marriage-wise, the two kids, the ex-wife and her new partner, the dog, who must be saved, and the last-minute peril all make their way in, but of course I can’t tell you how they blend in with the thoroughly unfavourable Russian man and his two, equally unfavourable boys, because that would be a spoiler, even though you can probably work it out for yourself.

X-Solid: The film achieved many things, an insight to multiple beliefs put into one movie, an outstanding achievement for CGI and special effects which still make me go “wow”. There is nothing anyone can say against the CGI used in this movie, even films like Transformers 2 look minor compared to this. But as we say, there isn’t that much CG to compare with films like Transformers 2 because they’re merely robots where 2012 is a global destruction movie. Besides the outstanding CGI, the story is fine by itself but not the greatest, there are tearful bits and then there’s funny bits and that is where my only major complaint will go.

Image from the 2012 trailer

Nothing anyone can say? Really? Have a go stone. –ed.

Stone: The CGI in this film is both impressive, and thoroughly boring at the same time. As someone currently with a 3D modelling module at uni, I know how much hard work can go into making these things, and the detail is quite impressive. The re-used elements, the boring repetitiveness, and the fact an aeroplane can fly through some collapsing buildings, however, just take the edge off. Yes it’s shiny, but it’s not as impressive sitting back knowing that the St Peter’s Basilica is just triangles from a computer instead of a highly detailed model, or that the people falling are pixels, not eve stunt men. Real stunts and high-quality models are what made this genre acceptable, now, well, now it’s just boring.

X-Solid The major complaint is where they use some jokes through the story, I know it is mainly used to put some light heart into the story rather than seeing everything being destroyed. But the problem is the way they executed them throughout the movie. They were sometimes too stupid for the movie or just not funny at all. If they made them more suitable they would have been more ideal for the movie but this is just the path it went, and not a good one. Some bad acting can be seen also in the movie. Some of it is acceptable and some is just poor but then not every movie will have spot on acting it’s just something that is proven.

Stone: The other problem seems to be the American leaning towards geography. Everything that happens anywhere not in the states happens around famous landmarks. The Vatican, the Christ the Redeemer statue in Rio, The Eiffel Tower, the tunnel where Princess Diana died, and the fact that people from other countries all talk with over the top, stereotypical accents.
To bring this to a close, 2012 is by far the best disaster movie out of the lot. Tonnes of action, excitement and many other experiences which are shown throughout a family’s journey to survive the global scale events of which 2012 will bring. I recommend you see it, if you’re a fan of action, disaster, CGI or anything of the kind. I give this movie a solid 3 out of 5, due to the silly comedy and sometimes bad acting and non over great story. The special effects alone are worth the watch, I would rather call this movie ILM the movie instead of 2012. (Even though none of the effects were from ILM – ed.)

Stone: So there you have it. The film is dull, boring, too long (158 minutes, and you feel every, last, lingering second), overly-CGI’d and overly predictable. All that, however, can be summed up even better. As always, the BBFC told you all this in their rating.
Rated 12A for Sustained moderate threat and one use of strong language.
Moderate threat. That is all.

It’s me again. The ed. So there you have it guys. A review made up of two different people’s ideas. It may have worked, it may not. In fact, if it didn’t work it’s unlikely you are going to see this and me writing an outro is pretty pointless. But it was worth a shot. I hope you enjoyed it, and have now got different ideas to make your own judgement on what the film was like. You may have noticed that stone didn’t give a score for his review. He doesn’t tend to, but he said he would this time, so he can have the final word.

Stone: Apparently I can make use whatever scale I want. So on a scale of “very good” to “very bad” I say “meh”.

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Some content from this post is reposted from the Random Blog of Random Blogginess. The original post can be found here. It is used, with permission, under the Creative Commons Attribution-Non-Commercial-Share Alike 2.0 UK: England & Wales License.

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