[Movie] 2012

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.

2012 Movie Poster

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.

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.

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.

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.

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.)

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