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2012, the new blockbuster from Roland Emmerich, is something of a disaster. What else is new? You'd think we had enough doomsday already, what with Hollywood intent on remaking all your favourite 1980s movies, never mind a global recession. But Emmerich can't help himself. This is the guy who zapped the planet with extra-terrestrials in Independence Day, shook us almost to death with Godzilla, then fridge-freezered us en masse in The Day After Tomorrow. Now he's moving the ground beneath our feet. 2012 begins in 2009 as the sun begins emitting dangerous radiation and picks up in 2012 when the earth's core melts magnificently.
Stuck in the middle of this oncoming cataclysm is a sprawling ensemble cast. There's Chiwetel Ejiofor's Adrian Helmsley, a level-headed scientist who predicts the disaster. There's Danny Glover as the US president, and he's exactly how you would imagine Obama in three years' time: cranky and crumpled like an old suit. There's Woody Harrelson's quirky turn as prophet of doom Charlie Frost. And centre stage is John Cusack's Jackson Curtis, a crap novelist, limousine driver and ex-husband of Kate (Amanda Peet). His job is not just to save his kids, get rid of the ex-wife's annoying surgeon boyfriend, reunite his nuclear family and somehow get his family to the secret location where the world's governments have built mysterious 'ships' to save an elect few [this is a thinly-disguised recession movie: the world is collapsing, the plutocrats are out to save themselves, good luck if you're an ordinary punter] but also to keep a fine balance between the serious and the cheese.
Emmerich goes to work with the cambazola like a man making school lunches. Kate's beau (Thomas McCarthy) stands in a supermarket aisle. "I feel there is something coming between us," he tells her. There certainly is. A giant crack appears right between them which then tears the supermarket into a canyon. We watch a spoof Arnold Schwarzenegger tell California: "It seems to me that the worst is over." Thirty seconds later, California pretty much ceases to exist. Giant earthquakes toss the state into the sea. The inhabitants of 2012 are screaming. In the stalls, the audience is laughing.
2012 has the campy tone of a '70s disaster movie. I'm happy to get into the spirit, slurping on its hokum with only the occasional gulp of disbelief – Emmerich cannot surprise you with his silliness. But for all his earthquakes, neither can he move you. Not once do you get a wobble in the gut, a stir of adrenalin, a rush of feeling for a character. It's mass destruction on a comic-book scale. Worse, whatever direction our hero travels in, the dismantling of the earth follows conveniently just inches behind. All that's left is to spend your time wondering who among the many Russian characters our disaster meister is going to kill off. (Answer: pretty much all of them.) Our American heroes are never in doubt.
2012 is the kind of disaster movie where everybody has to keep telling you it is the end of the world. Now you'd assume most people who go to watch this kind of fare do so on the basis they know what it is. But Emmerich has absolutely no trust in his audience. Old bums are wheeled out with The End Is Near slogans. "The world as we know it will soon come to an end," intones the president. Soon, everybody's mouthing it, and the dialogue hits the screen in bold underline with exclamation marks. ("You need to read this! You need to read this now!!") In moments of crisis, Emmerich even doubts his ability to communicate the importance of what's happening on screen. So he dials in music on high alert. Or he has someone comment on the action. From an aeroplane, Hawaii looks like a melted Terry's chocolate orange. "This is not good," a soon-to-be-killed-off Russian tells us. Really? How so?
I put much of this down to the fact Emmerich believes you won't pick up on his telling details because you're so busy being wowed by his special effects. The CGI is impressive. On a scale of one to 10, it goes to 11. Having discarded any interest in human interplay, the Stuttgart native opts for global blitzkrieg. He demolishes Rio de Janeiro's Christ the Redeemer statue. He rolls a decapitated St Peter's Basilica around the screen like it was the pope's salt shaker. He drops an aircraft carrier onto the White House. He sinks whole cities into the sea. You start to wonder what someone like James Cameron could do with this kind of CGI muscle. But the thought is quickly squashed as Emmerich moves whole continents at finger snap. It must have been hell in the effects studio:
"I'm afraid, Mr Emmerich, we can't make the global destruction any bigger."
"Say vhat? It must be bigger!!"
"But Mr Emmerich, the computer is on the brink of a meltdown."
"Vhat! Vhat! But I vhant to blow up ze world again again!!"
Running out of things to blow up, Roland Emmerich's next movie will have to be set in outer space.
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