You Don't Have To Be A Mayan To Know Which Way The Wind Blows

My first memories of being scared in a theater were of watching the trailers for Irwin Allen productions like The Poseidon Adventure (1972) and The Towering Inferno (1974). I don't know which movies my mother and I had gone to see when those previews played but the sight of crowds of people trapped, overwhelmed and facing certain death by either water or flames terrified me. I even felt unnerved a few years later when we saw Superman: The Movie (1978) and I watched the destruction of Krypton play out on the big screen. To see people running for their lives as the ground below them gave way and they plummeted into an endless chasm, falling helplessly into space, was scarier to me than any creature feature I had seen. A monster or an animal can conceivably be reasoned with - or at least be deceived, or defeated. But Nature is devoid of thoughts or feelings. Nature, to me, is not about sunsets and gentle breezes. It's about hundred foot tall waves, raging fires, and enormous upheavals in the earth.

Producer/writer/director Roland Emmerich knows all about what Nature (and what CGI) is capable of. With only one true disaster movie to his credit - 2004's The Day After Tomorrow (Godzilla and Independence Day had plenty of destruction but they were rooted in sci-fi fantasy with their giant monsters and aliens) - he apparently decided that he had been thinking too small with that film and looked to the Mayan calendar for inspiration for 2012. This is the big enchilada of disaster movies. I believe that the book on this genre should be permanently closed now. I guess someone else will try to carry on at some point - maybe even Emmerich himself - but I can't imagine why. Unless all prints of 2012 are mysteriously lost, there is no more need for any further cinematic depictions of disaster - that is unless someone wants to do a disaster movie in 3-D. Maybe that'll be Emmerich's encore after this. Personally, I think he should just move on because trying to top himself at his own game after 2012 looks like a losing proposition to me.

I had expected that 2012 would've gone more into Mayan mumbo-gumbo but the prophecies or what-have-you of the Mayan calendar are given a brief shout-out or two early on and never mentioned again. Apparently there wasn't much material there to work with - but they did have that magic date to offer and Emmerich doesn't let it go to waste. To Emmerich's credit, the characters in 2012 are more personable than they had to be. Smart casting helps, with John Cusack as a novelist and Chiwetel Ejiofor as a scientist being especially good. And I wouldn't have thought that a movie about the end of the world could be such giddy fun but Emmerich has pulled it off. This is the kind of movie where one character says to another "I feel like something's pulling us apart," as a beat later a gigantic crack appears between them in the floor of the supermarket they're standing in. Corny? Sure, but you don't spend the kind of money that was spent on this movie to leave people depressed. 2012 frequently reaches the level of total slapstick farce and boy, those are some good times. I'd hate to spoil the highlights for anyone, so I won't but all I can say is that I'm still chuckling over some of 2012's best bits.

When I told my wife this movie was two hours and forty minutes long, she couldn't believe it. But while it does seem like a movie that by rights ought to be short and sweet, Emmerich finds a way to make 2012 more than just a global smackdown. This catastrophe isn't something that's just sprung on the world's leaders so plans are in place to ensure the survival of the species, giving 2012 a third act that isn't just about people lying around dying. And of course, in classic disaster movie tradition, there's plenty of soap opera level dramatics with characters either rising or falling to the occasion.

Emmerich himself rises to the occasion with the help of his cast and special effects team. 2012 is a giant hunk of foolishness but it's also the greatest 'disaster porn' film ever made.

2012

As you may have noticed, it's been unusually quiet here lately. I'm sorry for the lack of activity but I think Barack Obama's landslide Presidential win temporarily took the wind out of my need to write. Or more specifically, the need to write about horror. Over the next four years, peace and prosperity might return to the USA and even if that turns out to be just a case of wishful thinking, for the first time in a long time, life seems less anxious and the future doesn't look so scary.

But while at a screening of Quantum of Solace, I saw a well-timed reminder that the future is always something to fear in the form of the teaser for director Roland Emmerich's upcoming doomsday mega-spectacle 2012.

There isn't much to see here, just a monk in the Himalayas desperately ringing a church bell as a massive tidal wave crashes over the mountains and washes away everything in its path. But I like that the clip utilizes a music cue from 1980's The Shining. As the waves crash over the mountain top, it's to the same music heard in the famous teaser for Kubrick's film where the elevator doors open and unleash a torrent of blood. It might be cheesy of 2012 to appropriate this music for their purposes but I appreciate the fact that both teasers end awash in a cascade of doom.

How do I rate the prospects of 2012 as an actual movie? Pretty low, although that does nothing to diminish my desire to see it. I love movies that feed into half-assed 'real' fears (how well I remember spending the summer of '78 in mortal terror waiting for the killer bees of The Swarm to end Life As We Knew It - after all, it was all over the news how South American killer bees were on their way to North America so it wasn't just made-up crap) and worrying about the end of the world in 2012 because the Mayans said so is about as half-assed as it gets (even though, like killer bees, the Mayan calendar itself isn't just made-up crap). My concerned wife is already wringing her hands over this nonsense and I'm sure this movie will send plenty of people searching for every scrap of info that will tell them where to hide when the shit goes down in four years.

For myself, my only worry is that I'm not sure how the world is supposed to end in this movie and I'd hate to be disappointed. I'm too lazy to look up what the Mayans themselves had to say (even though the 2012 teaser encourages uninformed viewers to "Find Out The Truth" by Googling '2012') and I'm guessing the film takes its own liberties with the prophecies anyhow (because even the best prophecies can stand some juicing up).

I'm just hoping that our global end game isn't all down to an environmental issue, like the Earth shifts orbit and all Hell breaks loose. My feeling is that if the world is ending according to an ancient Mayan prophecy and there isn't aliens involved, why bother? Seriously, I'll be pissed. As end of the world cataclysms go, 2012 is supposed to be the mother of them all (sorry, Nostradamus) so why not go for the whole cosmic enchilada?

I just hope that Roland Emmerich and co. deliver something so spectacular that the forces of the universe will be pressed to come up with something better to top it and have to miss their 2012 date altogether. After all, if 2012 is good I'd like life on Earth to continue so we can see a sequel.