The Agent of Chaos

Before I start my review of 2012, I want to issue a giant "fuck you" to the theater I saw it in. I only have three theaters in my city, and they're all owned by the same heartless corporate assholes, incapable of feeling love and probably unaware of the true meaning of Christmas.

The theater was packed ballsack to ballsack and the air conditioning was about as effective as one of the employees blowing into the theater. After about ten minutes the air was stale and the Mexican kids behind me had driven me to the BRINK OF SANITY. Every time there was drama on the screen they would loudly sigh and start loudly mock-crying. Towards the end of the movie they had created a symphony of restless foot-tapping and had sent me VIP, front row tickets and the acoustics were out of this world. And there was another Mexican kid right next to me who was one of those anal fissures who thinks he needs to announce shit as it happens. Like "OH MY GOSH THAT'S A BIG PLOT POINT" every time there was a big plot point. Does anyone have the number for the Mexican ambassador?

So it was hot, my shoulders and back and legs hurt, the air was stale, the audience were a bunch of faggots. I was so ready for some apocalypse-porn. I wanted that audience to erupt into a fireball and have the manager turn into a giant man-maggot while all the stockholders get fed to a giant bird. I wanted to see this fucking city get destroyed by a biker gang of anthropomorphic tornadoes.

Unfortunately, it didn't LIGHT MY WORLD ON FIRE. It's not exactly a DISASTER, but it won't be the END OF THE WORLD if you miss it. It's sure to start a TIDAL WAVE at the box office and your seeing it may be as inevitable as ARMAGEDDON.

I don't understand how writing these scripts could possibly be so brain-scrambling. I want to see the world blown to shit and see clowns become the dominant species on Earth. Instead we're treated to lame family drama, the sort of tenth-run Oscar bait that the Academy laughs at for being such a shameless attempt to get the cast some Oscars. But with volcanoes and exploding cities thrown in.

The story is pretty simple. The world is exploding. Sunspots are after us. Or something, I'm not sure. Anyway, Yellowstone is exploding and fireballs are coming for you. John Cusack and his family are arguing amongst themselves and the screenwriters are planning to off his wife's new boyfriend so that she can reconcile with her husband. And that's it. The rest of it is window dressing. The point of the movie is to be unabashedly optimistic (to use the film's only words against it) and torture the audience with small seats and mouth-breathing foreigners.

The lame plot could be forgiven because it's a movie about the (fucking) end of the (motherfucking) world, so at least it's fun to watch all those cities you'll never get to live in get spitefully blown to shit, right? But holy cake, for a movie that's nearly three hours there's hardly any apocalypse to be had. When the apocalypse is apocalypsing it's all a great deal of fun, but if this movie was an hour and a half and the ratio of apocalypse action to overwrought family drama was preserved, this would turn into a documentary about the creation of Earth, because I have to find the reciprocal to solve that equation.

Let's not split hairs about something: Roland Emmerich is trying to tell us something. He's been making movies about the end of the world for over a decade, he clearly has a big boner for blowing up cities and he spent over $200 million on this monstrosity. That means one of one things: he spent at least $140 million (with all three of its disaster sequences, there's no way in fuck this cost $200 million--there's just no way) on a doomsday device. THIS IS HOW A JAMES BOND VILLAIN ACTS. Connect the dots, you sheeple.

Roland Emmerich is a menace to society. He's Michael Bay without the fanfare and box office numbers. He doesn't even use young, undeserving actors like Bay does. He uses tired old B-listers. If you can be described as "a poor man's Michael Bay", I hope you're good at improvising nooses, because you may just be dangerous*.

Chiwetel Ejiofor completely (and I mean completely) invalidates John Cusack's character by having more interesting drama and being a much better actor, damn it. In the span of a few years he starred in Dirty Pretty Things and Serenity, two excellent performances that should have made him far more bankable and far more popular. He has a story that runs parallel to John Cusack's and they reek of two different screenplays that were fused with John Cusack's modest career goals and transformed into something lumbering and awful. Actually, there were probably some other screenplays in there as well, like the actually good apocalypse movie that no one seems interested in making. You know, the 100-minute film about characters facing the apocalypse and certain death, witnessing the destruction of the Earth and beginning to pick up the pieces after they miraculously cheat death. The one that addresses the themes of certain death and the destruction of every thing they hold dear.

As for the rest of the characters, Danny Glover continues to barely make an impression on the viewer, which is his trademark acting style. Oliver Platt plays the fat government agent (I'm sure his actual job is never revealed; he's just "evil government agent") who wants power and nothing else. If he had chosen a role in local government instead of national government, he would have ended up as the heartless mayor who wants to bulldoze the youth center and build sell the land to some greedy corporate types who want to build a strip mall. While Oliver Platt embezzles all the funds from the sale to buy more hot dogs, a plucky group of neighborhood kids challenge the land developers to a game of basketball, with the winner taking the land the youth center is on. But when the land developers hire the New York Knicks to play against the children, they must contend with their superior skills. Will the childrens' devotion to the youth center and belief in the power of teamwork be enough to overcome the Knicks' superior skill? Will the Knicks' lack of investment in the fate of the youth center keep them from beating the children of inferior skill? Will Mayor Oliver Platt ever eat $3 million worth of hot dogs (A: Yes)?

Hold on, let me write this down.

3/10

*I set out on my Michael Bay retrospective to try and find something about his aesthetic that I like, and after just three films (I'm still trying to make it through Armageddon, okay?) I've pretty much rejected him as useful in any respect.