2012

[Revy]

It was a good movie...

It doesn't rest on spiritual or New-Age stuff, in fact the Mayans are mentioned only a few times (in the sense that they were right), and prayer is shown to not work against the catastrophe. It's based on some seemingly plausible scenario (at least by Hollywood standards) of a solar flare which acts like a microwave in heating up the Earth's core causing "crust displacement" (earthquakes, volcanoes, tsunamis).

[Os Cangaceiros]

My favorite part? When the Indian dude called his buddy in an underground bunker in China on his cell phone, after a massive pole shift and after all ground communications on Earth had been obliterated. (This was as an enormous tsunami was rushing towards him.)

The bit about a yellow piece of plastic jamming enormous gears that looked like they could devour an SUV was amusing, too.

[ComradeMan]

Pretty rubbish film by all accounts. It also hides a pro-capitalist and pro-statist element of propaganda in that the destruction of capitalist symbols of wealth and the destruction of government are portrayed as apocalyptic. Like a British film I saw the other day in which Scotland is isolated for 30 years after a zombie virus wipes out most of its population. When agents return in order to find survivors and create a vaccine the society they find is barbarous and chaotic thus re-enforcing the message that without government we are all lost and doomed to some kind of medieval inferno.

My 2012 scenario, a giant UFO turns up over a Mayan pyramid and out steps Jesus... ha ha... now it's going to hit the fan...!:D

[bots]

such a terrible movie. it had so much potential to be awesome too. it was basically just a rehash of all the crappier bits of independence day. at least the president died in this one.

[brigadista]

poseidon adventure for the 2000s unfortunately without shelley winters

[Brady]

Pretty rubbish film by all accounts. It also hides a pro-capitalist and pro-statist element of propaganda in that the destruction of capitalist symbols of wealth and the destruction of government are portrayed as apocalyptic. Like a British film I saw the other day in which Scotland is isolated for 30 years after a zombie virus wipes out most of its population. When agents return in order to find survivors and create a vaccine the society they find is barbarous and chaotic thus re-enforcing the message that without government we are all lost and doomed to some kind of medieval inferno.

My 2012 scenario, a giant UFO turns up over a Mayan pyramid and out steps Jesus... ha ha... now it's going to hit the fan...!:D

I saw that Scotland one too, thought it was quite amusing, albeit you are entirely correct with your criticism from an anarchist perspective. Can you remember what it was called?

apologies for derailing the thread slightly.

[brigadista]

doomsday i think

[Brady]

thats the one, cheers

[Jimmie Higgins]

If you want your brain to explode and your flesh to rot off your body, movie hop from "2012" to "the Road".

[Kayser_Soso]

I am actually working on a screenplay I plan to sell to Roland Emmerich. It's called "Roland Emmerich Blows Shit Up", and consists of roughly 90 minutes of famous landmarks exploding.

[Invader Zim]

2012 wasn't that bad but it certainly wasn't good by any stretch of the imagination. The plot consists, more of less, of John Cusack running, in the suit he wore in Grosse Pointe Blank, with the apocalypse a few feet behind him. It contains way too much sentimental filler and should have been about 30 minutes, if not more, shorter.

[cleef]

thought it was a pretty standard film to be honest nothing amazing...i swear the mayan prediction doesnt mention anything about the world ending on Dec 21st 2012 though? Just some change in the alignment of the stars or something?

[Kayser_Soso]

thought it was a pretty standard film to be honest nothing amazing...i swear the mayan prediction doesnt mention anything about the world ending on Dec 21st 2012 though? Just some change in the alignment of the stars or something?


IIRC the whole story behind the theory is that the Mayan calender stops in 2012. Apparently someone thought they would just calculate indefinitely into the future.

[Os Cangaceiros]

doomsday i think

Doomsday was fucking awesome. It's probably one of my favorite films, actually...sooo ludicrous and sooo many plotholes, yet sooo awesome.

[Dimentio]

Well, apocalyptic culture precedes capitalism. The idea that humans will be punished because of their progress and their defiance to the limits set by God is existing in most civilisations. Its about an extension of individual guilt to embrace an entire civilisation.

[Os Cangaceiros]

I think that it would kind of interesting to witness the "end of the world" first hand, personally.

I'm going to die someday, and "end of the world" sounds like an awesome cause of death.

[LOLseph Stalin]

Terrible movie. Probably the only good thing about were the special effects. Not only was it incredibly ridiculous that Hollywood would cash in on something like this, but I also spotted numerous scientific inaccuracies in it. I guess inaccuracies are to be expected in a movie though. It also made me angry how the elite were literally able to buy their way onto the arks while leaving the poor behind to die.

[Il Medico]

It also made me angry how the elite were literally able to buy their way onto the arks while leaving the poor behind to die.
And what do you think would happen irl under capitalism?


Exactly.

[CELMX]

one of those movies where you sit down, drop your mouth open, and go:

"EXPLOOOOOOOSSSSIOOOOOOOOONNNN"

[Invader Zim]

It also made me angry how the elite were literally able to buy their way onto the arks while leaving the poor behind to die.

Which is pretty much the entire point of that part of the film.

[Kayser_Soso]

Which is pretty much the entire point of that part of the film.

...and is pretty much what would happen in real life.

[bots]

I think that it would kind of interesting to witness the "end of the world" first hand, personally.

I'm going to die someday, and "end of the world" sounds like an awesome cause of death.


me and my friend were talking about the funnest ways to go out in the movie. i picked tidal wave on the cruise ship. he picked getting smashed in the face by the volcano.

[BogdanV]

IMHO, it was the funniest film I watched for the past half year. I never had such a good laugh, especially when the main character was piloting the small civil airplane or when he was driving the car.
As for inaccuracies, there were tons of it, like the idea that a plane reactor would function through dense fumes filled with incandescent debris, or the pure propaganda stuff with the president sacrificing himself for the good of the country.

Also, the Indian mine at the beginning of the movie. The deepest mine is actually in Siberia and there's no way that mine could get close to the center of the Earth and have pockets of water in it.

Also, the ease with which the main character enters in the isolated perimeter in Yellowstone and after being caught he is left alone, free to wonder and do what he wants.

And another hilarious scene is with the president who insists that people should know the truth after the world was clearly going to hell. You'd must be really dumb to not realize that random cracks and entire cities going to hell isn't something normal.

And speaking about random cracks, when such a thing happens, it doesn't just pop there while everything else in the vicinity is still standing. When a crack in the earth literally shows up in your face, you'd get a earthquake that would send down everything for a good couple of miles.

And last but not least, windows in the cockpit of the ark ? Didn't they fear that the pressure would cause massive damage to the ship ? Well, the windows would be the first to break, be it reinforced glass or plexiglas.
As for the bay doors being submerged while half-open; the pressure would rip the gate apart so the chances for a engine to oppose that pressure and close the gate is even more retarded.

Also the fact that the arks weren't heavily guarded by the army is really absurd. Any self-respecting cappie would know that the massive number of workers and unfortunate clients would try to board the ship by force, so a slaughter would be inevitable.

Oh and if this apocalypse was caused by a massive solar flare, or to put it another way, Earth's water were to be heated by microwaves, wouldn't we be getting a planetary EMP up our bottoms ?
That would render every electronics dead from the beginning, not to mention that people too would be cooked to death or at least suffer/die from direct sun exposure.

In the end, this movie failed so much trying to be serious that it was funny as hell. I almost choked at the cinema laughing at the "escape" scenes !

[Revy]

IMHO, it was the funniest film I watched for the past half year. I never had such a good laugh, especially when the main character was piloting the small civil airplane or when he was driving the car.
As for inaccuracies, there were tons of it, like the idea that a plane reactor would function through dense fumes filled with incandescent debris, or the pure propaganda stuff with the president sacrificing himself for the good of the country.

Also, the Indian mine at the beginning of the movie. The deepest mine is actually in Siberia and there's no way that mine could get close to the center of the Earth and have pockets of water in it.

Also, the ease with which the main character enters in the isolated perimeter in Yellowstone and after being caught he is left alone, free to wonder and do what he wants.

And another hilarious scene is with the president who insists that people should know the truth after the world was clearly going to hell. You'd must be really dumb to not realize that random cracks and entire cities going to hell isn't something normal.

And speaking about random cracks, when such a thing happens, it doesn't just pop there while everything else in the vicinity is still standing. When a crack in the earth literally shows up in your face, you'd get a earthquake that would send down everything for a good couple of miles.

And last but not least, windows in the cockpit of the ark ? Didn't they fear that the pressure would cause massive damage to the ship ? Well, the windows would be the first to break, be it reinforced glass or plexiglas.
As for the bay doors being submerged while half-open; the pressure would rip the gate apart so the chances for a engine to oppose that pressure and close the gate is even more retarded.

Also the fact that the arks weren't heavily guarded by the army is really absurd. Any self-respecting cappie would know that the massive number of workers and unfortunate clients would try to board the ship by force, so a slaughter would be inevitable.

Oh and if this apocalypse was caused by a massive solar flare, or to put it another way, Earth's water were to be heated by microwaves, wouldn't we be getting a planetary EMP up our bottoms ?
That would render every electronics dead from the beginning, not to mention that people too would be cooked to death or at least suffer/die from direct sun exposure.

In the end, this movie failed so much trying to be serious that it was funny as hell. I almost choked at the cinema laughing at the "escape" scenes !

I think you're over-analyzing it. I think if you pay attention to random stuff like that of course you're not going to like the movie.

It was a movie based on a Maya prophecy which has been interpreted (possibly incorrectly) about the end of the world. They did not have to make it realistic because most people don't even think the premise is realistic.

Also, the political criticisms are flimsy. For example, the government is portrayed as far from innocent, assassinating people who plan to reveal things they are not supposed to know about 2012.

I think a lot of critics were just brutal with their criticism of Emmerich's other film 10,000 BC. I thought it was great and artistic in a way. But people were too focused on the idea of "historical inaccuracy" despite the fact it never claimed to be an accurate portrayal of history...hence all the fantasy stuff like telepathy, prophecy, and references to extraterrestrials. But that flew way over the head of many critics who just thought "UH this has pyramids but it's in 10,000 BC" thinking they said something clever.

[Pavlov's House Party]

The Mayans never predicted the world would end in 2012. IIRC, they believed the world would end every 52 years or something unless they sacrificed people to the gods:rolleyes:

[Dimentio]

I think you're over-analyzing it. I think if you pay attention to random stuff like that of course you're not going to like the movie.

It was a movie based on a Maya prophecy which has been interpreted (possibly incorrectly) about the end of the world. They did not have to make it realistic because most people don't even think the premise is realistic.

Also, the political criticisms are flimsy. For example, the government is portrayed as far from innocent, assassinating people who plan to reveal things they are not supposed to know about 2012.

I think a lot of critics were just brutal with their criticism of Emmerich's other film 10,000 BC. I thought it was great and artistic in a way. But people were too focused on the idea of "historical inaccuracy" despite the fact it never claimed to be an accurate portrayal of history...hence all the fantasy stuff like telepathy, prophecy, and references to extraterrestrials. But that flew way over the head of many critics who just thought "UH this has pyramids but it's in 10,000 BC" thinking they said something clever.

The Mayas did never predict that the world would end by 2012 :lol:

[Black Sheep]

main flaw:
the notion that neutrinos interact with matter.
For fuck's sake.

[Il Medico]

main flaw:
the notion that neutrinos interact with matter.
For fuck's sake.
It's a movie, give it a break. I thought it was pretty good. Lots of eye candy effects wise.

[BIG BROTHER]

The movie was bullshit.

They took a pretty interesting concept and turned it into a a bad action/sci-fi/romantic/political movie.

I mean come on, at the end of the movie one of the last lines is the little white girl saying that she doesn't need pull ups anymore! yay! humanity is saved!

[IllicitPopsicle]

I liked/thought the G8 scene was funny. The protestors were screaming "Drop the Debt!"

[TheCultofAbeLincoln]

Pretty rubbish film by all accounts. It also hides a pro-capitalist and pro-statist element of propaganda in that the destruction of capitalist symbols of wealth and the destruction of government are portrayed as apocalyptic. Like a British film I saw the other day in which Scotland is isolated for 30 years after a zombie virus wipes out most of its population. When agents return in order to find survivors and create a vaccine the society they find is barbarous and chaotic thus re-enforcing the message that without government we are all lost and doomed to some kind of medieval inferno.

My 2012 scenario, a giant UFO turns up over a Mayan pyramid and out steps Jesus... ha ha... now it's going to hit the fan...!:D

I also saw that flick about scotland being rampaged by zombies a while back, and at first had high hopes. Kind of like, well everyone assumes the US is going down the drain immediately when the shit hits the fan and somehow the tiny island that can't feed itself is going to survive (V for Vendetta, Children of Men, etc)...So it'll be nice to finally get a movie where Britain gets royally fucked.

But comparing that sad sack of crap filmaking to a semi-decent B movie like 2012 is a monstrosity in and of itself my friend. Yes, 2012 wan't very intellectual but at least it was entertaining, not like watching some Scot cannibals in what appears to be a horribly made Prodigy music video.


Anyways, to your original point, a fascist like govt running things after some apocalyptic event (or even different factions resembling such) is a genre of movie I'll never tire of. The Road is next on the list, if it's even half as good as the book it'll be worth the $8.

Oh, and everyone else, come on. This movie wasn't exactly made to impress the crowds at Cannes. It was made to be a low-plot high-budget action flick based on special effects. I mean, Danny Glover is President (You know, of Lethal Weapon/Predator 2 fame? (insert Reagan joke here)) If you didn't want to see a bad movie with massive explosions or LA sliding into the ocean, you should have gone to see Fantastic Mr Fox (which was delightful btw).