2012 (2009)
January 6, 2025 2:57 PM - Subscribe
A frustrated writer struggles to keep his family alive when a series of global catastrophes threatens to annihilate mankind.
Shepherd and I paid actual money for this movie when it came out and I can barely remember any of it.
posted by Kitteh at 3:51 PM on January 6 [4 favorites]
posted by Kitteh at 3:51 PM on January 6 [4 favorites]
The number of “driving away just in time to avoid the collapse of the ground behind the car” shots was problematic.
posted by Lemkin at 3:53 PM on January 6 [5 favorites]
posted by Lemkin at 3:53 PM on January 6 [5 favorites]
It's only a problem if you're the one falling into the hole. But if you're a family in a limousine??? YOLO (Y'all Often Levitate Outrageously)
posted by phunniemee at 4:04 PM on January 6 [6 favorites]
posted by phunniemee at 4:04 PM on January 6 [6 favorites]
Of all the movies I’ve seen in which the protagonist outruns a speedily advancing cold snap and escapes it by slamming a door on it, this is my favorite.
posted by ejs at 4:32 PM on January 6 [4 favorites]
posted by ejs at 4:32 PM on January 6 [4 favorites]
So, better than The Day After Tomorrow, then?
posted by baf at 5:17 PM on January 6 [1 favorite]
posted by baf at 5:17 PM on January 6 [1 favorite]
So, better than The Day After Tomorrow, then?
No. Please be serious.
posted by phunniemee at 5:25 PM on January 6 [6 favorites]
No. Please be serious.
posted by phunniemee at 5:25 PM on January 6 [6 favorites]
This film has bright spots and boring spots, where I think Emmerich really got too focused on the devastation/chaos porn versus the script. In all honesty, this has been a symptom of his for a long time with most of his end of the world/disaster flicks.
It's been a while since I last watched it, but it sticks out, or at least parts, so I can appreciate that it achieved that much. Woody Harrison's character was entertaining, if almost a satire of a character - but he's the Randy Quaid of this film if that makes any sense. John Cusack is John Cusack and keeps things a bit more engaging than most.
Do we cheer when the horrible Russian oligarch loses his seat on the Ark? Yeah, we did. Was Yellowstone's super volcano erupting a wonderful play on volcanic paranoia? Yep. Was the Andreas Fault tipping Los Angeles over like a dinner plate, only a let down because we didn't see Snake Plisken surfing a wave or something while it happens? Perhaps.
As incredible as it seems, I'd wager this was the best film Emmerich produced until Moon Fall, which well, I guess doesn't say a lot about this film. It's most recent like film would be Greenland if we're going for a dad doing everything he can to get his family to safety involving an excessive amount of traveling to a secret location.
posted by Atreides at 5:44 PM on January 6 [3 favorites]
It's been a while since I last watched it, but it sticks out, or at least parts, so I can appreciate that it achieved that much. Woody Harrison's character was entertaining, if almost a satire of a character - but he's the Randy Quaid of this film if that makes any sense. John Cusack is John Cusack and keeps things a bit more engaging than most.
Do we cheer when the horrible Russian oligarch loses his seat on the Ark? Yeah, we did. Was Yellowstone's super volcano erupting a wonderful play on volcanic paranoia? Yep. Was the Andreas Fault tipping Los Angeles over like a dinner plate, only a let down because we didn't see Snake Plisken surfing a wave or something while it happens? Perhaps.
As incredible as it seems, I'd wager this was the best film Emmerich produced until Moon Fall, which well, I guess doesn't say a lot about this film. It's most recent like film would be Greenland if we're going for a dad doing everything he can to get his family to safety involving an excessive amount of traveling to a secret location.
posted by Atreides at 5:44 PM on January 6 [3 favorites]
Was going to flag this as a double because I distinctly remember leaving a comment in FanFare about this movie and John Cusack but upon inspection that was a Day After Tomorrow post also by phunniemee and now I'm trapped in some sort of recursive hell of bad movies and my decaying brain wishing for a meteor to hit the earth like in that Tommy Lee Jones movie
posted by Alvy Ampersand at 6:15 PM on January 6 [6 favorites]
posted by Alvy Ampersand at 6:15 PM on January 6 [6 favorites]
I hope we can all agree the important thing is that the prophesied catastrophe was avoided.
posted by Lemkin at 6:32 PM on January 6 [1 favorite]
posted by Lemkin at 6:32 PM on January 6 [1 favorite]
No unfortunately the catastrophe was written, produced, and filmed.
posted by phunniemee at 6:36 PM on January 6 [1 favorite]
posted by phunniemee at 6:36 PM on January 6 [1 favorite]
My favorite part of any Roland Emmerich movie
Clearly your deathbed movie will have to be a Roland Emmerich disaster film (redundant?) where LA succumbs to a boat deluge
posted by ginger.beef at 7:13 PM on January 6 [1 favorite]
Clearly your deathbed movie will have to be a Roland Emmerich disaster film (redundant?) where LA succumbs to a boat deluge
posted by ginger.beef at 7:13 PM on January 6 [1 favorite]
actual screenshot from 32 minutes into Moonfall
posted by phunniemee at 7:32 PM on January 6 [3 favorites]
posted by phunniemee at 7:32 PM on January 6 [3 favorites]
Are there any flung boats in Stonewall (directed by Emmerich in 2012) or only flung bricks?
posted by larrybob at 7:52 PM on January 6 [1 favorite]
posted by larrybob at 7:52 PM on January 6 [1 favorite]
The lengths God will go to to help a little girl stop pissing herself are truly remarkable.
posted by GCU Sweet and Full of Grace at 8:19 AM on January 7 [2 favorites]
posted by GCU Sweet and Full of Grace at 8:19 AM on January 7 [2 favorites]
I love Roland Emmerich movies because they're each such a specific and consistent snapshot of the parallel dimension that exists entirely in the man's head. Nothing in his movies bear any relationship to reality, but they bear a very strong relationship to his other movies in a way that makes for a kind of complete little world you get to visit again every time he decides he'd like to destroy Los Angeles.
Like they're stupid and silly, but idiosyncratic artistic voice is something that's fallen out of fashion in genre fiction so it's kind of a treat to revisit Emmerich's specific set of dumb stereotypes every couple years. Also seeing recognizable tourist traps you've visited get obliterated really is kind of fun.
posted by Phobos the Space Potato at 9:35 AM on January 7 [3 favorites]
Like they're stupid and silly, but idiosyncratic artistic voice is something that's fallen out of fashion in genre fiction so it's kind of a treat to revisit Emmerich's specific set of dumb stereotypes every couple years. Also seeing recognizable tourist traps you've visited get obliterated really is kind of fun.
posted by Phobos the Space Potato at 9:35 AM on January 7 [3 favorites]
I was forced to see this movie in theaters -- I'm not really a disaster movie person -- and the thing I remember best is the Oliver Platt character smugly announcing that they secretly hired China to build a bunch of submarines. Then they showed the queen boarding the submarines with her corgis, and all I could think was: this is so dumb. I would simply not let the queen board. I would tell all the septuagenarian billionaires who bought a place on the ark that they would be waiting in the VIP lounge and then -- well, look, I'm not going to finish that sentence because it's gonna sound very agist and also a bit eugenicist. But the "secret submarine for old rich people" thing absolutely killed me.
The other thing I remembered was that the subs surfaced off the coast of Africa, where everything looked just fine, and the joke I could not let go of was that the whole continent had been left unaffected. Honestly, I would like the half-hour comedy sequel where all the richest and most important people in the world have to brazen out their role in the not-apocalypse.
One thing about all these movies that...uh, might have been more obvious to adults when they came out but totally went over my head...is how 9/11-y they are. It felt like there was a big discussion over how cinema had not engaged with 9/11, but when you look back at the media of the early aughts, it is all terrorism "thrillers" and apocalypse stories.
posted by grandiloquiet at 10:26 AM on January 7 [3 favorites]
The other thing I remembered was that the subs surfaced off the coast of Africa, where everything looked just fine, and the joke I could not let go of was that the whole continent had been left unaffected. Honestly, I would like the half-hour comedy sequel where all the richest and most important people in the world have to brazen out their role in the not-apocalypse.
One thing about all these movies that...uh, might have been more obvious to adults when they came out but totally went over my head...is how 9/11-y they are. It felt like there was a big discussion over how cinema had not engaged with 9/11, but when you look back at the media of the early aughts, it is all terrorism "thrillers" and apocalypse stories.
posted by grandiloquiet at 10:26 AM on January 7 [3 favorites]
Clearly your deathbed movie will have to be a Roland Emmerich disaster film (redundant?) where LA succumbs to a boat deluge
Sharknado 18: Boatnado
posted by We put our faith in Blast Hardcheese at 11:53 AM on January 7 [2 favorites]
Sharknado 18: Boatnado
posted by We put our faith in Blast Hardcheese at 11:53 AM on January 7 [2 favorites]
Sharknado 18 x Boatnado: Electric Volcano the Return
posted by Atreides at 12:18 PM on January 7 [1 favorite]
posted by Atreides at 12:18 PM on January 7 [1 favorite]
As was the thing to do back before your social medias and your toots and your tiks and your toks, new media tried to go viral with ARGs, and 2012 apparently has a weak one that the internet has literally forgotten existed (other than The Internet Archive), but somewhere within its laboured fun included the fake book from the movie, which still lives on partially on Google Books. Somewhere I have a PDF of the first chapter, which was also part of the ARG.
[I wrote a fake review of this book on my book blog, which is where I retrieved this information from]
posted by AzraelBrown at 12:59 PM on January 7 [3 favorites]
[I wrote a fake review of this book on my book blog, which is where I retrieved this information from]
posted by AzraelBrown at 12:59 PM on January 7 [3 favorites]
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posted by phunniemee at 3:07 PM on January 6 [3 favorites]