Cusack in 2012: "YOU STOLE MY CHEERIOS!"

Cast: John Cusack, Amanda Peet, Danny Glover, Chiwetel Ejiofor, Thandie Newton
Director: Roland Emmerich
Screenwriter: Roland Emmerich, Harald Kloser

“First you distract them with humour, then you make them think.� It’s a belief lined with paranoia, spoken by Woody Harrelson’s eccentric conspiracy-mad wanderer. It’s an interesting idea for how to make a mass popcorn audience take notice, and it’s certainly director Roland Emmerich’s principle filmmaking philosophy for how to make a big-budget disaster blockbuster. And for those still counting, 2012 marks his third swim in this particular ocean – following the staggering success of Independence Day and the less popular albeit still entertaining The Day After Tomorrow. Distracting the audience with humour before making them think about the consequences of human ignorance on the planet worked well twice before – but can Emmerich pull the same trick again?

Unlike Emmerich’s previous work, 2012 is grounded in a mythic phenomenon surrounding the year 2012 (no way!), a date that according to a mixture of archaeoastronomy, alternate interpretations of mythology and numerological constructions, marks the beginning of the end – a New Age apocalypse that some regard as the spiritual transformation of the world. Immediately, then, 2012 feels precariously distanced from Emmerich’s more care-free blockbusters: this, after all, is laid on the foundations of anxieties and actual beliefs rather than the mere grand aspirations of ‘what if?’ Despite such high-minded pretenses, however, Emmerich and his screenwriting partner Harold Kloser fail to inject their latest end-of-the-worlder with much zap or zing – the source of earthly destruction (a global cataclysm) is underdeveloped and never fully understood. The film opens ominously with a strong sense of peril hanging over itself, yet Emmerich struggles to establish the basis for disaster. This is a film that leaves no pause for thought – questions such as how (or even why) the apocalypse is reigning down upon mankind seem to have been left out in the cold, lost forever in the desert of destruction.

The plot, or, what’s left of it, however, does move like a roaring steam strain as it powers towards the next sight of major spectacle. While actors and characters have been commonly demoted to the role of window dressing in Emmerich’s past ventures, 2012 boasts enough star wattage to light up Broadway. John Cusack (in his first big-budget screen outing since Con Air) is the film’s pulsing heartbeat, giving a typically charismatic turn as a father trying to protect his family, while Amanda Peet, Danny Glover, Thandie Newton and Oliver Platt all give strong if unmemorable performances.

But, let’s not forget, the special effects were always going to be the real stars and Emmerich has pulled out all the punches, providing more white-knuckle set-pieces and unimaginable visions of global ruination than it’s possible to count. In one particularly eye-popping sequence, the film’s characters await the return of Cusack’s hero, nervously sitting on a runway in a plane that desperately needs to take off. Darting towards his family, Cusack is seen amidst a dizzying flurry of CG mayhem – roads tear, skies fall, oceans overflow onto crumbling landscapes. It’s fast, furious, hair-raising excitement – and for lack of a better phrase, it’s a truly breathtaking spectacle. And, as you would likely expect from the director of Independence Day, 2012 revels in the wrecking of major landmarks – we watch in horror as the St. Peter’s Basilica in Vatican City crushes a swarming crowd of churchgoers, and, in another epic sequence, the Christ the Redeemer statue – beautifully looming over Rio de Janeiro’s skyline – disintegrates before our very eyes.

It’s not all gasp and awe though. Aside from the admittedly jaw-dropping visuals, 2012 struggles to hold itself together amid the constant chaos. At two-and-a-half hours in length, the film feels notably overstretched, particularly during its final act when the narrative has nowhere to turn and the characters have nowhere to run. An apparent obligation on Emmerich’s behalf, also, to provide the film with a political centre (inserting groan-inducing lines like “When the government tells you not to panic, that’s when you run!�) feels somewhat garbled and outdated in the wake of the world’s more pressing and immediate crisis: the economic recession. Yet, for all its structural flaws and sincere lack of originality, 2012 is a handsome slice of escapist fantasy that does serve a purpose – it’s a reminder that distracting the audience with humour before making them think is still an admirable filmmaking ethos that many directors would do well to uphold.

2012 is released in cinemas on 13th November via Sony Pictures

By Matt Freeman