There’s something about disaster action movies which has us mentally drooling. There is that inexplicable kick of watching action horror unfold at its best by creating a sordid visual feast that keeps us safe as it continues to psyche us. I have this huge need for a fix of action movies once in a while. And must unabashedly state , I love all of the Die Hard Series, Independence Day, Armageddon, Terminator series among the legendary action movies and one can still catch me settling down to a TV telecast from any point in the story.
Its natural to be then waiting for a movie like 2012 and be ready sadistically to derive vicarious pleasure from the special effects that Hollywood wizards are known to create for the best known disaster which has captured the world imagination…Tsunami and with promises of the king of all disasters...The doomsday. And when it’s Independence Day Roland Emmerich at the helm you start expecting the mother of all disaster movies.
But for the first time, since I began my silly quest for nirvana through action movies willingly allowing suspension of disbelief, I found myself embarrassed at the total lack of a imaginative coherent script and any effort to making heroics look believable as in the past prompting me to actually sympathize with our film makers who are trashed for dumping logic at work.
The makers seems to be in a tearing hurry to cover all possible physical mutations, destructions possible before any other director picks up the threads for a future project. So they go ahead and combine the Steven’s Indiana Jones mystique, the remnant heroism of the ONLY ONE MAN in history, the President of the United States of America, from his last film’s Independence Day and suspended logic from Bond movies.
Without giving out much of the story whatever there is of it , there is a token nod to Indian ingenuity at Astrophysics in a couple of scenes where we the Indians are still stuck living in muddy rain sloshed roads ( Watch as Kids reminiscent from Slum dog play….that’s to help them connect with India) and a scientist in sherwani with a wife in Kanjeevarams…( ok I am exaggerating) go down a technologically challenged mine lift to watch water from 17000 feet boil, a phenomenon which they believe is the first hint at naughty things going on inside the earth’s core.
Blame the sun and its largest solar flare which has apparently converted the earths centre into a micro waved liquid and as a result the cream on the top, the crust decides to change places .This apparently will start happening in a couple of years time which is enough for the moneyed and the powerful in the world to give up their billions to hitch a ride on the modern day Arc Of Noah! Sorry but there’s only place for few families so can everyone rush please because the selection is only by superior gene filtering. Pray how are the heads of state in various countries being considered as superior species? Choke!
As in all disaster actions movies from USA there has to be a common man who has to rescue his children and of course an estranged wife, rediscover love, the new husband be conveniently damned. An eccentric whose real warnings are never taken seriously. A scientist who creates access to the White House no less , all by borrowing a blazer and the infinite nod to contemporary world scene by having a Black husband with wise Black advisors and wily white second in commands. Hello Roland what’s the message there??
The biggest player of them all is the disaster itself comprising of a team of earthquakes and tsunamis which takes on a life of its own apparently preoccupied with only objective , to get its hand on the hero and his family , the collateral damage being the sinking of the rest of the world. You can almost hear the Tsunamis, volcanoes and an earthquake slapping their fists together as each time the family manages to get out of their loop in a propeller aircraft. ‘Damn’….The balance 6 billion people be damned.
You start at the special effects only in the first scene but thereafter you start seeing a pattern at the long distance special effects. Special effects can be wondrous if backed by scientific logic which is apparently missing from the sets here. There is something scientifically wrong about the seas reaching the Himalayas which means there must be a hug vacuum of space elsewhere. The boiling water and volcanoes are conveniently forgotten after some time. The earthquakes are dealt too simplistically. The population of billions on earth are dealt with like extras who have no significance. Does not getting whole cities getting sucked into the earth create a vacuum or a low pressure belt? What happens to the sea which should drains out into the crust gaps of the earth. The mountains are in China ( Changing equations).
You are too tired to know by the end whether the Russian magnate an apparent spoof of what US perceives the former superpowe to be manages to escape , whether the population selected manages to save earth or themselves. You just get out and heave a sigh of relief at the traffic jams outside the theatre.
The one thing the director has managed to get you to do. Laugh at the 4.5 Richter earthquake which struck Maharashtra and feel the Tsunamis which hit Asia some time back were like lapping waves from the neighborhood swimming pool. And know that all it takes to destroy the world’s last living species from doomsday could well be an electrically powered nut remover wedged in the spaceships door ..cackle !! and which requires an Abyss type effort .
Am not really impressed with the over hyped special effects. It is in a base level which we have anyway come to expect from Hollywood. But why do all disaster special effects end up losing their colors and taking on a whole lot of grayish blue tinge. The actors go thru their now patented disaster flick motions of screams, shocked looks , dropped jaws, appreciative sighs at nobility..ah !
For the standard action junkie , dont worry about the special FX. its all there..see it once
But did not work for me…and so on till my next fix of action movies…Waiting Roland , Steven …….!!!