2012
Short description
A geophysicist, Adrian Helmsley, discovers that solar activity has caused the Earth's core to heat up and that the planet's crust is becoming unstable. He brings the finding to the American president, and governments begin secret preparations to save a small part of the population. A struggling science-fiction writer, Jackson Curtis, learns of the threat while camping with his children in Yellowstone National Park, where he meets a radio host who has been tracking the signs of coming disaster. When catastrophic earthquakes and volcanic eruptions begin, Curtis tries to keep his family alive, while Helmsley works from inside the official effort. The film draws on the Maya calendar and the belief that the world would end in 2012.
Roland Emmerich directed and co-wrote the screenplay with Harald Kloser, working from a story the two developed with Kloser also producing alongside Larry J. Franco and Mark Gordon. It was Emmerich's ninth film as director out of fifteen, following 10,000 BC and preceding Anonymous. John Cusack leads as Jackson Curtis, with Chiwetel Ejiofor as Adrian Helmsley, Amanda Peet as Kate Curtis, Thandiwe Newton as Laura Wilson, Oliver Platt as Carl Anheuser and Tom McCarthy as Gordon Silberman. The production was large even by disaster-film standards, costing 200 million USD, and it took 791 million USD worldwide, a strong return on that outlay.
Audience response was moderate: on IMDb it holds 5.9/10 from 420,000 votes, and on TMDB 5.9/10 from 13,042 votes. A film critics' rating of 5.3/10 from 242 reviews places professional opinion slightly below those audience scores.
What's left behind the scenes
- As Emmerich stated, among several famous and historical structures around the world chosen to be destroyed in the film was the Kaaba in Mecca – a place towards which Muslims around the world turn during prayer, and where the Tawaf ritual is performed during the Hajj. However, due to a suggestion from Klozer, who said he did not want a fatwa issued against him because of the film, the Kaaba was removed from the list.
- NASA specialists recognized this film as the most unscientific in recent years due to the greatest number of scientific inaccuracies and outright fabrications.
- The film's title refers to the end date of the Mayan calendar. Although the calendar itself does not contain specific indications of the date of the end of the world, many religious and cultural movements converged on the year 2012.
- The Russian oligarch’s “Antonov-500” aircraft is modeled after the An-225. It is similar in appearance and size. The main difference is that the An-225 does not have a rear hatch, which the aircraft in the film does.
- In one of the news reports shown in the film from December 2012, it is reported that the XXX Olympic Games have been canceled, which at the time of the report’s release were scheduled to take place (the actual time of the Games was from July 27 to August 12, 2012).
- Jackson’s son, Curtis, is named Noah, which is, in turn, an allegory for the Old Testament story of the Flood.
- To promote the film, a humorous video blog featuring Charlie Frost was created, in which Woody Harrelson, as his character, talks about the end of the world. It also includes the full version of the video that his character shows Jackson in the van in the film's plot.
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