It is better that the world ends here, right now, this instant, in a calamitous and civilization-decimating apocalypse before anyone else has to suffer through the disaster of a disaster film that is 2012. You’ll thank me later.

In the film, the sun has begun jettisoning excessive solar radiation thatwhich has turned the Earth into a gigantic microwave, cooking from the inside out. Soon, the planet’s crust destabilizes and shifts dramatically, causing earthquakes on a Pangaean scale and creating tidal waves large enough to submerge entire continents. When the governments of the world realize what’s occurring, they construct giant arks and begin selecting who will live and who must die. So fearful of creating global anarchy, they are even willing to assassinate anyone who tries to leak news of the impending disaster to the outside world. The problem is, our hero, Jackson Curtis (John Cusack), a down-on-his-luck writer (his latest book is “Farewell Atlantis” — wink, wink), lives in that outside world, and once he figures out what’s going on, he’ll stop at nothing to save his family. (Chiwetel Ejiofor is the real lead in this film in the same way that Jeff Goldblum was the real hero of Independence Day.)

When some friends found out I was seeing 2012, they invented a drinking game to make the experience more palatable. “Rule #1: Drink every time the camera pushes in on an actor’s face who is looking up and over the camera with stricken terror at whatever thing/building/tidal wave is about to come crashing down on him/her. You know the look.” “Rule #2: Drink every time someone talks to someone else ‘for the last time ever.’” “Rule #3: Drink every time a character’s hastily sketched flaw, introduced in the opening five to 10 minutes of pre-Disaster ‘normal world’ (alcoholism, inability to feel love, bickering relationship with ex-wife or son), is overcome in a moment of crisis.” Let’s just say that, had I taken their advice, I probably would have died from alcohol poisoning long before the movie reached its half way point.

To say 2012 is riddled with formulaic clichés is an understatement. Not satisfied with cribbing off of every other disaster movie that’s gone before it, the filmmaker director Roland Emmerich rips off the most is himself. In those scenes where scientists stumble upon the endgame scenario and passionately attempt to convince the powers that be of the urgency of the situation, you could have substituted the word “aliens” (Independence Day) or “climate change” (The Day After Tomorrow) or even “giant lizard” (Godzilla) for “solar flare” and no one in the audience would be the wiser. Emmerich originally said that he was done destroying the world on film, but that this script was so innovative and so fresh that he simply had to return to the global disaster genre he helped invent. The new and fresh thing that won him over: the image of an aircraft carrier bourn on a tsunami, crushing the White House. Riiiiight.

Emmerich is the Cecil B. DeMille of our age, though he lacks the intelligence and thoughtfulness to do anything other than dazzle his audiences with spectacle the same way a magician hypnotizes with an isolated, bright light or a swinging pocket watch. And for the most part, the effects are indeed spectacular. They better be; they are given more character development than any of the actual characters. 2012 skips ludicrous, dodges preposterous, sidesteps ridiculous, skirts absurd and runs headlong into impossible. California is upended and falls into the sea, colossal volcanoes erupt and tidal waves wash away anything lucky enough to still be alive. And through it all, our heroes thread a desperate trail, disaster nipping at their heels so often it’s almost as if it has a personal vendetta specifically against them. But clocking in at nearly three hours long, even those amazing effects that impressed in the beginning quickly transform 2012 into a bloated, tedious bore. Like Mother Nature, you’ll be muttering, “Now why won’t they just die already?”

2012 is unabashed disaster porn. Despite high-minded speeches about our love for each other being the highest human ideal, the film commits cinematic genocide, murdering billions with psychopathic glee. Not satisfied with “ordinary” deaths, it creates lavish, epic scenarios in which to butcher the unsuspecting. Even main characters are dispatched with ghoulish relish. And all of it is done for our entertainment.

Though the massive ad campaign behind the film purports that the doomsday scenario is based on predictions made by the Mayans hundreds of years ago about what would occur when the Sun, Earth and galactic center are in perfect alignment (an event, by the way, that occurs every December during the Winter Solstice), the movie barely addresses these issues at all. The Mayan aspect is little more than marketing window dressing to get you inside the theater.

Right before the beginning of the end of the movie, there is a line about the kooks with the “End is Near” signs having been right all the time. If it makes you feel any better, think of me as one of those placard-carrying kooks. And to paraphrase the film’s tagline: “You were warned.”

© Copyright 2009 Brandon Fibbs. All rights reserved.