It's the apocalypse... again!
If world-ending imagery is your particular flavor of eye candy, then the last few days must have been pretty rad. A bunch of meteors streaked by, Glitter was on HBO, and local movie theaters were chock-a-block with odes to global destruction: Ang Tanging Pamilya, All About Steve, and 2012. As Lady GaGa articulated in Bad Romance, “Ra ra ah ah ah roma ro ma ma ga ga ooh la la.” Translation: this week was amazeballs.
While the other two flicks were respectably awful in their own right, 2012’s disaster porn was the most beautifully messy of the lot. The box-office hit stars that dude from Must Love Dogs (John Cusack) as a rather neglectful father who races to rescue his kids from large-scale special effects. Said to be based on the end-date of the Mayan Long Count Calendar, 2012 is the apocalypse, according to German director Roland Emmerich, who annihilates humanity every eight years or so; 1996’s Independence Day was about aliens, 2004’s The Day After Tomorrow was about global warming, and 2012 is about a gross misunderstanding of Mesoamerican inscriptions. Imagine if it were in 3D.
Big-Budget Clichés
With such precedents, it was inevitable that this latest opus followed the same template. From featuring unknown scientists who saw it coming to reuniting estranged families, 2012 embraced all the big-budget clichés with the enthusiasm of someone who really wants to go out with a bang. At a panel interview in July, Emmerich was quoted thus: “I always said, ‘I don’t want to make a disaster movie anymore.’ And I found a story so interesting, but then also I said to myself, ‘Okay, so this will be my last one, so I will make the mother of all disaster movies.’” Well played.
In between biting my lip and rolling my eyes, my slightly cynical mind couldn’t help but jog back to a few nuggets of wisdom I’ve gleaned from my apparent addiction to this movie genre:
1. Natural disasters annihilate a city in the following order: famous landmarks and historic buildings first, all the rest second.
2. Foreigners prefer speaking in heavily-accented English to each other instead of talking in their native tongues.
3. Instead of inching closer to safety, it’s much wiser to turn back and look for a map, rescue a pet or help a complete stranger.
4. Having any kind of job will automatically make a father or mother forget his/her child’s schedule of activities, resulting in misfortune.
5. In the next three years, mobile telecommunications will be so efficient that cell phones will still work as the planet implodes.
Too close to home?
In 2005, South Park even got in on the action with “Two Days Before the Day After Tomorrow”, also known as “Today,” the eighth episode of its ninth season. A parody of The Day After Tomorrow, it shows Stan and Cartman accidentally destroying a dam, which causes massive flooding in the town of Beaverton. Because the two don’t confess, the people decide to attribute the calamity to global warming.
Leaving no stone undemolished, 2012 is similar to an amusement park ride, kinda thrilling but totally temporary. It’s stuff we’ve seen before regurgitated for 2009. What makes it slightly different — at least to audiences in Manila — is its timing.
In light of what Filipinos went through in the wake of three major typhoons, 2012’s doomsday theme seemed uncomfortably familiar. Escapist fare becomes anything but when it hits too close to home; the paranoia is more than enough. (In one scene, the governor announces that the recent spate of natural disasters is over and there’s nothing to worry about. on cue, an enormous quake shakes the house and knocks the TV to the ground.) Then again, it can also be cathartic. Even if it puts science front and center in the story, it’s just a film after all. Do as I did and don’t watch 2012 for the facts. Watch it for the laughs.
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