2012 Sucks

The movie that is, not the year. And yes, I know it hasn't come out yet. That doesn't prevent me from declaring that it will suck, at least if anything I saw in the trailer the other night actually has made it into the movie.

First, there's the disaster that signifies the end of the world. Purportedly this disaster is predicted by the Mayans who, had they known their little prophecies would be stolen by the likes of Roland Emmerich to make a spectacularly bad movie, would probably have aborted their civilization before the Spanish got around to doing it. But the biggest problem is how the disaster unfolds; the planets become aligned, and somehow this causes the Sun to fire out extra radiation that melts the core of the Earth but not the crust, which now becomes "free-floating" and triggering massive earthquakes and volcanoes (never mind that the crust is already free-floating, on top of the Earth's mantle.) If you fail to understand the science behind that, it's because there is no science behind such a ridiculous theory. The sun is not one giant radioactive device; it won't irradiate your insides without zapping your outsides too. And there is no alignment of the planets that would cause such excess radiation in the first place. I'm pretty sure that even if all the planets of the solar system were hurled into the Sun, the Sun would burn them up and keep right on going. Look, I know one of the cliches of disaster movies is the implausible scenario that causes the disaster, but the premise of "2012" is so stupid that it doesn't merely insult my intelligence, it actually drops it several points.

Of course all of this is predicted by a "Coast to Coast" style crank, played by Woody Harrelson. I hate Woody Harrelson, but I'm willing to admit that there are certain roles that he is appropriate for; unintelligent murderer, pornographer, moron, loser. But he is not appropriate for the role of conspiracy-crank. In fact, he manges only to look like an aging stoner, and stoners possess no reputation for stumbling across secret scenarios for how the world will end (that would require entirely too much effort.) In any case, we learn about the imminent massive death-causing disaster via this character's "blog", which actually happens to be an animated video that he invites John Cusack's character to "download." Okay, it's 2009. At this point, aren't we familiar with what blogs are? Right, of course we are, which I guess is why Emmerich thinks it's hip to throw a reference to one in there. But if you're going to do that, what you reference has to actually be a blog, not an animated video because, as we know, animated videos are not called "blogs." In my opinion, this sort of willfully ignorant/grossly negligent error encapsulates what is almost certainly wrong with the entire movie.

Lastly, John Cusack stars in the movie. 'Nuff said.