2012 - a disaster film

I'm not a fan of 'destruction' movies and this particular one was definitely not on my list of anticipated movies. I had seen just a little bit of the trailer and the fall of 'Christ the Redeemer' scene made me think this could be an interesting watch. Well, the trailer deceived me. I saw this movie in a theatre at Helsinki yesterday evening. It was 150 minutes of 'holy crap'. Holy - because it is based on an ancient Mayan faith. Crap - because it IS crap. It is another proof of how clever marketing and hype can fool the entire world. In the south Indian context I can quote 'Sivaji - the boss' as an example.

It was my first visit to a Finnish cinema hall. At the outside the movie theatre looked like a very-artistically constructed ancient building. The moment I landed inside, I felt like I was in Satyam cinemas or Inox. No big difference. Of course the audience was much quieter than our people. The movie was supposed to start at 1615 hrs. But until 1630 hrs there were only advertisements; they were all in Finnish :-( It was painful to sit through all those incomprehensible ads. I didn't then realize that these ads were just saving me from the horrible movie.

There is nothing worthy to say about the movie. Everyone told me this is from the director of 'Independence day'. I should have been more alert and googled before deciding to watch it. Just after returning from the movie I found out Roland Emmerich is the director of '10000 B.C' and 'Godzilla'. Had I known this before I would not have gone for this. 10,000 B.C was like the worst possible copy of Mel Gibson's marvelous 'Apocalypto' and 'Godzilla' was awfully funny. It was silly to watch a Godzilla play hide-and-seek in Manhattan. In the case of 2012 I should admit I wasn't very alert and let myself get fooled. I consider the Euro 8.40 I spent for this movie as an act of charity towards Sony corporation.

Coming to think of Sony, I completely understand the movie is distributed by Columbia pictures which is owned by Sony corporation. But why does that mean everywhere it should be Sony products on the screen all the time! Every laptop that has 'acted' in this movie is a Sony Vaio. Every cellphone is a Sony Ericsson. I wonder what would have happened if Pixar made movies when Steve Jobs was its CEO. Would they have filled the screen with iPhones and Mac-books? How silly. I wish Microsoft doesn't plan to get in to movie making.

Starting from poor casting (The US president and German chancellor lady were the most silliestest of all. I believe Barack Obama and Angela Merkel would themselves have done their parts better), poor script to very poor direction, everything tested my patience. After I returned from the movie I searched on the Internet and found that this movie is categorized as a 'disaster film' - a genre of movies which show some disaster on screen. I agree to this completely. It WAS a perfectly 'disastrous' film.

--S--