I caught a late showing of this Friday night, which, I believe was release night. The place was PACKED. Managed to get in with a couple of friends, unfortunately had to sit at the front. OF A DIGITAL PROJECTION SHOWING. You know how annoying that is? I had to look from left to right alot of the times to keep up with what the hell was going on, damn huge screen.
Anyway, regardless of what sort of showing it was, I'm gonna say this right off the bat; The visuals in 2012, were ABSOLUTELY STUNNING. I do not care what any reviews say, I don't, I don't. It was most probably one of the most fascinating use of CGI I've seen in a long time(Not including Avatar, not out yet), and maybe the idea of the world ending is a particularly grim one, alot of this film did make me laugh. Not the people dying, there were just little cheesy one liners that I'd rather not talk about, they are ever so cringe-worthy.
The film was probably far too long to sit through, 158 is it's official running time, but my GOD it seemed like a lifetime. No, it wasn't that bad, but I think it followed the formula of The Day After Tomorrow too much; it began with a science-y bit, they find out something's gonna happen to the world, then the president finds out, blah blah blah. Despite all that, I think the fascinating visuals made up for it, I had a good time watching people being pushed off the face off the earth by cars, being crushed by buildings, and other ridiculous objects- No, I'm not a psychopath, I just thought it was thoroughly detailed in the way the CGI was done, and felt that it was incredibly effective. It all seemed so...realistic? Yes, yes, I realise in this film nothing is gonna be realistic, but, seeing the roads crack and people hanging on for there lives was pretty special; the screams, and the people crying out for help were all small elements of what made the good parts of this film.
John Cusack was blah in this, and it was so ridiculously amusing. Example: The scene where the destruction of LA begins, and the ground is literally tearing apart, Cusack is WAAAAYYY too nonchalant for my liking. I mean okay, fair enough, his character may have been portrayed in that sort of way, but come on, the world is ending for crying out loud, your just gonna sit there and try and AVOID IT?? In fact, thinking about it, that scene, pretty much all of the people in the Car at the time weren't the most scared people it was pretty stupid. I'm really not sure what happened there, but god, it made me laugh, and driving through a building??? Really?? It was this and flying through the two buildings, magically making the jumps which seemed oh-so-cliché to me, but hey, it got the message across, and it was an enjoyable film.
Now I've read that there's going to be a TV series spin-off to this, which would definitely be interesting, because I'd love to see what happened after the final scene, because, quite frankly, the last 15 minutes or so of the film were pretty spectacular. Just simply because of what happened to them, and I'd like to see how that ends. So I look forward to this.
All in all, not a bad film by any means, it just had too many redundant parts in that we've already seen, but I'd say the visuals made up for it, but then the story was just far too biblical for my liking, which I realise was the entire point of the movie, but it would have been nice to show it in a different way. Visuals were great nonetheless.
5.5/10
Kazed