2012: Our Reaction

Posted on Friday September 25, 2009, 15:04 by Helen O'Hara in The Empire Blog

Roland Emmerich, his writing partner Harald Kloser and stars Chiwetel Ejiofor and ONLY JOHN FRICKING CUSACK were in town today to introduce 53 minutes of footage from 2012, and it really was everything we expected. Let's describe what we saw, and you can start to make up your own mind.

2009...and Chiwetel "serious government scientist" Ejiofor rocks up to Jimi Mistry's Indian home above a deep copper mine. Mistry's looking sweaty and harried, and not just because he doesn't rate his wife's fish curry. No, it's because "neutrinos" from a solar flare seem to have "mutated" (physicists, stop laughing at the back!) and are not acting as microwaves heating the Earth's core. Suddenly Chewie's looking all sweaty and harried too, as he rushes back to...

Washington DC, where Oliver Platt has graduated from White House Counsel's Office (in The West Wing) to something more senior. We didn't quite get what, but he seems to be White House Chief of Staff or Secretary of State or something.  Platt isn't impressed by Chewie's khaki-heavy take on black tie as he crashes a formal dinner to give Platt the news, but is soon taking the news to the President (Danny Glover, instantly inspiring confidence).

Six months later, and Glover presents the news to the leaders of the G8 countries in an attempt to get them involved in some sort of international response. Straight after that, the Chinese start evicting Tibetan villagers from their homes in preparation for the building of a new dam (or could it be something else?).

Flashforward again to 2010, as art works are removed from the Louvre under Thandie Newton's watchful guidance and replaced by fakes, and a Saudi billionaire signs up for...something costing a billion dollars. Lifetime supply of Pot Noodles? Season tickets to Arsenal? It's just not clear.

Now it's 2012, and the director of the Louvre calls fake on the art works removal and tells Thandie Newton that he plans to host a press conference to explain why - but then he's bumped off. The stakes are high! What's happening?

Cut to: John Cusack, aka Jackson Curtis, failed author and limo driver, who's late for a camping trip with his kids. Yes, another unreliable divorced father who is perpetually late and something of an underachiever money-wise, while his hot wife has moved on to a more successful but less interesting schlub. And here are the two photogenic tots too, the elder of whom is rather resentful of Dad's crapness.

Meanwhile, back in Washington things are moving faster than expected. Chewie's off to Yellowstone to investigate the science; Platt's trying to keep everything under wraps, and Newton turns out to be Glover's daughter. Chewie's totally - albeit not surprisingly - smitten. He leaves for Yellowstone (because what better place to be when the world's crust is collapsing than in the caldera of a super-volcano?) while Glover sits Newton down to explain just why that pesky Frenchie had to be killed.

Back in California, Cusack and tots head off to Yellowstone camping, where they are briefly arrested by government forces who have taken over the spot where a once-scenic lake has dried up for no obvious reason. A plainly crazy Woody Harrelson watches from the woods. How do we know he's crazy? Well, he has a BEARD and LONG HAIR. He is also dictating stuff for his own reference later on.

After Cusack Curtis and kids are released by the government (they meet a visiting Chewie, who's such a fan of Curtis' writing that he lets them go) they get to chat to Woody, who clearly has a bead on the whole thing. He also has a map to a supposed "big ship" that will leave for space and save a select few people. Apparently if you're a billionaire you can buy seats on it - so it's a bit like Virgin Galactic but less cuddly.

Cusack and his mosquito-bitten kids are called back home by ex-wife and mother Amanda Peet, who nearly got swallowed by a massive crack in the Earth's surface that cut straight through the heart of her local supermarket and is understandably wigged out. Meanwhile, Chewie and his crew have discovered that the globe is heating faster than expected, and they're going to have to start the evacuation like, now already. Cue an obnoxious Russian billionaire being called from his ringside seats at a Las Vegas boxing ring, and sending  Cusack Curtis to pick up his even more obnoxious and frizzy haired sons. It's when one of them makes a crack about going in a "big ship" and Cusack being left to die that Our Hero starts to think that Woody may have been on to something. He hires a plane, hares off to rescue ex-wife and kids - and the film suddenly gets really, really good.

Yes, it's about 40 minutes in and a massive earthquake starts in California as "the entire San Andreas fault is shifting". Apparently it's a 10.5 on the Richter scale (that's bigger than any quake ever recorded, fact fans!) and it totals Los Angeles. Cusack, driving a stretch limo like it's the bus in Speed, is virtually the only person moving as roads collapse behind, ahead of and occasionally over him.  At this point the entire audience gasped a lot.

The group make it to the airport, where the plane-renter dude is already dead at the pump but the plane's ready to go - a good thing too, with the runway collapsing behind them and downtown LA falling inward ahead. As new hubby Gordon (Thomas McCarthy) proves useful for something and flies everyone out of there, there's a breathtaking sequence as the land falls away, subway trains pass by on the same level as the too, too slowly climbing plane and skyscrapers come crashing down. As they gradually gain height, they see that image (familiar from the poster) of the whole of LA tipping into the sea.

And that's that, in terms of sequential events. We also saw a brief clipreel which suggested to us the following: 1. Cusack and co. head to Woody's to grab the map to the big ships; volcano-ballistics come flying at them as a result. 2. They head to the Himalayas where the ships are, just ahead of lots of water. 3. Jimi Mistry is going to have a bad day. 4. Chewie WILL get together with the First Daughter. 5. Rio will crumble. Things will go Ka-BOOM. A lot.

Frankly, even given the fact that I'm a known Emmerich apologist (well, not for 10,000BC, but I adore Independence Day and don't hate Godzilla or Day After Tomorrow) this is better than I was expecting. It's pacy, the action's astonishingly well put together (like, literally white knuckles for us) and while the physics makes very little sense and the dialogue not much more so, it's looking like a lot of fun. We're pretty sure we know exactly what's going to happen to every character* in the film, but we can't wait to see more of this.

Only, y'know, on the screen; not in person.

*with the exception that we're not sure whether they'll heroically kill McCarthy's Gordon or Cusack's Jackson, but we're pretty sure they'll knock off one. That's not a spoiler; it's an educated guess.