You know, I’m not in principle against a film based on the premise that the world will end in 2012 as prophesized by the ancient Mayans, even though the idea is complete bunk. What does bug me is that the film is by Roland Emmerich, and looks to be another noisy, incoherent mess heavy on special effects and almost bereft of plot or character development. (See Godzilla, The Day After Tomorrow, 10,000 BC, etc.)
I had to laugh, though, when I saw this trailer on television the other day. The text of the trailer declares,
The Mayans warned us
We should have listened
Waitaminit — the film is, in essence, about the end of the world, involving the destruction of pretty much everything on the planet. How would listening to the Mayans actually help at all in such a circumstance? How are we supposed to prepare for the end of the world, “duck and cover”? Hide under the kitchen table? Build enough spaceships to fly everyone to the moon?
This sort of incoherent trailer does not bode well for the film, in my opinion. Then again, has there ever been a film about global catastrophe that has been any good? Looking through the recent list of choices — Armageddon, The Day After Tomorrow, Deep Impact — I can’t say there are any that are particularly memorable. Really, there have been so many movies involving mass destruction in the past few years that I’m totally desensitized to it.
Skulls in the Stars 
Honey – you forgot the other suggestion you had about what we should have done upon listening to the Mayans. “Hit the reset button”.
Well, it looks like they managed to build one spaceship, so if we’d been listening for the last what? three hundred years? we could’ve built a few more.
But at least the Day After Tomorrow had Dennis Quaid in it.
Is there a spaceship in the trailer? I must not have noticed with all of the mass destruction going on. However, with the spaceship angle, the whole thing seems like a rip-off of “When Worlds Collide”, which reminds me that I’ve got the original WWC novel at home to read.
There’s at least a rumor of one – apparently people are going rebel against being left behind, too.
Was “When Worlds Collide” a novel? I thought it was a shorter work. I remember reading it in the 1970’s or so. Reminded me of 1920’s pulp. Murray Leinster, Ralph Milne Farley and such.
Apparently so! I’ve got the book at home. You can read about it on Wikipedia here. Wylie is apparently one of those authors who had a influence that extended further than his name recognition. I’m going to be reading a few of his works in the near future.
There’s a really good article in the November 2009 issue of Sky and Telescope, written by E. C. Krupp, the director of the Griffith Observatory. A summary of the article is available here (but it’s not nearly as vicious as the one in the magazine).
At first I was doubtful about all of the 2012 Doomsday hoopla, but then I saw this, and now I am deeply frightened for the safety of all life on Earth.
Let me try that again…
At first I was doubtful about all of the 2012 Doomsday hoopla, but then I saw this, and now I am deeply frightened for the safety of all life on Earth.
Deep impact wasn’t all that bad. I actually thought this movie was just a rip off of a bunch of other “end of the world” movies. But this was complete crap. It was just a small family which seemed to be able to outrun (hardly) every catastrophic event that is happening locally where they are. It’s just a run and hardly get away movie. Hardly any story, the big ship crashed into the mountain so it started to leak? Come on, all they really did was make it into a, ooo look at this animation, who cares about the characters, just see what we can do with animation kind of thing. Hated it.