2012 (2009) dir. Roland Emmerich
Starring: John Cusack, Amanda Peet, Chiwetel Ejiofor, Thandie Newton, Woody Harrelson

*1/2

By Alan Bacchus

You don’t go into a Roland Emmerich films expecting Steven Spielberg, you expect an adequate knock off with, hopefully, enough explosions and worldly destruction, to placate the shameless repetition.

...before I continue...to add some context, I actually liked ‘Stargate’ and ‘Independence Day’, was indifferent to ‘The Patriot’ and ‘The Day After Tomorrow’, and ‘Godzilla’ and ’10,000 BC’ were unbearably awful and two of the worst pictures I’ve ever seen...

With these low expectations, miraculously ‘2012’ still manages to be even more awful than expected and will join 'Godzilla' and '10,000 BC' as part three of his trilogy of awfulness.

Roland Emmerich, this time at the helm of his own script shamelessly remakes Stargate, ID4, Godzilla and The Day After Tomorrow with different actors and with different world monuments destroyed. His opening scenes are the same: somewhere in some remote part of the world, some lowly schmuck discovers a small detail which reveals the coming of a cataclysmic event in the near future. In this case, it’s a scientist in India who finds the liquid at the earth’s core is boiling which means the world is heating up and ripe for a massive series of apocalyptic disasters.

Meanwhile, another schmuck, a lonely everyman from the U.S., with relationship problems, either stumbles upon this evidence or has his own evidence to corroborate said disaster and fights to a) convince his estranged family to believe in him and b) overcome his own personality deficiencies to save the world from disaster.

In 2012, Emmerich uses John Cusack, in place of Jeff Goldblum, James Spader or Matthew Broderick and uses the random shifting of techtonic plates to be his ‘Godzilla/Alien/extreme weather force of nature antagonist. His baddies are the usual crop of idiotic governments suits who can’t see the field from the trees.

The film is anchored by a number of narrow escapes from worldly destruction scenes. In every case John Cusack finds himself either outrunning massive earthquakes and tectonic plate displacements via car, or piloting a plane off a runway, being torn apart by said tectonic plate shifting. And so Cusack and his group of innocents hop from one famous landmark to another escaping in the nick of time.

The third act is even more awful throwing us into a series of calamities and narrow escapes aboard a Noah’s Ark-like ship built to withstand the flooding and sail away the remainder of the world’s human and animal population to safety.

Two and a half hours later the film ends. Save yourself some time and just watch the trailer.

2012 is available on DVD and Blu-Ray from Sony Pictures Home Entertainment

Godzilla (1998) dir. Roland Emmerich
Starring: Matthew Broderick, Maria Pitillo, Michael Lerner, Jean Reno, Hank Azaria

*

By Alan Bacchus

However silly and cornball “Independence Day”, there was a thrill in bringing back the simple earth vs. aliens b-movie plotting. And certainly watching major landmarks in New York and Washington get destroyed in such magnificent fashion was a visual delight. Thus “Independence Day” is a genuine guilty pleasure. There can be no pleasure on any level derived from “Godzilla” – a loud, ugly, tedious and repetitive version of the beloved ‘man-in-suit’ Japanese monster franchise.

Emmerich recycles the same plotting from ‘Independence Day’, except replacing the aliens invasion of the earth with a more confined invasion of New York. In the opening credits Godzilla’s existence is explained as a mutation from illegal nuclear testing in French Polynesia, but has now swam off the island toward the United States. While world scientists track this mysterious beast around the world, he seems to be taking the long way around for an attack on Manhattan. Once ashore he runs amuck in the city destroying buildings and fighting off the military. The humans collaborating to combat the beast include nerdy scientist Niko Tatopoulos (Matthew Broderick), his wannabee TV journalist ex-GF (Maria Pitillo) her cameraman (Hank Azaria) and a slimy French government agent (Jean Reno).

Emmerich commits some of the most blatant creative theft since Brian De Palma’s 70’s-80’s Hitchcock fixation. Emmerich’s victim is Steven Spielberg shamelessly lifting direct shots, scenes, visual composition and camera movement from “Close Encounters of the Third Kind’, ‘Jurassic Park’ and more. The opening moments which has the scientists tracking the trail of destruction of the lizard across the Pacific is lifted directly from ‘Close Encounters’, and final the stadium sequence is essentially the raptor chase from ‘Jurassic Park’. But it’s Emmerich’s overall tone of wonder and amazement which rings as nasty and deliberate pilfering.

Emmerich’s monster, as designed by Patrick Tatopoulos, who had previously created some wonderful designs in “Independence Day” and “Stargate” chooses to create a literal version of the Godzilla beast – a nuclear fallout-mutated monster which appears to be just an anatomically correct blow-up of a real lizard. As such, Godzilla’s legs are bent out of shape like a four legged creature and his face is a square muscular mass of cold-blooded leather. Emmerich eschews any attempt at creating a personality to the beast – which was one of the endearing hallmarks of the Toho beast – a monster with a distinct personality. This Godzilla is simply a giant lizard.

Emmerich’s tin ear for casting is front and centre. Michael Lerner is a great character actor, but in the skin of a U.S. President rendered as a sour grapes jab at Roger Ebert is an awful creative choice. Same with the casting of “The Simpsons” voice actors Hank Azaria as the Eng camera operator named ‘Animal’ (seriously, his name is Animal), the diminutive Harry Shearer as a womanizing news anchor man and the affable funny man Kevin Dunn as a hardnosed military general (whaat???). Dr. Niko Tatopoulos as played by Matthew Broderick is a typical Emmerich character and carbon copy of the protags from Stargate (James Spader) Independence Day (Jeff Goldblum), The Day After Tomorrow (Jake Gyllenhaal) and though I haven’t seen it yet, most likely John Cusack’s character 2012.

Without a personality to the beast, all of the action is just noise. And with a particularly dark and wet colour palette the entire picture is rendered soulless, inert and dead.

“Godzilla” is available on Blu-Ray from Sony Pictures Home Entertainment