Remember the 2012 video clip from this post? I made some ridiculously clever and snarky comment about the actors reacting to special effects for five minutes, which doubtlessly impressed and attracted every girl who read it. (None.)
It turns out that someone else made the same observation and made a custom edit of the video, removing all the computer-generated footage of mayhem and destruction. All the practical shots–that is, the shots of actual physical objects that really exist, including the actors–remain in the sequence.
Exciting, no?
Based on the running time of the edited version, roughly 4/5 of this sequence consists of computer-animated shots of stuff collapsing, crumbling, blowing up, falling over, and otherwise being destroyed. I’m hesitant to proclaim that the suckage is self-evident… but it is.
Don’t go see the 2012 movie. If you take nothing else from this post, let it be that.
Roland Emmerich is a very bad filmmaker. It’s bad enough that he’s a hack to rival Michael Bay, Brett Ratner, and the like, but that’s not what really makes him bad. When someone mentions the name of a director and the first thing you think of is a famous city blowing up, falling apart, or otherwise being destroyed, you have gone beyond the echelon of simple suckage and reached the level of true badness. Emmerich seems to deal exclusively in paranoid doom fantasies.
If it’s possible for entertainment to be socially irresponsible, then Emmerich’s movies certainly fit the bill. He likes to incorporate famous doomsday scenarios into his movies, but he doesn’t like reality very much. If there’s any degree of truth to the subject matter, it’s long gone by the time it goes through the Roland Emmerich “make things more exciting!” Play Doh machine. Man-made climate change is a real problem. The Day After Tomorrow did as much to obfuscate the reality of that problem as any doomsaying environmental alarmist ever has.
Surely people are capable enough of distinguishing fiction from reality, right? Surely Emmerich’s mindless popcorn movies are harmless, right?
Not really. There is a scientifically observable correlation between the release of movies that feature certain paranormal phenomena and the public’s belief in those phenomena. For example, a big budget motion picture about EVP is released. People are well aware that the story is fictional, but lack the criteria to evaluate the phenomenon of EVP itself. Subsequently, the number of people who believe there are messages from the afterlife hidden in radio and television static skyrockets.
Human beings are good at absorbing information, but they’re bad about recalling which pieces of conflicting information are correct and which are not. It’s the simple fact that the concept is implanted in the audience’s mind that enables the belief in that concept to germinate. Evolution unfortunately didn’t equip us very well to deal with bullshitters like Roland Emmerich.
Okay, so what if people believe in paranormal flim flam? Even if the movies can encourage such beliefs, nothing bad ever comes of it, right?
I’d argue that encouraging irrational beliefs can undercut people’s ability to compete in this age of reason we inhabit. At the very least, it becomes extraordinarily difficult to take people seriously if they start enthusiastically yammering on about conspiracy theories, ghosts, and UFO abductions. At worst, they might get so into the phenomenon that they start actively pursuing it. Ever see footage of a UFO convention? It’s not a pretty sight, and that’s coming from someone who’s competed in video game tournaments and regularly visits comic book specialty stores.
Aren’t there plenty of movies and directors that have dealt with this kind of story over the years? Sure enough, but as I said before, nobody makes those movies their stock and trade quite like Roland Emmerich does. His latest trip into the world of delusion is the 2012 myth: the idea that the world will end once the ancient Mayan calendar runs out. Consider, for a moment, that maybe the Mayans couldn’t predict the future, and that the calendar stops for any number of far more plausible reasons. Keep in mind, the Mayans didn’t actually say the world would end. The movie’s tag line, “We were warned,” is something of a mystery. We were warned about what? That it’s impossible for a man-made calendar to continue into infinity?
So yeah. Screw Roland Emmerich, screw his movies, and screw the ridiculous 2012 myth. Once the movie is out, we can look forward to hearing even more about it, until the year passes and people are forced to make some other arbitrary prediction of the end of days.
That’s the theoretical side of the argument, of course. Let’s take a look at the movie itself. This scene, released in advance, features John Cusack and the other actors pretending to ride inside various vehicles while reacting to the special effects for five minutes.
Let us, for a moment, speculate about the behind-the-scenes interaction between Emmerich and the cast while this scene was filmed. I can hear it now:
Emmerich: “Okay, John, now the street behind your car is collapsing!”
Cusack: “Oh no, we have to get away from this collapsing street!”
Emmerich: “Okay, John, now the lamp post is falling into the path of your car!”
Cusack: “Oh no, we have to get away from that lamp post over there!”
Emmerich: “Other side of the car, John.”
Cusack: “Oh.”
Emmerich: “Okay, John, now there’s a building in front of your car and you’re going to drive through it!”
Cusack: “What?”
Emmerich: “Just look scared and surprised.”
Cusack: “Okay.”
Emmerich: “Now you’re in an airplane!”
Cusack: “An airplane? What happened to the car? How did we get away from all the other stuff?”
Emmerich: “It doesn’t have to make sense. Just do it. You’re in an airplane.”
Cusack: “Okay.”
Emmerich: “Now you’re perilously flying under two buildings that are listing into one another, when you could have just as easily flown over the top of them!”
Cusack: (isn’t listening because he’s on the phone with his agent)
John Cusack, incidentally, must have accepted a million billion dollar deal for appearing in this film.
Now, let’s have a look at some choice Roland Emmerich quotes. These are real and not fabricated at all.
Reporter: Can you discuss the controversy [The Day After Tomorrow] has raised over the possibility of global warming’s effects on the environment?
Emmerich: I’m a filmmaker, not a scientist. But I had a very smart and intelligent screenwriter, who did a lot of research, and he tried to keep it as accurate as possible.
Mouth fart noise.
Reporter: When you were writing this movie, did you have any worries that a disaster movie taking place in New York City was happening too close to 9-11?
Emmerich: I thought about it very carefully. The first thing I did was I stopped writing. I was halfway finished and I stopped writing for nearly four or five months because I was so shocked with what happened, like everybody. But then, slowly, friends of mine said, “Why don’t you keep writing? It’s a natural disaster, what’s the big deal?”
9/11, a natural disaster? Maybe they didn’t pay the research guy enough.
And then there are several, from the promotional campaigns of a few of his films, in which he claims he promised himself he’d never do another disaster movie again, except that [insert retarded idea here] was such a good idea that he just had to do it one more time. I won’t list any specific quotes, since I just summarized all of them.
Look forward to plenty of “just one more time” Roland Emmerich movies until he dies or the world gets destroyed for real.
