Movie Review: 2012

John Cusack is the most important man in the world.

I'll get back to that statement in a minute.

You know how you have to buy a new calendar every year? Sure, they all have 365 days (except for those that don't) but the dates don't always fall on the same day of the week. However, if you leave an old calendar in the basement long enough it becomes useful again. Ten seconds of research says every 28 years. That follows my mental math, but I'm still not promising that's right. But, in theory, we could have a big ass calendar that runs 28 years and never needs replacing.

The Mayan Long Calendar takes a bit longer to loop. About 5,125 years.

Their calendar works a bit like this.
1 day = 1 day
20 days = 1 uinal
360 days = 18 uinal = 1 tun
7200 days = 360 uinals = 20 tuns = 1 katun
144,000 days = 7200 uinals = 400 tuns = 20 katuns = 1 baktun
1,872,000 days = 93,600 uinals = 5200 tuns = 260 katuns = 13 baktuns = 1 Great Cycle

And, just as the world doesn't end every 28 years, it doesn't end every 5,125 years. It seems absurd to think that it would, doesn't it? However, this is the strongest argument there is supporting the idea that the world will end on December 21, 2012.

The planets will be nowhere close to lining up. There's no rogue planet heading for Earth. Even the Bible based doomsday predictions are landing on that date because we've passed all the other dates that loons think the Bible says the world will end and we're still here.

Still, it makes for a good disaster movie.

The science in this movie is crap. It should be assumed to be ALL crap unless someone says otherwise. Neutrino detectors really are built in old mines at least a mile underground. There really is a super caldera under Yellowstone National Park. No tsunami would be big enough to swamp the Himalayas. Neutrinos won't become microwaves and bake the core of the planet. The ash from Yellowstone exploding won't clear for years, let alone provide clear skies 27 days later.

You've all seen the trailers for this movie by now. A city breaks and falls apart as a discordant descending tone plays over and over again. That's somewhere in southern California and you've seen almost that entire scene. Luckily, there are other scenes in the movie that are worth watching. Yellowstone National Park bulges and spews and explodes. Hawaii burns. DC gets swamped. Las Vegas gets enveloped in a cloud of ashen death. Planes crash on Chinese glaciers.

And through all of this John Cusack survives. The most important thing to know is that you should never, ever, get even a single step behind John Cusack. Where he steps the ground immediately falls away or explodes. Even the vehicles he rides in fall away behind where he sits. Whole continents shift to make sure they're where he needs to land. Buildings fall slower so he can get out, through, or pass under him. Stay with him and you'll live, just so long as you're not slower than he is.

Let me pause for a moment. I just saw that Roland Emmerich, the guy who wrote, directed, and produced "2012" is also working on adapting Isaac Asimov's Foundation trilogy for a movie. Insert an appropriate squeal of delight here. If you have some crystal in the house it should break.

Where was I? Oh, right. The movie didn't suck. In fact I recommend seeing it. I recommend seeing it on a huge screen. I'd even see it again on an Imax screen or something. But, if I got it on DVD it'd just be so I could go through the disaster scenes in slow motion.

Yummy was a bit traumatized. Not like she would be if she saw "Paranormal Activity" or "Legion" but shaken a bit grumpy. We react a bit differently to cinematic horrors. Guess which one I am.

Anyway, it's a good story, well told, with great special effects.