November 16, 2009

• 2012 is an idiotic movie

  I saw 2012 last weekend. It was an odd experience. The people in the theater actually clapped at the end. The three people I went with all reportedly enjoyed it.

  Me?

  I couldn’t stop rolling my eyes throughout the movie.

  While 2012 wasn’t the worst movie I’ve ever seen, not by a long shot, it was quite possibly the stupidest.  I found the plot to be completely ridiculous. It’s basically a movie full of the worst kinds of hollywood cliches and stereotypes imaginable.  Seriously, anybody could have written this movie. You just watch end of the world movies and splice them together without any thought. There is zero depth to this movie.  There is nothing in it that makes you think. At all.

  2012 would have been a better movie if it had simply forgone the plot and any semblance of a story and just given us two hours of images of beautiful global environmental destruction.  Watching the awesome power of the Earth beautifully tearing apart civilization was probably the best part of this movie. The pitiful pretense of a story just got in the way.

  Some more specific complaints (spoilers):

  1. The movie completely fails to get you to care about what happens to any of the barely developed characters
  2. Nevertheless the movie annoys you by killing characters in a worst than arbitrary fashion. The character deaths are designed to make the story fit into a nice little package.
  3. The coincidences in this movie that drive the plot forward are sooo ridiculously improbable it smashes verisimilitude into some form of earth destroying subatomic particles.
  4. There should be some kind of rule that says no more than 2 plane takes off in the nick of time scenes in any given movie.
  5. The Dog must Survive, Captain goes down with the ship, Witness to Destruction, Death of Love Rival, Heroic Ex, Evil Pragmatist, Spoiled Rich Kids, The Speech that Changes Everybody’s Mind, The typical atypical American Family (1 boy, 1 girl, mother, divorce/separation, 2 dads), Danger heals all wounds. President as Moral Voice, President must be black (recent movies/tv shows), Inexplicably Long Countdown to Destruction, Crazy Stoner out in the Wilderness —   those are just some of the over used standard stereotypical representations in the film. The movie is basically MADE of these stereotypes just strung together in an arbitrary order.

  There were many other things that bothered me about the movie but this is enough for now.  Basically this movie is more hollywood movie candy like we’ve been subjected to for years now.

  Now don’t get me wrong, I’m not one of those that thinks there’s no place for silly unintelligent special effect flicks. I have no real inherent problem with them. There just, I think gets to a point where it’s clear the movie makers have zero respect for their audience at all and treat them like children. That’s inherently different from trying to elevate your viewers to another level. The latter is what all movies should aim at least a little to do, even the ones that exist just to make money. 

  Otherwise every person just gets to a point eventually where they just can’t take the absurdity of it any longer. There’s only so many times you can see the same stories with the exact same characters and the exact same concepts and the exact same coincidences and the same jokes before you feel the urge to give up on movies entirely (either that or shoot yourself, either way it’s one less customer for the movie industry). If 2012 is the symbol of direction in which hollywood blockbusters are going, I’m pretty sure that’s exactly what will happen. The movie industry is doomed.

  I think critics need to include a stupidity category rating on movies. So at least people know that this movie might be entertaining but it’s going to make you dumber just by watching it. That would be a huge help.

  • 7:13 pm
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