2012 [Blu-ray] [2010] [Region Free]

I have looked at some of the reviews, and as much as anything I wanted to write a couple of lines simply to counter things.

There are far too many people who want to come across as insightful, so very seriously aware viewers, who know the hidden agenda going on, and can't be fooled into watching brainless entertainment without giving back a whole load of disdain. However, if you want a battleground for such debate, I hardly think 2012 is the proper place.

This movie is from the guy who make 10,000 BC, Godzilla, and The Day After Tomorrow. It's a disaster movie. It's a soap opera. As such it has all the cardboard characters, the ridiculous cliffhangers, the simple dialog, and all the depth of a pond. On the other hand, it has spectacular effects, load bangs, literary seismic events. Some characters won't make it, some will become unlikely heroes. Which ones? Watch The Towering Inferno from the 70's to find out, it's all the same.....

But then, what was this movie trying to do? Some here are talking about the political message, the "new world order". I truly think they must be having a laugh on us. This film has been made many times, and it'll be made many times more. It's exciting at times, daft, silly and ridiculous. It's a disaster, after all.

What more do you want? You want politics? Go elsewhere. Who'd have thought an American movie, made largely for the American market, financed by American dollars, would center itself on American ideals, and the American way of life? Are we really shocked?

This is a five not because it's a good film, but because it does what it says on the tin. And for those concerned, it's okay to simply be entertained sometimes, honestly, it is.

If you sit down to watch 2012, like I did, you're probably not in it for the characters or Oscar worthy acting, or any kind of real emotional imput. No, you're in it for the thrills and spills, the relentless breathtaking superb CGI orgies of special effects and riveting explosions.

So you'll be pleased that this movie delivers its promise. I don't see the point of people writing about the poor acting or 2D characters because this is not what this movie is about. It is no more than a B movie pop corn action flick, which you sit down to watch on a Saturday night to loose yourself in the silliness of this action epic purely to be entertained. I agree that the characters are very badly conceived. None are particularly likeable and most others are annoying. This can be frustrating because you feel that if the actors and producers had taken the time to make the characters more likable this movie would be so much better off for it. For a start it would become instantly more compelling because you'd be willing the characters to survive, unfortunately you just don't care.

While the script is very loose, the dialogue is bland and the acting close to embarrassing for all concerned - the effects seem beyond our time and are the most exquisite I have seen to date. I had to marvel at how calm the characters seemed in some absolutely absurd scenarios, when buildings are collapsing all around them, they have no real fear or shock in there expressions and it takes away all the believability. It's hard enough to believe anyway, as the action is very far fetched, but undeniably brilliant. I just felt if the acting had been stronger the sense of peril would be greater, so the action moments would feel more intense, scarier and slightly more realistic. The central character drives cars, dodges explosions and comes close to death like he does it everyday and it really doesn't bother him.

I do agree with all this movies flaws and it does have a fare few. Still I was not disappointed by this film because my expectations were nothing more than what it is, which is an action epic that will at least once make you gasp. It's a little overlong and when the dialogue scenes do come they aren't very engaging and quite frankly I was just waiting for the next action set piece. In conclusion I would recommend this as a brainless entertaining film to watch over the weekend with a bottle of wine a few mates and some popcorn. It's worth the purchase, even better on Blu-ray. Just leave your brain at the door and don't expect too much, but it's certainly no way near as bad as others have made out!

Having already destroyed the world twice on the big screen, Roland Emmerich clearly wasn't afraid of running the risk of repeating himself when he decided to do a much more thorough job of it in 2012. Where most disaster movies work best by trapping a group of characters who usually die in reverse order to their star billing in an large enclosed space, be it a capsized sinking ship or a burning building that they have to fight their way out of, here he raises the stakes by trapping the entire human race on a sinking, burning planet that's starting to fall apart. Naturally there's a way out for the rich and powerful and the chosen few, which just as naturally don't include at least half of the main characters. Just as in George Pal's When Worlds Collide [DVD] [1951], which this can be seen as a hugely expensive reworking of with all the spectacular advances in special effects 60 years and $200m can buy, the governments of the world are building arks to preserve their species. Or, more accurately, the Chinese are building them with the rest of the world's money (Emmerich knows the value of keeping things multi-national to boost the overseas box-office, admirably including more major roles for non-white actors than the average American movie).

The echoes of his previous hits can certainly be clearly heard, whether it's destroying the White House but saving the dog again just like he did in Independence Day or having characters outrun extreme weather conditions - in this case pyroclastic clouds rather than global warming itself - as they did in The Day After Tomorrow. But there's no denying that he gives great Apocalypse, and he clearly has enough anarchic spins on the End of the World As We Know It to fill another movie with jaw-dropping special effects setpieces, taking on a whole new set of iconic landmarks. Thus a crack along the Sistine Chapel that divides the hand of Adam and God results in the Vatican crushing the praying masses, the statue of Christ the Redeemer in Rio De Janeiro falls apart like jelly, Yellowstone Park becomes the world's biggest super volcano and Hollywood and the entire state of California fall into the sea while the ground opens up beneath Las Vegas like Sodom and Gomorrah Part Two. This is Armageddon - the Rollercoaster Ride, and about as impressively staged on a purely technical level as you're ever likely to see on the screen, and unlike other hacks who overdo the shakeycam and MTV editing, Emmerich has enough confidence in the spectacle and old-fashioned filmmaking nous to let you actually see it all properly.

It's a surprisingly well-structured film too, at least for its first two thirds, giving enough detail to move the film towards the cataclysmic day without giving away its entire hand too soon. Even more surprisingly it keeps the worst excesses of cheap sentiment that the genre is notorious for at bay for much of its running time before finally giving way to temptation in the soggy finale that could have done with a bit more ruthlessness and a lot less cheese. But for the most part the worst excesses are relegated to the deleted scenes bin on the DVD and Blu-ray (including one character getting a crowdpleasing but unbelievable sock on the jaw while a couple of dead meat supporting players miraculously return from their watery grave).

Not that everything works so well. Some of the cast (Chiwetel Ejiofor, John Cusack, Oliver Platt) get dealt a better hand by the writers than others (George Segal, Woody Harrelson) and there are enough bad lines that raise laughs like "The director of the Louvre was an enemy of humanity?" for you to suspect they were put there deliberately. The costume design of the crew of the arks in the finale, especially Stephen McHattie's captain, look like leftovers from a cancelled 50s TV show and there are a some unfortunately poor in a laugh-out-loud way moments in the boarding sequence (hint: oil sheiks and corgis).

But by far the biggest drawback is the image quality. While the big effects sequences are convincing enough, the decision to use the highly flawed Panavision Genesis digital cameras instead of shooting on film means that shots of an airship carrier crashing into the White House look more convincing than simple shots of characters talking in dark locations or at night - and there are a lot of them in the last section of the film. Blu-ray can't help the problems of lack of depth, detail and definition or the persistent blurring even on simple motion in low light levels, merely accurately reproduce the flaws in the original. While the image quality is never as bad as on Superman Returns, it's a major step back from the kind of quality you should expect from a film this expensive.

Yet for all that, as a spectacular exercise in watching big things get destroyed while the odd human being makes an unlikely hair's-breadth escape that usually defies the laws of physics, it does it's job.

While the DVD only offers an audio commentary, adulatory featurette on the director and 5 negligible deleted scenes and a hokier alternate ending as extras, the Blu-ray includes additional puff pieces (though not as many as the US disc, which also includes a music video) as well as a picture-in-picture featurettes, but there's nothing of much substance here.