If there is one common theme that apocalypse movies just love to replay over and over again, it has to be the divorced father saving the lives of his kids not only from disaster, but from their disbelieving mothers and their new beaus as well.
In that respect, 2012 follows closely what War of the Worlds and Tsunami in Haeundae have shown us - basically, "bitch, before you leave your retarded husband, just think - he might come in handy when the world comes to an end one day."
And so, joining the herds of thousands that have clogged the cinemas since its opening last week, I finally - after three days of wasting an apocalyptic amount of time hunting for just one ticket at any cost - got to see that movie that they had been hyping about for an entire year.
Putting aside all the noise that this movie will convert one's faith (probably the same noise that says doing yoga will convert you), I found this movie emotionally-moving at times (like when the boy screams 'dad' for his father despite having rebelliously called him by his first name before that), but failed to feel any suspense or 'feel' the movie as I did with The Day After Tomorrow. Somehow it's hard to fake even the subtlest empathy toward a sinking Las Vegas. I tried to, real hard.
You see crashing cars, collapsing buildings, cracking lands - but you hardly see anybody die. That's the problem! And oh by the way, you also see tons of Sony Vaio laptops, a departure from the typical Yank movie with Macbooks.
The whole damn thing is too American from start to end. Like who cares if fat Americans die while grocery-shopping in K-Mart? What they should've done was to show more of the Chinese laborers that got suckered into building the arks - those underprivileged people that built the same ships that would eventually leave them to die.
Or the part where the poor puppy-eyed Indians (in the typical soppy Bollywood-style tear-jerker) were all swallowed by a 1.5km-high Tsunami. Or that magnificent scene where the Himalayas were crashed by giant waves, with the monk calmly banging his gong in anticipation to die at any second.
The visual effects are nothing short of breathtaking. It has all the factors to wow anyone that understands how hard it is to simulate the physics of dust, debris, fire and water, and this movie does that so well. Except for the part where the naval ship rolls over and crumples the White House. That looks too much like a model to me. The arks too look like they were taken from some video game. But as far as the natural elements go, they've done great.
However, if you, like me, saw the trailer, went 'wow!' and went to the movie expecting lots more wows, you'll be a little disappointed. There doesn't seem to be much left beyond what you've seen in the trailers.
