(2009) **1/2Or as I like to call it: Trope-a-thon or What a Bunch of Crap or Knock Some Shit Down Already.
Julie and I watched this from Netflix over the weekend. Our tag-team review follows. There are spoilers coming up, but believe me, you don't care.
I'm not sure how to adequately describe the idiocy posing as the scientific basis for this plot. When Armageddon came out there was all the back chatter about the possibilities of actually being struck by a killer asteroid. This movie tries for the same thing with the popular hooey attributed to the poor Mayans, and then after dragging their good name through the mud it decides to give our friend the neutrino a hard time. Apparently neutrinos are known for passing through matter and doing nothing and bothering nobody, but this time they -- gasp! -- do something! "They've transformed into completely different particles!" Which is about the same as saying the plot is magic. "Oh my God! With (science words) like that, epic, sweeping events will occur! (cough! science...)"
Julie sez: While there were many logical flaws that made themselves immediately apparent, only later did this one drift to the surface of my mind. Hero scientist Chiwetel Ejiofor flies 20 hours and interrupts the President's Chief of Staff at a dinner party with urgent news--news sooooo incredibly urgent it cannot wait for a proper appointment. And then--THREE YEARS LATER, the shit goes down in LA. I mean, I understand, three years isn't a long time to mobilize the salvation of the human race, animal species, and great works of art. But come on. Wait until after the party for criminy's sake. And then how the hell do you expect this whole thing will stay a secret when you bust into a party and announce, "I've got urgent geological news that all the leaders of the Earth need to see!" Do you really think everyone at the party is just like, "Man, whatever. That guy is just talking shit. Oh, looks like the Chief of Staff is pretty upset--you know, whetEVer, I need to get my drink on here."
Octo: Whether you watch this whole movie or not, it is worth the effort to check out the scene of Los Angeles's destruction. It's a two-part chase scene, (limo, plane), but the car full of bad guys has been replaced with EVERYTHING FALLING EVERYWHERE. It's pretty cool. Roland Emmerich may make you want to bang your head on a wall, but he knows his spectacle. And if you've gotten that far you might as well get to Yellowstone erupting. And so on.
BUT, when I say "worth the effort" and "you might as well get to," I honestly think your time will be served better to just fast forward to these scenes. The LA quake is the first real jazz in this movie, and I think it was at least 45 minutes in.
And the stereotypical human drama is some of the most boilerplate stuff you've ever seen. I like Chiwetel Ejiofor well enough (I always want to see actors from all things Firefly do well), but I wanted to kick his whiny ass when he does the impassioned speech about saving our very humanity along with our lives. And it's all crap! He's just trying to get with the President's daughter Thandie Newton, who's there watching the speech with a painful knot of Impassioned Concern on her brow.
Julie Sez: I disagree. The emotional scenes of this movie were absolutely the best part for me. It was like watching the Rocky Horror Picture Show or something. I like Amanta Peet and John Cusack well enough that I figured they were kind of slumming it in this movie. I mean, as much as anyone can be slumming it in the tentpole movie of the year and making millions of dollars. I like to think that Cusack spent every day hitting the bong, which probably contributed to the fact that I actually believed most of his lines, even considering the whole Bad Dad Who Finally Comes Through in a Tragedy thing is so definitely played out. He played it one more time anyway, and he did an okay job. And then you have Amanda Peet, sort of looking around and going, "Wow. This is totally different from TV." I mean, she didn't actually ever say that, but she might as well have. It's like, yep, after whatever acting training you might have had, you get to play a woman unhappy with her ex who marries a surgeon, a surgeon she just might not be in love with anymore. Watch out, this could be the role that pushes you right over the edge. I mean, there's Hedda Gabler, Lady MacBeth, and then there's bitchy coal-digging sarcastic mom who still gets horny for her writer ex husband--that's gotta muster up a wellspring of emotional depth heretofore untapped--Oh, why am I even bothering with the thick layers of useless sarcasm--women in these movies are a friggin' nightmare.
Octo: and now an array of pointed questions for 2012 regarding the giant apocalypse-proof escape arks:
Why have only one giant hatch?
And why oh why build it so you can't start the engines unless it's sealed?
And if that's so important, what's the point of the interior decks being sealed off with automatic bulkheads?
And I'll sign off with the following:
Woody Harrelson, playing Lone Nutjob Who Knows, shows John Cusack his blog which features a flash-animated recap of the plot. Which means this movie copies from one of the worst parts of Jurassic Park
In the end the waters recede and our hero gets to go out with the President's daughter. Which means this movie copies from some of the worst parts of Deep Impact and Mars Attacks
Julie sez: No matter how you criticize this movie, it is totally rad to see the world come apart. And the cheesiness? It kind of says to me that the film's producer's had the same cynical approach to the making of this film that Oliver Platt's character had to the making of the ships. It's all about the Benjamins, baby. They phoned it in on character and story development, not to mention plausibility. And you can almost see Oliver Platt, jaded Secretary of Staff, saying, "Because audiences don't fucking care about that." We all know we want to see giant waves destroy cities. End of story! I almost wish they'd just gone the extra step and hired Will Ferrell to play the lead and just made all the corny dialogue actually funny dialogue. But still have shit crack apart and slide into the ocean. See people? This is why you need Julie as a development exec. Look at the entertainment that awaits you once I take over in this town.
But still, I was excited to see this one, and even in all its disappointingness, it didn't disappoint. So I guess cynicism reigns supreme in Hollywood. Um, again.
29 comments:
pretty much exactly what i was expecting when i first saw the trailer for this.
hilarious review format, although i have to admit, when julie sez "i disagree..." i found myself wishing she'd said, "why, you ignorant decrepit motherfucker..."
Look, say what you want about how it turned out, but I just don't understand where you're getting this idea that it's some kind of cynical, deliberate cheesiness, like they did it on purpose. Nobody does that on purpose. They were trying to make a good movie, like everyone tries to make a good movie.
The problem is that Emmerich is a very weak writer, and doesn't have a James-Cameron-style fan club to apologize for his crappy scenic material. The whole "bad movie = cynicism/greed" argument always seems misguided and unnecessarily snide.
I remember that ten years ago a co-worker of mine insisted that original Star Trek was "camp," because it was so ludicrous that you couldn't take it seriously. I actually got very angry and explained that a whole lot of people were earnestly working very hard to make the best sci-fi they could, under impossible conditions while surrounded by oblivious but well-meaning network executives. There's nothing remotely "campy" about what they did, and I'd say the same thing about 2010. It's an attempt to make a real When Worlds Collide style disaster movie. The whole "it's all about the benjamins" argument (just because it turned out badly) irritates me.
You want to get pissed off at cynical filmmakers, find the people who greenlight all those "Date Movie" spoofs or Aniston vehicles. Not the 2012 gang. They were legitimately trying to make a sci-fi movie, which, in case you hadn't heard, is extremely difficult to do even under the best conditions. I thought it turned out fine. He can't write dialogue or direct actors; we know this. Alejandro González Iñárritu (21 Grams, Babel) can't direct actors either, but nobody calls him an opportunist because its not genre stuff.
And I didn't even think the plot was so bad. Compared to every other Emmerich movie, it was fucking Shakespeare. (Not that that's such a high bar). I found the Platt/Washington stuff to be engaging, and I liked the two old fucks on the boat (much more than I liked Maximillian Schell and Vanessa Redgrave and all the other ancilary people in, Deep Impact).
Also, the effects were absolutely superb throughout, and I challenge anyone to dispute that!
Jeez, Jordan. Is the Hollywood Special Olympics this week? Every player gets a trophy and a 65 million dollar opening weekend?
Sure, nobody sits down at the keyboard and says "I'm going to write some trite crap to go in between the explosions." But the decision to use the trite crap they have instead of, I don't know, hiring another writer with a shred of the 200 million dollar budget -- that decision gets made all the time. Because the cheese is "good enough."
Of course I can't claim things are like this across the board, but you make it sound like the film industry is a tree full of elves making cookies, and that's not how it is either. I don't think a single industry person I've ever worked with wouldn't give me a quizzical look if they heard the phrase "well-meaning network executives."
Not that those people are moustache-twisting villains, either, flexing their cynicism and greed to deliberately foist sub-par character development on the masses. I don't think people have to be evil to make cynical decisions, but I also think it's naive to think there's no cynicism going on in the constantly re-made decision to not take risks in the name of narrative intelligence.
And that's regardless of genre; I don't like the cynical romcoms you cite either, but 2012 isn't above reproach because you liked it better than Avatar.
As for greed, the movie made almost three-quarters of a billion dollars worldwide. That's something only greedy people can pull off.
As for greed, the movie made almost three-quarters of a billion dollars worldwide. That's something only greedy people can pull off.
Says who? That's supposed to sound like some kind of homily or truism but it doesn't hold up under scrutiny. Was George Lucas "greedy" the first time around? Were Lennon and McCartney "greedy"? Sometimes you just hit the nerve or spike the vein, and even though there are millions of others trying to do the same thing, you're the one who does it. There are all kinds of reasons for this, but the idea that it's "something only greedy people can pull off" is just nonsense. The one thing has nothing to do with the other; I think you know that, too.
I don't think a single industry person I've ever worked with wouldn't give me a quizzical look if they heard the phrase "well-meaning network executives."
In which case you'd have to explain what you meant, speaking out of context like that and borrowing my overblown phrase.
I simply meant that there was a guy named Herbert F. Solow at Desilu (soon to become part of Paramount) who believed in Roddenberry and Star Trek. Alan Ladd Jr. at 20th Century Fox ran interference for George Lucas, dealing directly with the board of directors. These are "well meaning executives."
Again, presumably you know this already and could easily explain it to whomever was giving you a quizzical look.
But the decision to use the trite crap they have instead of, I don't know, hiring another writer with a shred of the 200 million dollar budget -- that decision gets made all the time. Because the cheese is "good enough."
Correct, but there's no greed inside that decision. It's just expediency and trusting what you know. Emmerich's routine involves him writing the script, and the stuff is profitable.
Running an industry on box-office (like any capitalist enterprise) doesn't mean you're switching over to "greed" as the motivator for making stuff. It's just basic market economics; a system for vetting stuff. Arguing that the ones making profits are the "greedy" ones isn't logical.
I mean, there are legitimately exploitative movies. The old "grindhouse" stuff (not that I knew anything about that until the recent Tarantino/Rodriguez movie), the material that ends up on Mystery Science Theater 3000. These are legitimately cynical make-a-buck assembly-line movies, and the stuff you guys are saying applies. It's "good enough."
But something like 2012 is just way too expensive and carefully made of a project to fall into that category. They're really trying hard to get it right. Those guys are just off-base, that's all...just like Coppola was fatally off-base when he made Godfather III or Lucas when he made Phantom Menace.
There's the perfect example: Phantom Menace. We've talked about this before, Octo. It sucks, but it's clear that Lucas believed in it and was really trying. He just kind of lost his creative shit, etc. but he didn't suddenly switch over into some other, cynical "greedy" mode and say "this sucks but it's good enough, because it's star wars so I don't have to try too hard. And neither did Roland Emmerich.
You know what's a totally cynical, greed-based movie like you guys are saying? Batman and Robin.
There's an example of a bunch of people really trying to just make a fucking fortune with toys and bullshit and knowingly wrecking the movie along the way. It's just a paycheck for all of them.
I agree about the cheesiness. But desroc and I still thought it was pretty fun. We're silly like that.
Fun review. 2.5 may be a bit generous for this silliness, but not by much. It's a fun ride for the most part, after all.
My favorite plot hole was the decision to build the things under these obviously dangerous mountain caverns, where BY DESIGN, the ships are going to be battered around and crushed against cliffs when the waters come in. Oh, and just to make that even more harrowing, let's build them all right next to each other so they bang around like bumper boats on the way out.
As for the interesting cynicism/art discussion that's broken out, I like your instinct to want to defend the filmmaker, Jordan, but Emmerich is no Lucas or Coppola. And his studio handlers have no illusions about this.
I think absolutely the cheesiness here was deliberate (Batman and Robin is a great example, btw). Triteness, simplicity, regurgitation...these are all calculated decisions when dealing with productions like these. Those are traits of mass pop culture that transcend borders and work well in translation, and that's where these investors are looking these days for their real returns. I watched Independence Day in a crowded theater in Casablanca, dubbed into French with Arabic subtitles, and that's where Emmerich flicks are gold.
It's not just that plot/character/dialogue are "secondary" to Emmerich's effects, either. Or that he's just not very good at those things. It's that anything complex or new or challenging would be specifically verboten, since it wouldn't sell well in say, India, where they might have 3-4 rows of different subtitles on the screen at any one time. In general, talking = bad.
This isnt' to totally slam these folks for such cynicism, though. Hell, if I was putting up 100 mill, I sure wouldn't want Ang Lee telling me he had an interesting take on the Hulk franchise he wanted to explore.
I don't see any difference -- any creative difference, formal difference, or business difference -- between James Cameron deciding not to hire a writer and Roland Emmerich deciding not to hire a writer. It's the same move with the same result. Cameron's stuff is better because Cameron himself is better (as a writer/producer/director), but that's the only difference, and it's a difference of taste. The business equation (give this guy a lot of money to make a sci-fi blockbuster; and give him the control he wants, because his box office track record) justifies the request) is identical in both cases. The idea that there's some sort of fundamental difference in the intentionality behind the two projects just doesn't hold up;. It's a quantitative, not a qualitative, distinction. I personally can't stand Roland Emmerich's movies (2012 was far and away my favorite; it comes closest to being a real movie) but I'm not going to mentally consign him to some other category of "cynical" "greedy" hollywood; he belongs at the same table as Spielberg and Kubrick and everybody else.
Look what Spielberg did with War of the Worlds. Brilliant post-9/11 social commentary, daring and controversial, and I'm sure it made just as much (if not far more) money than 2012. Each of the filmmakers has exactly as much creative freedom as their box office power earns them. Spielberg has literally earned the freedom to preach and philosophize on the blockbuster canvas.
Stop. Judge. Jordan.
(That's a reference to the old, lame video game Karate Champ.)
I haven't seen this movie but that was a fun review to read! I like the dual voices. Octo, you and Julie are the Sonny & Cher of Horrorthon!
But Jordan's arguments were like a full nelson submission hold. Fascinating discussion!
I got a little over-excited
And I fucken' LOVED the dual review format. I just felt I had to get my man Roland's back.
(And I don't even like him! I'm just so damned principled )
I take that back about 2012 being my favorite Emmerich movie. My favorite Emmerich movie has got to be Independence Day, for one simple reason: it's an absolute masterpiece of structure. You could teach it in a movie class: the three-act construction is fucking perfect, and all the conflicts are adroitly presented and resolved. Unfortunately the movie is (in the word(s?) of David Edelstein, "ridiculous."
I should really let this drop, but the raggedy loose ends of this dialogue are still in my head like a scab I can’t stop picking. I think Jordan constructed a conflict where none existed. Here’s exhibit A of that thesis:
“Also, the effects were absolutely superb throughout, and I challenge anyone to dispute that!”
Even a cursory glance at Julie’s and my review would show that we had nothing but positive things to say about the action scenes and special effects; indeed seeing the movie is recommended by both of us on this basis. At the very least, Jordan’s “over excitement,” as he put it, is getting in the way of his paying attention to the actual discussion at hand. Were I to speculate what else is going on (and this is just speculation), he is angry at one or more of the following: our negative opinion of 2012, sci-fi writers in general not being taken seriously, the fact that Avatar, which he did not like, is receiving of much more praise than 2012, and his historic irritation over the idea that high-level filmmaking decisions are made based on cynicism and greed.
Speaking of greed, my statement about greed was admittedly pretty worthless. What I should have done first was reviewed when “greed” entered into the conversation, because it was actually in Jordan’s first comment, and not our review. So when I say “the cheese is good enough” and Jordan says the following:
“Correct, but there's no greed inside that decision. It's just expediency and trusting what you know. Emmerich's routine involves him writing the script, and the stuff is profitable.
Running an industry on box-office (like any capitalist enterprise) doesn't mean you're switching over to "greed" as the motivator for making stuff. It's just basic market economics; a system for vetting stuff. Arguing that the ones making profits are the "greedy" ones isn't logical.”
Pretty much everything in his response is rendered moot. I didn't call "greed," Jordan said I called "greed" and I mistakenly uh... agreed. "It's just basic market economics" equals "it's all about the Benjamins" in this case. Or, to use Jordan’s examples, we did not compare the production of 2012 to that of Batman and Robin, old-school grindhouse movies, or any of a number of terrible romantic comedies.
If my argument still doesn’t convince you that Julie’s point never invoked “greed” (whether the word was used or not), consider this: Up until the comment I just quoted, Jordan had never mentioned anything about profit motive, or running a business, or capitalism. His initial round of comments seemed to be about Emmerich et al making art for art’s sake, so I thought any discussion regarding the Benjamins was in the realm of “our side.” Then he said the above and suddenly I realized I had been incorrectly positioned on the “greed” side when that was never where I meant to be (although admittedly I helped put myself there by adopting his rhetoric).
So the one part of Jordan’s response to my point about the cheese being good enough is this:
“Correct.”
I think we're all in agreement here. Movies are made to make money. That gets prioritized over certain other aspects of the movie-making process. Mass market movies are made a certain way to appeal to mass market audiences, because that's how the money gets made. In terms of the action/FX/disaster scenes, the emphasis is on wooing audiences with things they haven't seen before. In terms of the character scenes, the emphasis is often on showing audiences things they have seen before so the rest of the movie hangs together without complications. This also ties together with Landshark’s comment on how these movies are made to be exportable.
Which brings me to James Cameron and some other stuff Jordan argues against despite nobody else having brought it up.
Jordan says “The problem is that Emmerich is a very weak writer, and doesn't have a James-Cameron-style fan club to apologize for his crappy scenic material,” and goes on to refute that Emmerich’s intentions are different from Cameron’s or Speilberg’s or Kubrick’s. Again, nobody said that. I’ll go further and say that, in my opinion, they’re all cheesemongers. Here, for example, is something I said about Avatar when I reviewed it:
“The story contains few surprises, the expected share of boilerplate characters, and with them an array of unfortunate dialogue. At some point Sigourney Weaver says "so much for the quiet life" or something like that, and you'll roll your eyes.”
Without seeing the relevance of Cameron’s fan club of apologists, I will point out that I’m not in it. As for the others, what’s another movie with an estranged couple who reunite because of the events of the movie? Minority Report. What’s another movie with Bad Dad Who Finally Comes Through in a Tragedy? War of the Worlds. Some cheese is finer than others, but it’s still cheese.
Which brings us, I think, finally, to a point of actual contention.
The process I described above, in which the financial bottom line is the primary concern when making a movie – I think there is cynicism in there, although not, maybe, in the way that forms the argument Jordan dislikes.
With a few notable exceptions (like backing Tarantino), risk-taking is not a favorite sport among Hollywood decision makers, as it represents an unknown effect on the Benjamins. The decision to stick with the familiar way of doing things, to not challenge the audience or the filmmakers (as regards to the elements we’re discussing) is, while not necessarily opportunistic or devious, at least pessimistic in its regard for the masses and what they can handle. And that’s a kind of cynicism I see happening. Perhaps it’s a small facet of a decision that’s more importantly based on financial savvy, or fear of losing money (which can be the same thing), but it’s in there. And the purveyors of the finer cheeses are, I think, less pessimistic about what the audience can take. The example I keep thinking of is in Minority Report, when the old lady botanist suddenly kisses Tom Cruise full on the mouth. It’s a weird moment, I’m not exactly sure what it means, but I love it.
And whether you agree with me about cynicism in Hollywood’s upper ranks, I can tell you for sure that those who work for the decision-makers are cynical as hell. Because we all dream of things being done a little differently, a little smarter, and the message from above is a universal “dumb it down.” (See Minority Report again, in which the ending reveal is reveal twice for those who missed it). Whether it’s in the boardrooms or not, cynicism does reign supreme in Hollywood.
(At this point I’ll mention that Julie really intended that statement as a toss-off joke, and I’m sure would find the effort I’m expending here ridiculous.)
Coming soon: I have Transformers 2 in my Netflix queue. If Jordan springs to the defense of Michael Bay we are truly through the looking glass.
Octo makes some good points, and his defensive argument is good, and his enlightened assumptions about my underlying pissed-off-edness are pretty accurate.
I was a little surprised, myself, by the vitriol that the question tapped into. Clearly there's something to this, beyond the specifics (or, as Octo points out, the imaginary specifics) of his and Julie's critique of the movie.
(There was another comment thread, last year, when this stuff came up. I have to try and remember what it was about, so I can find it...)
Basically, here's my problem:
1) People look at the arts and draw distinctions between "high" and "low" culture. In the fine arts or writing it's a little easier, because you can deal with different galleries or magazines or other categorical benchmarks. With Hollywood movies, there's just the multiplex, and whatever ends up there, it's up to you to decide how to categorize it.
2) The result is a bunch furious territorial distinctions between "art" and "entertainment;" between "the masses" and "the cultural elite;" between "real movies" and "popcorn movies;" between the enlightened and the unenlightened. (There are not-very-deeply buried value judgments here, obviously.)
3) And, a great deal of this makes sense. You can go ahead and talk about what appeals to one kind of audience, etc. But it's a post-facto descriptive model, not a model of intentionality.
4) The part that bothers me is when cultural critics reverse-engineer this demographic model into some kind of imaginary model of an overdetermined creatve process, wherein the filmmakers themselves are grappling with the distinctions in #2 above, and, by implication, with the moral value-judgments that get attached. In other words, there is a (wholly mythical) image of filmmakers who should (or could) listen to the "angel on their shoulter" telling them to "make art," but in the end their nobility crumples in the face of the business realities and they decide to "merely" make "entertainment." Then they have "sold out;" they are no longer pure artists etc. The noble artist falls because he gives in to the "reality" of filthy lucre etc. and the need to please that "stupid" "mass audience."
5) And I just completely reject everything about this idea. I torpedo it; I nuke it. J. J. Abrams and Steven Spielberg and Wes Anderson and Michael Mann and Joss Whedon and the rest of them all understand that you get the gig and you try to do what you can try to do. You don't sit down and decide beforehand "For this project, I am attempting to satisfy the market, as opposed to my other project, which is 'art'." It just doesn't work that way. Evveryone's just, you know, doing it; trying to get the stuff in front of audiences and trying to make it good. This idea that it's like politics; that you "abandon art for commerce" like you're changing political parties or something, is just lazy thinking. At least, that's how it seems to me.
I just hate this idea of some kind of "struggle" between "the artists" who want to be creative and "the money people" who want to ruin art by making it appeal to the masses. There is no such struggle! There are millions and millions of tiny decisions that get made every day along these lines of market viability vs. full expression of whatever idea is being discussed, but it's not this goddamned "war of virtue" in which the evil moneymakers kill the art and at the end all the art is dead. It's just like rock'n'roll; it's a popular medium, and the people who are good at it (Bono, Peter Jackson, etc.) learn how to channel the subtleties of what they're thinking and feeling into the lens of popular art.
I'm just trying to remove the implied moral stigma.
It's like those people who claim that someone like George Michael or Justin Timberlake "cynically" sits down "to write a hit song" and uses a "formula" to do it, while, in contrast, someone like Lou Reed or Leonard Cohen was "making art" (e.g. not 'compromising.") All I see is a bunch of people sitting down trying to write some music. They're all thinking about getting on the radio, and they're all thinking about how to get that particular emotion into words and notes.
The fact that a student can read a novel and regard it (correctly) as "an indictment of war" (for example) doesn't mean that the novelist sat down and said, "I need to indict war...how would I go about doing that?" and came up with a story to serve that purpose. Probably, the writer just started writing about his/her own experiences as a soldier, or was just thinking about warfare, looking for a story. Once it's done, it turns out that you can say all kinds of things about what it means.
Similarly, the idea of a writer/filmmaker etc. saying "I should try something else, but instead I'm going to just slum it and go for the mass audience" is too proscriptive.
Let me be more clear on a point where I'm open to attack. I said:
I just hate this idea of some kind of "struggle" between "the artists" who want to be creative and "the money people" who want to ruin art by making it appeal to the masses. There is no such struggle!
Now, obviously there are thousands and thousands of individual conflicts and individual dillemae that can be discussed in those terms. But that's all they are: individual moments when it's struggled over.
It's like arguing over whether to go to a nice restaurant or to save the money (while sightseeing, say.) There's a case for frugality, and there's a case for culinary experience and enjoyment. Maybe the couple who argue over this frequently take the same positions, and maybe one of the two is the "responsible" one when it comes to money, etc. but the idea that this is one small battle in an ongoing war between "the frugal people" (bad!) and "the experience-seekers" (good!) is just a grotesque simplification.
I'll stop. Am I even making sense any more? (Was I ever making sense?) Making this point is like trying to catch a butterfly in a big room.
Post a Comment