The action scenes are breathtaking, Emmerich really does destroy the world this time, but everything else lacked. I didn't cared for any of the characters and especially Harrelson's part is a joke. It's about 20 minutes to long too. Still a B+ just because of the visuals which were really really awesome.

Emmerich as you know him, big destruction, disfunctional families, cheesy speeches and melodrama, while it worked in ID4 it's getting a little stale by now (or already has been since ID4 ended). Admittedly, it doesn't fail completely, sometimes it's semi-successful at tugging on your heartstrings and while it doesn't really make a difference whether a tsunami is the size of a skyscraper (The Day After Tomorrow) or mountain (2012), it can still be pretty fun witnessing the destruction. 6.5 / 10

yeah agree with both the above.

But there also quite a bit intentional and unintentional jokes. I thought the fleeing of LA was just too comical.

I also thought there wasnt enough destruction that we got to see. I guess you see LA, Himalayas, Vatican, Vegas and Washington DC with a quick view of Hawaii and Brazil. But would have been good to see what happened in other places around the world, especicially Europe and East Coast USA (NY).

Still solid popcorn entertainment even though i fell asleep towards the end.

Prob a B-

I think Emmerich intentionally avoided NY this time since he already covered it in TDAT, so he picked DC as the east coast representation.

2012 is nearly as preposterous as The Day After Tomorrow and equally badly scripted, but it's just as much enjoyable brainless popcorn entertainment. Emmerich's latest "world go boom" extravaganza has a mix of breathtaking special effects and paper-thin characters. The cast is surprisingly top-notch for this sort of film, including John Cusack, Amanda Peet, Chiwetel Ejiofor, Thandie Newton, Oliver Platt, Danny Glover, and all of the performers act accordingly with the material. You know exactly what you will get with this film and thus it's pretty hard to complain. Check your brain at the door and enjoy the end of the world, I guess. B

A+++ fucking awwwwsome!
best visual for a disater movie i've ever seen.

Plot - okay but Godzilla/ID4/TDAT had better plot/characters and better build-ups. The first half out of the LA destruction and the intentional humor sucked.

FX/destruction - first of all, FUCK THE DIGITAL STYLE! It looked ass. Why the hell did they use it? It seriously depreciated the film for me. The disaster sequences were very good but were a little green screeny at times. LA displacement and the Himalayas flooding were the best ones. The epicness of the arks looked so beautiful as well. The amount of destruction was surprisingly just okay. They should have shown the destruction on a wider scale like MadGez said. And the lack of NY. NY not being shown blowing up in a disaster flick is like an F13 movie without tits. Also, a disaster film of this scale could have shown one whole continent raped by a megatsunami, or something bigger.

Overall - a better world-goes-to-shit flick than TDTESS, but it's Emmerich's weakest disaster offering by far.

B

'

Weakest disaster offering and you still give it a "B"???

Emmerich' weakest. ID4, Godzilla and tDAT were straight A's for me.

3/10 -> D-

Complete disaster. If the movie was a collection of various disaster evens around the world it might have been very good as I loved the special effects.

The story sucks ass. The basic plots is the same as in The Day After Tomorrow. But what happens next is ten times more awful. The characters are craptastic and all of what they're going through is way over the top even for Emmerich and his crew. And it's not even bad to be good in a bad way, it's completely awful.

And the even worse thing is that the movie is soooo fucking boring. If the world didn't start to collapse when it did I would probably fall asleep. The LA sequence woke me up, but all of the following sequences were basically the same but presented in a different way, so even the disasters became boring by the end of it.

And the running time. Oh my. The movie never stops. It just goes on and on and on.

Seriously, how anyone can like this is beyond me. I even liked 10000 BC a bit more. At least the onscreen happenings there were possibly if only in the movie reality.

By far the worst Emmerich offering yet. It has nothing on Independence Day and The Day After Tomorrow.

Question: is the Himalayas scene expanded in the film, or is it just the same as in the teaser?

The scene continues. It's the final scene.

.. but how was it as an actual movie. I never realized we were rating based on visuals alone?

I was entertained for the whole time so can't complain much. B

I quite enjoyed it. Awesome visuals and disaster sequences, likeable characters and tone, entertaining plot. Its a light popcorn film, goes down easy more than anything.

Its light years ahead of The Day After Tomorrow. One difference I liked, is while in that film Quaid just points at a computer screen and says "Theres a hole in the ozone layer! A storm is coming!" to explain the disaster, in 2012 they take much more time and energy showing us what the catastrophe is, the details of how theyre going to deal with it, the white house and world leaders reaction, etc. Not that the film is too talky, but Ejifors side of the story gives good balance to the action of Cusacks, showing both the wordly leaders reaction and the common peoples

2012 also does a much better job with its characters... theyre much much more likeable and human than in the TDAT. And while Cusack has the predictable dad estranged from his kids storyline, her reasoning for cutting him off from them is perfectly understandable and a little sad. I was also pretty shocked at a major characters death near the end, or how quick and brutal it is...

But the real star is the action. The escape from LA is awesome!

Id be interested in the sequel for this, though itd be a completely different film, taking more of a Lord of the Flies new society approach than an end of the world one...

3.5/5

This was pretty awesome, the end.

Dull. A standard Roland Emmerich disaster film which delivers incredible computer-generated images in spades, but is hindered by dull characters and dialogue and, more damning, a missing-in-action sense of adventure and fun.

In predictable Emmerich fashion, the film has dual stories--one follows an estranged family as they race to survive the post-apocalyptic disaster, the other is set behind closed doors at the White House as politicians and scientists (spouting absurd jargon) argue over how and when to tell the people they are doomed. The strong ensemble cast mostly seems bored and lost, though the wonderful Chiwetel Ejiofor is impressive despite his character's many preachy monologues.

The action is plentiful and rendered with clear skill, but I wasn't riveted the way I hoped to be. In fact, I might say it goes too far over-the-top--while Emmerich has never been famous for his subtlety and love of realism, much of 2012's action lapses into unintentional comedy (see a small airplane weave in and around collapsing Los Angeles skyscrapers).

It's not a terrible film by any means; it's just... there. And not as popcorn-munching entertaining as it should be.

C-

Roland Emmerich brings about another visual fest again that's for sure and the roll out is decent and a bit better than previous disaster flick The Day After Tomorrow. Some of the scenes are way over the top and could not be survived by anyone as the cast seems to be given some of the best luck ever but the visuals that come about are wonderful. The plot is decent but works with the situation given. John Cusack does alright in his role but the only role that really stood out in the film was Woody Harrelson's Charlie Frost who brought alot of comic relief to the film. Though the film could also done without Oliver Platt who is one of the most annoying characters in a film this year. Overall, the film is a decent way to spend two and a half hours if you can keep your paitence through some parts. **

Emmerich has done the impossible and topped himself. The cheesiest, most ridiculous, emotionally manipulative and simply FUCKING AWESOME disaster film ever. It's a shit movie: the script is atrocious ("Family is where we are together"), it makes no sense at all ("The core is being microwaved zomg!") and the script is utterly predictable, except perhaps for one death. Emmerich basically follows this formula: Batshit insane scientific exposition, Spectacular CGI Orgy, "Emotional" scene on telephone. For 3 hours. And then everybody celebrates and ignores the death of 6.8 billion people. But this is the rare case in which the effects and action are so FUCKING AWESOME that you really don't give a shit about the mediocrity of everything else! Except the acting which was kind of decent. I admire John Cusack for not laughing with lines like his. Anyway the effects are amaaazinngg, but some of the scenes should've been longer (Vatican, Rio and Washington come to mind) and they were basically 100% spoiled in the trailers...but it was still visually stunning and got your blood pumping. There were also some suprisingly great (???) moments, like the Indian family in the flood and um...lol. That was one of the few moments sadness tickled my mind. I suppose you care about the characters somewhat, for an Emmerich movie that's A LOT of praise. It was better than Transformers though, you could tell what was happening and there actually was a story. Anyway watch it if you have a destruction fetish like me.

B

PS. LOL at the cookie fortune Dalai Lama. And Emmerich basically told Wolfgang Petersen to FUCK OFF.

I really am amazed by the up and down reactions to this movie in this thread.. Guess it simply boils down to whether or not you like blow em up, end of the world type of movies..

This was such an average popcorn flickmade worse by the fact that the trailer showed you all of the money shots except the yellow stone volcano eruption scene. Also the best scene from the movie is availible online in extended form on Yahoo. I can throw the ridiculous plot out, but I can't get over the overuse of "Plane" scenes and the absurdness of survival plan by the script writers. At least Emmerich's earlier diasaster films had some sense of plausibilty to them.

C

So everyone else was fine with the digital look?

Oooo... Yellowstone erupts in this? Man, I really gotta get myself down to the theater to see this. I keep putting it off, but I really shouldn't; movies like this are best on the big screen with good sound system.

Joy