Tag: Institute for Human Continuity

It’s Official: “2012” Sucked

Just in case you didn’t know, Roland Emmerich’s 2012 wasn’t the best of movies.

Actually, from a science perspective, it sucked.

It sucked in so many ways that I can’t be bothered to list why it sucked (so have a read of my Discovery News review instead).

Now, I’m happy to announce that NASA agrees with me. They think 2012 sucked so much, they’ve branded it the most “scientifically flawed of its genre.”

Donald Yeomans, head of NASA’s Near-Earth Asteroid Rendezvous mission, agrees with what I’ve been saying all along (especially since all that “Institute for Human Continuity” bullshit hit the internet). He said at the Pasadena Jet Propulsion Laboratory meeting:

“The film makers took advantage of public worries about the so-called end of the world as apparently predicted by the Mayans of Central America, whose calendar ends on December 21, 2012. [NASA] is getting so many questions from people terrified that the world is going to end in 2012 that we have had to put up a special website to challenge the myths. We have never had to do this before.”

Even though NASA agreed that Bruce Willis’ Armageddon was bad, it couldn’t compete with the scientific atrocities 2012 inflicted on its audience. The killer neutrinos, planetary alignment, crustal shift, geomagnetic reversal and super-duper-massive tsunamis proved too much. 2012 has even toppled The Core as worst sci-fi science movie. Now that is impressive.

But what does it all mean? Apart from us science snobs having a chuckle on our blogs, I doubt it will make the blind bit of difference. Why? This is why:

“On the opening weekend of 2012, the movie pulled in 65 million in U.S. ticket sales and an additional $160 million internationally, easily covering the $200+ million budget.

Movies aren’t about scientific accuracy, and it would seem that the hype behind 2012 can stand alone as the biggest moneymaker of all.

Fear sells, science doesn’t. The subject of doomsday will always be a blockbuster. Unfortunately, through the miscommunication of science, fear is usually the end-product.”

— “2012” Sells Tickets, Sells-Out Science

Oh well, you can’t win ’em all. Now, have a laugh:

Thanks to @mars_stu and @RogerHighfield for the inspiration.

EDIT: An earlier version of this blog post stated that the Science and Entertainment Exchange was involved with NASA’s decision to make 2012 “most scientifically flawed” movie in its list. I have received an email from the Exchange’s director that this is not the case. I have therefore edited any mention of the Exchange from the blog (even though my source, the Adelaide Now, still references the Exchange).

2012 Movie TV Teaser Trailer Micro-Review

2012

For context, you might want to read Want a Little Doom for Supper? first.

Give me some DOOM!

As scheduled, the extra-special 2012 teaser trailer appeared on the TV. Mildly excited, I flicked between the channels in the hope of catching a glimpse of what lies in store for November cinema screens. I tried to keep up the typing in real time… alas, it was too hard, the doom was moving too fast for my fingers, but this is what I remember…

We start off with John Cusack’s panic-stricken face warning his family on the phone while driving a stretch limo (stretch limo?) through LA streets, “When they tell you not to panic, that’s when you RUN!!!” Poetry.

Then a scene that can only be described as hilarious silly gratuitous insane the most over-powering CGI I have ever had the pleasure of seeing.

It was basically the Planes, Trains and Automobiles version of doomsday. Just without the trains. Add a crying child.

High-speed car sequences, palm trees snapping, ground cracking, houses folding… ooh look out for the obligatory exploding petrol tanker!!!! [extra !!! for effect] Then, buildings fall to the ground, people dying everywhere… but Cusack, plus brood, fly through the surprisingly uncongested LA streets at hyperspeed! Oh crap! Look out for the– PHEW! The car jumped through (jumped through!!) a disintegrating building (disintegrating building!!!), popping out the other end unscathed.

There’s more!

The Huge Massive CrackTM advances through California, with Cusack and co.’s car always in front of the impending doom that’s unfolding behind them.

Oh! There’s a plane! We’re now on an airfield… it’s okay, the family have an escape route! They fly off, Huge Massive CrackTM ripping through the asphalt as the pilot accelerates into the air. Buildings crashing down, toppling sideways (sideways!!!), crying child looks out the window, people are being squashed by cars down there!! That’s not for young eyes goddammit! They keep flying– NOOO!! More collapsing buildings!! Fly under them!!! YESSS!!! That pilot just flew UNDER a sideways collapsing building. Los Angeles is toast, looks more like the Grand Canyon than a city.

I’m tired… that was intense. Totally silly, too. Did it make me want to see the movie more? Not really, looks like it’s going to be very basic disaster pr0n, as predicted, with a very loose plot. Ah well.

Disclaimer: This in no way, shape or form indicates that I now think something is going to happen in 2012. All of the above is based on a trailer for a movie. A movie people! The theories about doomsday in 2012 are still nonsense. If you don’t believe me, have a read.

Image: Still from the awesome 2012 parody video 2012: It’s a Disaster!!! by Garrison Dean (io9)

2012: Hardcore Disaster Pr0n

2012b

This video made my day.

Fortunately I’ve been hard-wired to Twitter today, so I’ve spotted some awesome links pop up from my ace tweeters. But I wasn’t prepared for the awesomeness that was encapsulated in @jimmynewland tweet titled, “2012: All the Disaster Pr0n you can take!”

To be honest, I was expecting the movie trailer for the John Cussak disaster flick “2012” (coming to a deafening surround sound theatre near you), but no… this is better… far better. Take a look, it gets funnier the more you watch it:

As I made all too clear in my previous post on this subject, I made the pre-preview prediction (and I didn’t need a crop circle to predict this) that 2012 is going to be heavy on the CGI, but light on the plot.

Basically, it looks like Emmerich’s wet dream, probably an opportunity he’s been waiting for all his career. If you thought The Day After Tomorrow was an Earth-crunching death-fest, think again, this movie has rolling buildings, flying Bentleys, flying giraffes, spaceships, exploding cities, exploding fireballs, exploding… rocks… Hell, where’s the nukes! We need nukes! I hope Emmerich remembered the nukes.

And this video sums the whole thing up, and I love it. As described by the creator on io9, Garrison Dean:

Every so often I feel a film is just being marketed poorly. This is often laziness and misdirection on their part. Occasionally it is arrogance when they think there is more to their film than is actually there. So, in my own arrogance, I try to help them along. Last year I felt “Hulk” needed some help. Today my mission is one that blends swimmingly with my own love of Disaster. Please enjoy this special holiday treat that I made just for you.

Dean is referring to 2012, and watching it, I can’t help but be entertained and enthusiastic for the movie. He’s done a great re-edit. It now has the 1970’s classic disaster movie atmosphere of Towering Inferno with the cutting edge Big Flaming Balls Of Fire™ we are now accustomed to in modern Hollywood.

It’s not going to be a good film, films kinda need plots. Perhaps the experienced cast might be able to pull it out of the frenzy of tsunamis, burning cities and crying children, but I’m not going for the plot, I’m going for the CGI… and the science errors, of course.

John Cusack? Airlifted Giraffes? Please Tell Me It’s Doomsday

Firstly, let’s set the record straight: I love disaster movies.

I don’t care if the Earth is being invaded by aliens, getting hit by comets, being saved by oil drillers or poisoned by angry trees (yes, my brain even shrank through The Happening). It’s fiction, it’s fun and, let’s face it, who doesn’t enjoy a bit of global calamity interwoven with a silly plot.

So, today the extended trailer for the November film 2012 has been released (below), and I do admit, I was mildly excited to see what this budding blockbuster had to offer — although I changed my mind when seeing the horridly Hollywooded ‘science’ and the USS John F. Kennedy flatten the White House after surfing a mega-tsunami at the end. That was no cigarette they were smoking in the Sony Pictures cutting room.

The whole 2012 hype has kept my blogging gene active for the best part of a year, so I know for a fact that 2012 director Roland Emmerich has a lot of material to play with.

According to the CGI-fest of a trailer, have some ancient intrigue with “mankind’s earliest civilization” (the Mayans… a.k.a. not mankind’s earliest civilization) predicting the “end of the world” (are you sure?) with their pesky calendar. We also have something astronomical (yep, Planet X is back) careering toward Earth. We get tsunamis flattening cities, flying giraffe, Noah’s Ark, minivans getting hit by Big Flaming Balls Of Fire™, crying children, earthquakes, fire, more crying children, famine, angry politicians and John Cusack. (What?)

This is going to be oodles of fun if you want to see our planet disintegrate into a tortured dust bowl via computer-generated fury, but could this also be the end of the quintessential disaster movie?

This has been my complaint all along about the insane doomsday scenarios being dreamed up by crackpots and greedy authors: You’re trying too hard! What ever happened to the subtle art of doomsday prophesy?

EXAMPLE: Nostradamus says the world will end some hazy time in the hazy future (get that man a Nobel Prize!); a computer expert says, “Hmm, these microchips might reset when the calendar switches from 1999 to 2000,” followed by the aforementioned crackpots and greedy authors telling the scared populous that we’ll be driven back into the Stone Age… all because of a small, overlooked flaw in computer programming.

I miss those doomsday scenarios. They were simpler times.

Now we have 2012 conspiracy theorists compounding doomsayer dogma, bending science to suit their hopelessly flawed doomsday scenarios. 2012 seems to be a hothouse for every impossible planet killer we could possibly imagine. How the hell Emmerich is going to work Nibiru, Planet X, killer solar flares, polar reversal, galactic alignment and geomagnetic hoopla into the plot I’ll never know.

Impossibly jumbled plot to one side, I will still want to be one of the first to see this movie. I’ve examined the real science behind the proposed end of the world in 2012 since May 2008, and I can assure you, I have yet to come across one single ounce of Planet X matter. No planet-wide calamity is expected on December 21st, 2012, and there isn’t a single shred of scientific or archaeological evidence that suggests otherwise. It will be interesting to see if Emmerich hired a science advisor, to actually add any credibility to doomsday, but if recent examples are anything to go by, I suspect it’s going to be science-lite.

Unfortunately, I am still saddened by Sony Pictures marketing ploy. The Institute for Human Continuity (IHC) viral campaign was very a successful yet short-sighted idea, marketing the movie like a multi-million dollar advertising campaign, but pandering to the anti-science sentiment that flows through the heart of doomsday hoaxers.

All in all, yes, I’ll watch 2012, but I can guarentee I’ll be shaking my head for the most part. The choice of cast is a warning sign. John Cusack as the flawed dad who’ll save the day? Danny Glover as President?? Woody Harrelson? Woody Harrelson?