With the holidays approaching, Hollywood is rolling out a
second batch of blockbusters primed to either capitalize on the spirit
of the season (A Christmas Carol) or provide a couple of hours
of blissful escapism, like this week’s “rock ’em, sock ’em,
world-go-boom!” epic, 2012, from today’s maestro of destruction,
Roland Emmerich. The trailer indicates a scant plot: John Cusack races
to get his family to Ark-esque bunkers in the Himalayan Mountains,
after the Mayan Calendar correctly predicts the end of the world on
December 12, 2012. Mostly loaded up on money shots of wanton havoc and
world monuments crumbling, the film appears to sacrifice an element
integral to the best of disaster flicks: sympathy for its
characters.
Needless to say, Emmerich’s brand of gratuitous rack and ruin
doesn’t impress everyone. Entertainment Weekly columnist and pop
cultural whistle-blower Mark Harris is deeply offended by some of the
more brazen examples of mass carnage. He cites the shot of a plane
carrying Cusack’s brood zipping away from the devastation, slipping
between two towering office buildings as they collapse in a burning
heap. “Eight years after 9/11,” Harris writes, “Hollywood has
apparently decided that not only can we see two giant buildings coming
down in a movie, but we want to, because it’s fun.”
Harris uses the phrase “destructo-porn” to describe this type of
filmmaking where the goal is titillation above all else, via images of
wanton decimation. Harris is absolutely correct when he describes the
2012 trailer as a “glib orgy of world destruction.” He’s also
correct when he clarifies his argument against 2012 by admitting
that he thinks world events and mass catastrophe “can be packaged into
popular entertainment,” citing FlashForward and
Cloverfield as positioning their cataclysmic and jumping-off
points to tell more human stories. In 2012‘s trailer, “mass
annihilation isn’t the pretext, but the pleasure itself.”
By indicating what 2012 may lack, Harris points out what
makes successful disaster movies (Emmerich’s included) usually so
enjoyable: A disaster is only as palatable as the cast of characters
withstanding it. Disaster films usually boast an ensemble cast anchored
by one or two big names—1974’s The Towering Inferno boasts
Paul Newman and Steve McQueen with William Holden, Faye Dunaway and
Fred Astaire in supporting roles—and the screenplays take as much
care to set up the characters’ motivations as the parameters of the
coming disaster. By virtue of the straightforward scenario (characters
try to escape a bad situation), there is almost zero opportunity for a
convoluted plot, resulting in coherent films.
2012 is the most recent example of a genre that has been
revived over the past 15 years, where CGI has expanded the scope of
obliteration. The disaster picture came into its own in the ’70s when
Irwin Allen produced the best (The Poseidon Adventure and The
Towering Inferno) and worst (The Swarm). In a taped 1977
interview, Allen spoke of the genre’s popularity. “The problem with our
individual ids,” he said, “is that we’re all madly attracted to
disaster.” That, combined with what he sees as a desire to vicariously
enjoy being a hero, “results in the success of the disaster film.”
Allen turns to the camera with a Cheshire grin: “And for which I am
eternally grateful.”
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Don’t be scared by 2012
This article appears in Nov 12-18, 2009.
I think we better get used to this type of movie. The stories are no longer present in most movies like in the old days. There is a good one, once in awhile, but with Hollywood pumping them out to make quick bucks you have to pick and choose.