Looking Back at Roland Emmerich’s Film ‘2012’

2012 – The disaster film to end all disaster films.

It is difficult to untangle a mess. Moreso a film as silly as one based on a predicted apocalypse. When looking back at a film, one must try to understand why a film might have been made and what it says about the culture at the time. What allowed it to be so captured by the popular consciousness? What cultural anxieties does it reveal?

Roland Emmerich is a director notable for his ensemble casts, hopeful narratives, and blockbuster disaster flicks. Many premises Roland has devised reflect whatever popular culture is focusing on at any given time. During the nineties, Independence Day reflected the fascination with extraterrestrials at a time of American peace and prosperity. During the early 2000s, The Day After Tomorrow reflected the recent worry that climate change may kill us all. Bad news for those guys. And in 2009, Roland would direct a film that invited viewers to conspiracy fiction at a time of great economic recession and government austerity. By its release, on November 13th, Barack Obama had already been elected as the first black president, running on a campaign of reform. And what caused this reform to moderate or stall depends on who is asked.

2012 is a disaster film based on the pseudoscientific belief that the Mayan Calendar predicted the end of times on December 21st, 2012. It concerns two characters, Dr. Science Guy, played by Chiwetel Ejiofor, and Very Divorced Man, played by John Cusack, as they navigate the quickly unfolding disaster of earthquakes, volcano eruptions, and megatsunamis. These are not the real names of the characters, but such a silly film deserves silly naming conventions. Through Dr. Science Guy’s story, we learn that Earth’s crust is destabilizing, and so informs world leaders, particularly the United States government, of this impending scheduled catastrophe. In response, they all opt to keep news of this secret and use that time to build nine massive arks to briefly house a small portion of the world population. How will they fund this? With your tax dollars and also charging a billion euros per ticket. Very Divorced Man’s story is about a failed writer who is very divorced and very inadequate a father, and makes ends meet by chauffeuring a Billionaire Russian family. After taking brief custody of his two kids to take them to Yellowstone, he meets a conspiracy theorist who explains the plot to him and sends him on a worldwide journey to find the arks and save his family. In doing so, he gains back the love of his Very Divorced Ex-Wife and the respect of his Very Tiny Daughter and his Very Teenager Son, who styles a Justin Bieber haircut and an attitude that hates fun and laughter. The Stepfather is also there.

Photos via Sony Pictures.

After meeting several characters throughout their journey, including the Russian Oligarch that the Very Divorced Man works for and a Tibetan family whose son is a construction worker for the arks, they find said arks and escape with their lives. Meanwhile, Dr. Science Guy, stands up for himself and fends off the brutish Chief of Staff, the sole survivor of the United States Executive Branch. He allows the arks to accept more passengers at the very last minute and, thus, inadvertently saves the lives of the Very Divorced Man and his Very Divorced Family. Once the world stops ending, the music swells as the future of humanity is saved and the arks sail to the horizon to find a new home in what is left of South Africa. Also, the Stepfather dies at the end.

The Cape of Good Hope. Photos via Sony Pictures.

The film reflected the ironic fascination with a misunderstanding of the Mayan Calendar. Purportedly, the Mayans predicted that the end of the world would come on December 21st, 2012. This is untrue, for no other reason than today is [date of publishing]. The longer explanation is that authors as far back as the seventies published books with false claims that the world will end in 2012. The details varied. Perhaps, a planet or a meteor was going to crash into the earth. Perhaps,  the planets in our solar system were going to align and spell doom. Perhaps, some shift in poles or the date was wrong or something. The connection with the Mayan Calendar was always tenuous, as much as the predictions themselves were. The calendar only ended on a certain date for the same reason why December 31st is the end of the Gregorian calendar we all use. And much like New Year’s Eve, the end of the Mayan Calendar was a cause for celebration, not cataclysm. It was also, in part, caused by the exoticism of non-European cultures. It is often the case that, when their ingenuity is not dismissed as alien technology, they are given this off-putting reverence as if magical creatures from a lost land, rather than human civilizations with the same fallibilities. 

This is mostly immaterial to the fascination, however. People thought it was funny. Audiences did not watch it for the plot. They did not watch it for the pathos. The science does not even make sense. It has become the butt of jokes that the film makes loose use of concepts like neutrinos. None of it mattered. The job of a disaster director is to let audiences watch stuff blow up.

A purely coincidental fascination with a term. Photos via Google Books.

This is the first concession to make when critically analyzing this film. Do not read too deeply into the internal logic of this film. It does not have any. Instead, we shall do what most audiences no doubt did at first release. What is the film trying to impress upon?

As a start, it would be fair to point out how much the political landscape in the United States has changed in the last fifteen years. This is not to suggest that ideological undercurrents were never present before the Trump Presidency. If one were to watch the film Ghostbusters, one would be baffled as to why the Environmental Protection Agency was the villain of the film. What is meant by this is that certain archetypes have become more explicit in their politics and viewers have become much more aware of the inherent ideological nature of films. This is obvious to anyone with a film degree, but most audience members do not have film degrees.

A good example is Woody Harrelson’s character, the conspiracy theorist who’s service in the narrative is as exposition to John Cusack’s Very Divorced Man character. When one thinks of a conspiracy theorist, do their political leanings come to mind? What if, once upon a time, conspiracy theorists were often depicted as harmless cranks? Roland does this in his films, where the noted conspiracy theorist character is screaming about something, only to later be proven right, like a Cassandra with her prophecies. He did a version of this Independence Day with Randy Quaid’s character and he later did it with Woody Harrelson’s character in the film 2012. It is an interesting narrative device for writers, who find the concept of most conspiracy theories so funny that it is still the premise of some media today. Fly Me To The Moon is a film to be released this year, and it plays with the concept of the fake moon landing hoax. Inside Job is a canceled Netflix show that plays with the concept called Conspiracy Kitchen Sink, where every conspiracy is true at once. Speaking of, even the film 2012 deals with this trope as it makes mention of the Yellowstone Supervolcano conspiracy theory and the Princess Diana was Murdered conspiracy theory. The Da Vinci Code is conspiracy literature, as is Assassin’s Creed. It is a fun concept.

But now, with conspiracy literature comes the contention that many real conspiracy theorists lean right-wing and often spread great harm when accusing children of being paid actors in a massacre. Not so fun anymore.

Fun only in fiction. Photos via Sony Pictures.

This realization, one had with nearly every character and subplot, happened again and again. The Russian Oligarch is depicted as a capitalist with some level of humanity. He may screw over every character in the film, but he loves his children, and states they are the reason he paid for ark tickets. This archetype was common at a time when Russia was not considered a threat to US hegemony. Such a depiction is no longer possible post-2016 election or post-Russian invasion of Ukraine. Speaking of US hegemony, the US President is depicted as black, a common decision in films reflecting the race of the real-life contemporary President. He is treated with an odd sense of reverence, despite the film heavily implying that he, along with forty-six other nations, took part in extrajudicial killings against potential whistleblowers. President’s Daughter, a love interest to Dr. Science Guy, spends an enormous amount of resources saving culturally prominent artwork, even though what they save can hardly be labeled as that unless one thinks in shallow terms. Seriously, who saves the Mona Lisa?

A famous Cracked article once included the de facto villain of the film, the Chief of Staff, as part of a larger list that had a point in their villainy. Perhaps, it is best to reevaluate that. The real reason he is so easy to sympathize with is because he is the least idiotic character in the story. The entire plot hinges on the idiotic behavior of others, but not him. The Cracked article conflates intelligence with anti-villainy. It assumes the film has any consistencies. It does not. The Chief of Staff is villainous but so are arguably most of the government officials in this film. He helped fund thirteen ships by promising powerful people safe passage. He helped coerce Chinese construction workers to build them these ships while never offering them the passage themselves. He helped murder potential whistleblowers and never revealed to the public that the world was ending. His excuse for that last crime was that people would panic, but, as research reveals, people do not panic during disasters. They become more community-oriented and eschew laws and values in favor of survival and mutual aid. This is the real reason why people “looted” stores in New Orleans after Hurricane Katrina. They were not common criminals taking advantage of a sour situation. They realized that perfectly good food was going to rot unsold in aisles and humid weather. So they did the only rational thing and put the food to good use by feeding people. The film itself actually takes this viewpoint, demonstrating to the viewer that the Chief of Staff was wrong to assume moral panic. Every time the trolley problem comes up in the film, the characters choose to save more lives than less. Though, this choice gets harder to justify as the film reaches act three.

Let us expand further the question of initial impressions. What is the film’s imagery trying to tell audiences? This is where the admitted shallowness of its premise comes into full force. How anyone feels in any given scene is fully dependent on narrative shorthands necessary to follow the Hollywood three-act structure. This is why the only time one sees people covered in snow ash, even though it makes no sense within the film’s disaster logic, is around two-thirds of the way in. It is to remind audiences of the victims of 9/11 covered in dust from the fallen towers and thus make them feel what is supposed to be the emotional lowpoint of the story. Which feels completely incongruent to the first half of the film that so relished in the utter destruction and apocalypse. As Lindsay Ellis put it, Roland does not focus on the death of human lives but on the destruction of the symbolism. Rarely do people die on-screen, especially people audiences are meant to care about. The deaths are much more implied. Instead, the focus is on the destruction of cultural monuments and cities such as the White House and the city of Las Vegas. In fact, a lot of religious iconography is destroyed over the course of this film. As Roland put it in a Time Out article,

“Even the most religion-hating person would get down on their knees and ask God for salvation. Yes, it’s good to be spiritual, but praying in the face of disaster will not stop the disaster. Fate, luck and coincidence might help you survive, but not prayer.”

The question of faith is consistently discussed among many characters, usually as a byword for hope and human perseverance. The thirteen ships are a reference to Noah’s Ark. The Very Teenager Son is named Noah. Dr. Science Guy is meant to represent Noah in the narrative. We see both the US President and the Italian Prime Minister praying. When iconography gets destroyed, it is meant to signify how not even faith itself is safe from harm. We are being tested to survive. From a thematic standpoint, this is what the President’s Daughter represents in her job as a conservator. Her efforts to save the cultural touchstones of human art and history are genuine noble efforts. 

There is a film called The Monuments Men, that fictionalized the real-life efforts to save important artworks from destruction. There was a very real threat of Nazis destroying cultural monuments when they were losing the war. And, indeed, many artworks were lost, though some by Allied hands as well. There are times when the film questions why this is so important. And it provides a very simple comeback. No one likes to see their culture destroyed, no matter how mundane the work. The film 2012 makes mention of religious fundamentalists destroying religious iconography during the height of their terror. They robbed ethnic groups and anthropologists of valuable human history. There is an entire YouTube video by Kaz Rowe that discusses this topic.

So, it is amusing that the chosen artwork meant to symbolize these efforts is a painting so shallow in its cultural prominence, so empty in its meaning, that it is consistently derided by the art world or anyone with an art degree.

Baby’s first art history. Photos via Sony Pictures.

The Mona Lisa is not famous for who it depicts, nor for its artist. It is not famous for changing humanity’s understanding of art. This was never important to understanding the Italian Renaissance or Leonardo DaVinci himself. It is famous because a disgruntled worker stole it, did not know what to do with it, and left it in his apartment until he was arrested. Like a dog chasing cars. It is, in the purest sense of the word, famous for being famous.

Really, it is best to accept that the Mona Lisa is a perfect encapsulation of this film. And that it should best be approached as something to watch with friends while drunk. Treat it like an angry crowd at a nickelodeon or a football fandom during a world cup. As Roger Ebert put it:

“‘2012’ delivers what it promises, and since no sentient being will buy a ticket expecting anything else, it will be, for its audiences, one of the most satisfactory films of the year.”