2012 (the film)

Roughly eight or nine minutes prior to the climatic/heartwarming/life-affirming finish to the movie, the celluloid burned. Literally.

If you want to make sense of that, it got pulled close to the light bulb (probably due to being strung hastily or wrong), and began to singe. To save as much as possible, when you see this happen, it needs to be pulled off the loops away from the projector immediately.

Was it some ultimate sign that the end truly is near? A bad omen? Should we stay or go? Well, we waited about five minutes, then they said we could get free passes to see it at another time or wait another six minutes and finish it then.

We chose to stay, and although about two to three minutes were lost (had to be snipped), the film returned, and we got to see the end.

In short, Roland Emmerich's new baby totally got burrrrrned!

And I was there to see it. Epic.



Oh right, how was the movie? Well, it was better than 10,000 B.C., that's for damn sure.

But I liked it, the graphics were good (much better than those WTF-is-wrong-with-those wolves from The Day After Tomorrow), the story worked, it was just as scant on scientific truth as I'd hoped it'd be, and it did it's job. Lots of people were buried, drowned, crushed, and set on fire. John Cusack was...John Cusack.

In short: entertaining. If you enjoyed the awesome badness of The Day After Tomorrow, then you might not mind this.

I still wish I knew what went wrong after Stargate and Independence Day. I have a theory that he and Uwe Boll crossed paths right before the unmentionable Americanized "G" film was made. If you're familiar at all with Emmerich's work, you'll know what the G stands for.

One last thing. If you are indeed familiar with Emmerich's films, I believe it's important to note that unlike his other epic features of the past, the heartfelt we're-gonna-die-but-be-strong-anyway speeches were significantly shorter this time around. He gets an honorable mention for that. He must have figured out that after about a minute and a half, no one cares.