When You Thought We Were Safe…

Written by Chris YogerstcloseAuthor: chrisyogerst Name: Chris Yogerst
Email: chris@parcbench.com
Site: http://twitter.com/chrisyogerst
About: Chris graduated from the University of Wisconsin-Milwaukee with a BA in film studies and English. He is pursuing a master's degree in 'critical studies in film and television' and is the editor of the Parcbench movies section. He is also a contributor to Breitbart's Big Hollywood and Frontpagemag's Newsreal.See Authors Posts (74) on July 28, 2009

I was at the screening of the new Harry Potter film recently and saw a trailer that managed to blow my mind.  No, it wasn’t the one for Where the Wild Things Are.  I am most certainly talking about the trailer for 2012.  Just when you thought Hollywood was done with films about the end of the world, they throw another one at us.

Honestly, who green lights this garbage?

This is not director Roland Emmerich’s first attempt to make a film that will truly be worthless.  He directed the laughable The Day After Tomorrow film which was satirized hard in a South Park episode entitled “Two Days Before the Day After Tomorrow.”  His name is also attached to Independence Day, in which he famously blew up the White House.

He managed a sad attempt to create an American Godzilla film and also directed Universal Soldier, for those of you who remember the days when Jean-Claude Van Damme was a bankable actor.

And now, in a film absolutely no one asked for, Emmerich is giving us another look at world’s end in his newest film 2012.  Based on the trailer alone, it looks like it should be in contention for the imdb.com bottom 100.

Here is the tagline; “The Mayan calendar predicted it, science has confirmed it, but we never imagined it could really happen.”  Does Hollywood understand that many conspiracy theories make fun films, but these apocalypse films generally suck?  In a recent episode of their show Bulls**t, Penn and Teller have fun with many different angles of the 2012 apocalypse conspiracy.

Of course, there is a way to make these films work.  There has to be substance beyond special effects showing the destruction of historical landmarks.  Too many ‘end of the world’ films do just that.  Who cares if we see New York City sliding into the ocean?  Of course, now more than ever, one can justify showing the destruction of the White House but it has all been done before.  It’s boring now.

Recent films like I am Legend and Children of Men manage to use the end of civilization as a backdrop to a much more interesting and exciting tale.  The first gives us a look at how one would cope with being completely alone; the latter gives us an adventure of people trying to save the life of the last pregnant woman on Earth.  Each film uses an apocalyptic backdrop as just that, instead of being the center of attention.

A few films in this genre remain mildly entertaining because they find a way to focus on something besides the destruction of the Earth.  Seeing things fall and people running is not exciting.  With a topic that is so ‘blah’ to begin with, filmmakers need to find a way to look at it through a unique lens.