2012: Day 1 – The Trailers

Beginning today, WAMG brings you  a four-part series on Columbia Pictures upcoming film 2012.  Day 1 takes a look at the trailer from the film as well as other trailers from the genre. I must start off by  saying  I love “time for the bad news”  disaster films. Small scale…global scale, complete with the thinly veiled attempt at character development and not much of a script. Pretty much a big ball of cheese with no crackers. Schlock disaster films are the best. There… I said it.

When I worked in TV News, for me it was always about the visuals. What the viewer would see, not so much the news story. Believe me I had a lot of fun trying to overshadow the producer’s show with flying cg graphics and animations. The real explosions and fires came from our photographers. So it should come as no surprise that I have an affinity for visually blinding disaster movies. Studios have been trying to scare movie going audiences  of impending doom, as was evident in  the 1950’s,  with this Sci-Fi gem, WHEN WORLDS COLLIDE. This trailer is a beaut.

Growing up in the 1970’s, I loved Irwin Allen’s star-studded, grand spectacles like, THE POSEIDON ADVENTURE, EARTHQUAKE, and THE TOWERING INFERNO. Some of the characters survived, some… not so lucky.

The 80’s marked the eve of catastrophic threats to Earth with the likes of WHEN TIME RAN OUT and METEOR. In the post-Bond Connery flick, it  looks like the end of Terra Firma, until the scientists save the day with the use of nuclear rockets sent to destroy  the mammoth meteor  coming our way. The special effects are top notch!

The 1990’s gave us worldwide calamities with the likes of Mimi Leder’s DEEP IMPACT, Michael Bay’s ARMAGEDDON, and Roland Emmerich’s INDEPENDENCE DAY. The  constant, recurring theme in all these films…no character was ever safe. Any big time actor/actress could be picked off at a heartbeat, either by sacrificing themselves  or with the whim of the screenwriter’s keyboard.

With the turn of the century, the studios apparently thought 21st century audiences were clamoring for more and gave us Jon Amiel’s THE CORE. The 2003 Sci-Fi disaster film has terranauts traveling to the center of the Earth to restart the core that  was snuffed out by a government experiment that went awry. In the meantime, the planet begins to erupt by destroying the Coliseum in Rome and melting  San Francisco’s Golden Gate Gridge.  The funniest tagline, “Earth Has A Deadline,” to be sure.

Along with  the new millennium, came myths and prophecies about dates and  numerology  and were  prime for  apocalyptic films like Alex Proyas’ KNOWING and Columbia Pictures’ upcoming  2012. In these films, there is total destruction of the Earth. No one or thing to save the day. It’s “over and out” time.

So I wondered what the creators of 1995’s INDEPENDENCE DAY and THE DAY AFTER TOMORROW had in store for us with 2012. Could they pull off another booming, explosive, special effects laden disaster film, complete with absurd plots & without much thought to character. From this trailer, it seems they’ve exceeded my expectations once again and I can’t wait.

On a related note, last week director Roland Emmerich exclusively told Entertainment Weekly that there are early plans  for a tv version sequel to his film.

“The plan is that it is 2013 and it’s about what happens after the disaster. It is about the resettling of Earth. I think it will focus on a group of people who survived but not on the boats … maybe they were on a piece of land that was spared or one that became an island in the process of the crust moving….The movie talks about the varied reactions people have in the face of disaster and who should survive and how we carry on and what parts of our culture do we save. The TV show could carry on all that.”

The article also goes on to say that 2012 executive producer Mark Gordon, an exec. producer on  ABC’s GREY’S ANATOMY and PRIVATE PRACTICE, would be on board and is in talks with the network for the series. Makes sense seeing ABC will have a vacancy in the weekly disaster slot  once LOST ends, but we’ll first have to see how the movie does at the box office. As the article stated, an ABC spokesperson had no comment.

Come back tomorrow for  Day 2 and  a five minute extended  clip of the film.  2012, starring John Cusack, Amanda Peet, Thandie Newton, with Danny Glover, and Woody Harrelson,  opens Friday, November 13th.