Starring John Cusack, Roland Emmerich’s disaster movie ‘2012’ broke box-office records in China after its release in 2009. But why? It’s hardly a flattering ‘love letter’ to China, as some at the time thought.
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It s not so much that the Earth is destroyed, but that it s done so thoroughly. 2012, the mother of all disaster movies (and the father, and the extended family) spends half an hour on ominous set-up scenes (scientists warn, strange events occur, prophets rant and of course a family is introduced) and then unleashes two hours of cataclysmic special events hammering the Earth relentlessly.
This is fun. 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. It even has real actors in it. Like all the best disaster movies, it s funniest at its most hysterical. You think you ve seen end-of-the-world movies? This one ends the world, stomps on it, grinds it up and spits it out.