2012 Review: An American Apocalypse

Imagine you made a movie combining Independence Day and The Day After Tomorrow. Then throw in a $200 million budget and a determination to make it ‘bigger and bolder’. You probably wouldn’t end up far away from 2012, Hollywood’s latest vehicle for a good two and a half hours of escapist CGI sequences. The result is probably as good as could be expected. The animation is impressive, if ultimately forgettable.

The incidental ‘plot’ sees the earth’s core warm due to an unexplained combination of the alignment of the planets and solar radiation. This causes huge tectonic activity threatening to end all life on earth. Global governments, aware of the coming doom build a series of Noah-esque ‘arks’ (complete with pairs of animals) to survive the flooding of the world due to huge tsunamis.

Despite the obvious biblical illusions about the Great Flood and the apocalypse, they are fairly peripheral to an expression of American conservative libertarian family values. Appealing to the Sarah Palin voter, governments are treated suspiciously. The ‘ordinary man’ becomes the hero while global destruction aids the reconstruction of a broken nuclear family. Although America has its own ark, it is one among others and built in China, perhaps demonstrating how the US is beginning to see itself as a global superpower among others.

References to organised religion are made throughout from the appearance of the Dalai Lama to the collapse of St Peter’s. Religions are shown respectfully and as having a vague common message affirming ‘faith’. Yet, religious leaders can do little more than die pathetically with their flock. Had the film been made on this side of the Atlantic, I suspect religious leaders would be treated far less sympathetically. Ultimately however, American pluralism seems little preferable to European secularism.