Oh that Roland Emmerich and his pesky high concept, expensive star-studded movies!
The teaser trailer for Emmerich’s 2012 has arrived and it features a monk experiencing an accident in the workplace that his relatives will unlikely file an insurance claim for. It reminds me a little bit of the Scorcher trailer in front of Tropic Thunder because it feels like a spoof of disaster movies. I believe the trailer could have been a little more effective if was scripted as such:
EXT. Tibetan Monastary. – DAY
A MONK sighs at his perch as the mountain range he presides over overflows with THE ENTIRE OCEAN. He glances towards the Tibetan JET PACK, frowning at the EMPTY GAS TANK next to it. He pushes RAY BAN sunglasses over his eyes and begins to RING THE TOWER BELL, three dongs followed by a pause. The Tibetan code for “You thought you were safe from tidal waves here but you are dead wrong”.
The Monk’s face becomes impassive.
There goes the neighborhood.
TIDAL WAVE
HERE I COME!
Monk is obliterated by angry water. I guess he should have been CHRISTIAN!
The film may as well be called The Day After the Day After Tomorrow with its usage of massive digital destruction as the natural world abuses man-made objects like Amy Winehouse’s paparazzi treats our gift of sight. It’s a teaser trailer, so we’re assuredly missing a lot of interesting science and regurgitated Mayan Doomsday prophecy stuff that gives Graham Hancock 12 boners, but the fact remains that Emmerich’s brand of concussive filmmaking will probably sucker a large chunk of us in simply because we like to see the Earth manhandled without actually getting any dirt on us.
I personally think he’s a solid filmmaker but hate seeing him throw meatballs right down the middle of the plate. We are going to be inundated with people trying to cash in on the Mayan 2012 predictions over the next few years (until the world really ends the day before I get my first well-paying film gig) and I just don’t think this is going to be the smartest movie ever made. As a fan of Steve Alten’s Domain (a great doomsday prophecy book), it’s a shame that we’re getting a disaster movie masquerading as a Mayan Doomsday story rather than a Mayan Doomsday story with elements of global carnage.
That said…