2012 (film) - (nVidia) Stephan Trojansky Interview

2012 is a disaster film, directed by Roland Emmerich and released in 2009. The film stars John Cusack, Chiwetel Ejiofor, Amanda Peet, Oliver Platt, Danny Glover, Thandie Newton and Woody Harrelson. It was distributed by Columbia Pictures. Filming began in August 2008 in Vancouver.

The film briefly references Mayanism, the Mesoamerican Long Count calendar, and the 2012 phenomenon in its portrayal of cataclysmic events unfolding in the year 2012. Because of solar flare bombardment the Earth's core begins heating up at an unprecedented rate, eventually causing crustal displacement. This results in an onslaught of Doomsday event scenarios plunging the world into chaos, ranging from California falling into the Pacific Ocean, the eruption of the Yellowstone National Park caldera, massive earthquakes, and Megatsunami impacts along every coast line on the Earth. The film centers around an ensemble cast of characters as they narrowly escape multiple catastrophes in an effort to reach ships in the Himalayas, along with scientists and governments of the world who are attempting to save as many lives as they can before the disasters ensue.

The film was promoted in a marketing campaign by a fictional organization, the "Institute for Human Continuity"; this entailed a fictitious book written by Jackson Curtis entitled Farewell Atlantis, and streaming media, blog updates and radio broadcasts from the apocalyptic zealot Charlie Frost at his website entitled This Is The End. This campaign was subjected to numerous criticisms, and was regarded as a form of viral marketing. The film received mixed to negative reviews but topped the box office in its first weekend with $65.24 million.

In 2009, American geologist Adrian Helmsley learns from a colleague in India that neutrinos from a massive solar flare are acting as microwave radiation, causing the temperature of the Earth's core to increase rapidly. Adrian informs White House Chief of Staff Carl Anheuser and US President Thomas Wilson that this will trigger a catastrophic chain of natural disasters. At the G8 summit in 2010, other heads of state and heads of government are made aware of the situation. They begin a massive, secret project intended to ensure the survival of humanity. Approximately 400,000 people are chosen to board a series of ships (called arks) to be constructed in the Himalayas. The majority of tickets aboard the ships are reserved for heads of state, government officials and selected individuals chosen for their skills, while additional funding for the project is raised by selling tickets to the private sector at the price of €1 billion per person.

In 2012, Jackson Curtis is a writer in Los Angeles who works part-time as a limousine driver for wealthy Russian businessman Yuri Karpov. Jackson's ex-wife Kate and their children Noah and Lily live with her boyfriend, plastic surgeon and amateur pilot Gordon Silberman. Jackson takes Noah and Lily on a camping trip to Yellowstone National Park, where they meet Charlie Frost, a conspiracy theorist living as a hermit and hosting a radio show from the park. Charlie references a theory that suggests the Mayans predicted the world would come to an end in 2012, and claims he has knowledge and a map of the secret ark project. The family returns home as cracks develop along the San Andreas Fault in California and large earthquakes occur in many places along the West Coast. Jackson grows suspicious and rents a plane to rescue his family. He collects his family and Gordon when the Earth's crust displacement begins and they escape Los Angeles as it collapses into the Pacific Ocean.

As billions die in cataclysmic earthquakes worldwide, the group flies to Yellowstone to retrieve Charlie's map. The group narrowly escapes as the Yellowstone Caldera erupts. Charlie, who stayed behind to broadcast the eruption, is killed in the blast. Learning that the ships are in China, the group lands in Las Vegas, where they meet Yuri, his sons, girlfriend Tamara, and pilot Sasha. They join the group and secure an 'Antonov 500' (A fictional aircraft, similar to the Antonov An-225 & 124) fleeing just as Las Vegas is destroyed by an ash cloud sent by the Yellowstone Caldera. Also bound for the arks aboard Air Force One are Anheuser, Adrian, and First Daughter Laura Wilson. President Wilson chooses to remain in Washington D.C., and after surviving the fall of the Washington Monument is soon killed by a mega tsunami that sends USS John F. Kennedy crashing into the White House. With the Vice President also dead and the Speaker of the House missing, Anheuser takes over as acting president.

Arriving in China in a crash-landing that kills Sasha, the group is spotted by the Chinese People's Liberation Army. Yuri and his sons, possessing tickets, are taken to the ships. The Curtis family, Gordon, and Tamara, who do not have tickets, are picked up by Nima, a Buddhist monk on his way to the arks. They stowaway aboard an ark with the help of Nima's brother Tenzin, who has been working on the ark project. A tsunami approaches the site as tens of thousands are still attempting to board the final ark, and a large drill becomes lodged between the gears of the ark's hydraulics chamber, preventing a boarding gate from closing and rendering the ship unable to start its engines. In the ensuing chaos, Yuri, Gordon, and Tamara are killed, and the flooded ark is set adrift. Jackson and Noah free the drill from the closing mechanism, and the crew regains control of the ark, preventing a fatal collision with Mount Everest.

When the floodwater from the tsunamis recedes, satellite data shows that Africa's elevation rose in relation to sea level, and the Drakensberg mountains in KwaZulu Natal are now the highest on the planet. The scientists are sure that the rest of the land on earth will soon rise above sea level, too. As three arks set sail for the Cape of Good Hope, Jackson reconciles with his family and Adrian starts a relationship with Laura. The movie ends with a view of the Earth from space, showing a much larger Africa, a partially flooded Asia and apparently unaltered parts of southern Europe.

The credits cite the bestselling non-fiction book Fingerprints of the Gods by author Graham Hancock as inspiration for the film, and in an interview with the London magazine Time Out Emmerich states: "I always wanted to do a biblical flood movie, but I never felt I had the hook. I first read about the Earth's Crust Displacement Theory in Graham Hancock's Fingerprints of the Gods."

Director Roland Emmerich and composer-producer Harald Kloser co-wrote a spec script titled 2012, which was marketed to major studios in February 2008. Nearly all studios met with Emmerich and his representatives to hear the director's budget projection and story plans, a process that the director had previously gone through with the films Independence Day (1996) and The Day After Tomorrow (2004). Later that month, Sony Pictures Entertainment won the rights for the spec script, planning to distribute it under Columbia Pictures and to make it for less than the estimated budget. According to Emmerich, the film was eventually produced for about $200 million.

Filming was originally scheduled to begin in Los Angeles, California, in July 2008, but instead commenced in Vancouver in August 2008 and concluded in January 2009. Due to the possible 2008 Screen Actors Guild strike, filmmakers set up a contingency plan for salvaging the film. Uncharted Territory, Industrial Light and Magic, Digital Domain, Double Negative, Scanline, Sony Pictures Imageworks and others were hired to create visual effects for 2012. Thomas Wander co-wrote the score with Harald Kloser.

Although the film depicts the destruction of several major cultural and historical icons around the world, Emmerich stated that the Kaaba was also considered for selection. Kloser had reservations over including Mecca, saying he did not want a fatwā issued against him.

The film received mixed reviews from film critics. Review aggregator Rotten Tomatoes reports that 39% of 2012 critics have given the film a positive review, with a rating average of 5.1 out of 10. The site's general consensus is that "Roland Emmerich's 2012 provides plenty of visual thrills, but lacks a strong enough script to support its massive scope and inflated length." Among the site's notable critics, 27% gave the film a positive write-up, based on a sample of 33. On Metacritic, which assigns a normalized rating out of 100 to reviews from film critics, the film is considered to have "mixed or average reviews" with a rating score of 49 based on 34 reviews.

Peter Travers of Rolling Stone criticized the film by comparing it to Transformers: Revenge of the Fallen: "Beware 2012, which works the dubious miracle of almost matching Transformers 2 for sheer, cynical, mind-numbing, time-wasting, money-draining, soul-sucking stupidity." Roger Ebert was enthusiastic about the film, giving it 3 1/2 stars out of 4, saying it "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". Both Ebert and Claudia Puig of USA Today called the film the "mother of all disaster movies".