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…
13 comments
my eyes slammed through the back of my eyes? oh you soooo almost had me there…till you blew it.
Goddamnit! Goddamnit! Goddamnit! What is with all these retards whose major experience with mayan culture is Montazuma's revenge insisting the world will end in 2012?
And why is the marketing so scary on this? I'm surprised they didn't go full tilt douche bag ala the godzilla marketing and have a tag line saying "well… the Mayans called it" or something equally glib and stupid.
And fuck John Cusack. He's tired of rom coms, so he makes this instead? For shame.
This is probably an incredibly fucking obvious thing to say – in fact it definitely is, given your in-article reference, but….DIDN'T EMMERICH MAKE THIS FUCKING MOVIE ALREADY?
Is the creativity-pool in Hollywood so shallow and turgid that a guy gets to pitch the same shit movie he made with Dennis Quaid a couple of years back and some assclown writes him a check for 200 million dollars to make it again? :Tidal Harder? What have we come to?
This one is different. This one is like Die Hard in a building.
Actually, I'm stoked. I love end of the world movies. Here's hoping the movie poster features little head-shots of the all-star cast across the bottom.
What's Bradford Dilman up to these days?
Does he really have the audacity to use music from The Shining?
Nick, your script snippet thingie made me laugh… Huzzah! That said, I'll give any original content the benefit of the doubt over adaptations, and I liked The Day After Tomorrow, daftness and all.
How many fucking movies do we have to see with giant tidal waves wiping shit out. I guess Emmerich saves a few bucks by reusing FX shots from his old movies?
To Michael, above: Montezuma was an Aztec. And Cusack made a couple of movies last year outside his comfort zone (War, Inc., and 1408); 1408 was the only one that did all that well, and it was a sleeper. Don't blame the man for payin' his bills.
They didn't just use the music from the Shining trailer, they actually used the frigging trailer itself, substituting blood gushing through elevator doors for water gushing over the Himalayas. Direct ripoff. Maybe the characters in the movie triumph in the end by tricking the end of the world into follow the wrong footprints into the Grand Canyon where it gets lost and dies.
I really need to know if the Monk dies or not.
Couldnt resist getting a Steve Alten reference in there, eh.
Emmerich is an awful filmmaker. His films are moronic and seemingly proud of it. I'd honestly watch anything by Albert Pyun over his work any day.
I can't wait to miss it!
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