2012: Blu-ray (2009)

How can the destruction of the world be so boring? That's the question I asked myself throughout all 2.5 hours of 2012. I had pretty low expectations going in so I can't really say I was disappointed but I thought the movie would at least be viscerally exciting.

If anyone is not aware of the plot, it involves the ancient Mayan prediction that world would end in the year 2012 coming to fruition. The focus is mostly on John Cusak's character and his attempts to save his estranged family from peril. Chiwetel Ejiofor also plays an important role as a gov't official with a strong sense of compassion. There's a bunch of other people involved including Amanda Peet, Danny Glover Thandie Newton, Oliver Platt and most memorably Woody Harrelson. If you're wondering why I haven't named any character names it's because the movie doesn't establish any of them as real people so why should I refer to them then as anything other than the actors who play them.

The actors all give acceptable performances, for a giant popcorn movie, with Harrelson as the standout but acting isn't really the point. Director Roland Emmerich has shown over the course of his career (Independence Day, Godzilla, The Day After Tomorrow) that he loves to blow things up in spectacular fashion with characterization an afterthought. The point is to watch all the destruction occur and for a while it's pretty cool to look at. The problem I had was that it all starts to look the same after a while. How many times can a plane take off on a runway that's falling apart at the seams? How can Hawaii being destroyed look the same as the annihilation of Las Vegas etc etc? The run time is also very problematic, at 2.5 hours there's only so much CGI earth crumbling I can take and the lack of any emotional ties to the characters means when shit's not blowing up or crashing down there's nothing to keep an interest.

The Blu-ray itself is very high quality but it falls short for me as a reference disc. The picture quality is excellent but a lot of the CG looked very, very fake. I didn't see 2012 in the theaters so maybe that's how it's supposed to look but on Blu I found it very distracting. The Audio is reference quality. It's extremely loud and powerful as expected. There is tons of Low end, constant surround usage and dialouge is never lost in the mix (not that what they're saying is of great importance).

I'm sure there are tons of people out there that really enjoy this movie and can take it for what it's worth. I just found it overlong, very repetitive and devoid of almost all emotion. It's a great looking and sounding movie, even if the affects don't look all that real, and probably worth viewing on a good HT system but I have no interest in ever sitting through it gain.

Ratings:
Movie: 2/5
Blu-ray 4.5/5