Survival Movie Review: 2012

2012 Roland Emmerich PosterLast night a few prepper friends and I went to the midnight opening show of the new survival/TEOTWAWKI movie 2012. I wasn’t sure what to expect as I had already heard that they had blown it or that it was really bad. But I figured even a bad movie can be enjoyed (through mocking) if you’ve got a group of friends with you!

2012 really has very little to do with survival. You won’t walk out of it with ideas or inspiration of things to add to your preps. In fact, the scenario that the movie presents is pretty much total un-survivable destruction regardless of who or where you are. It is however a bit about surviving based on your wits with 20 gallons of luck!

There are three fantastic chase sequences which are amazingly shot and will pump you full of adrenaline while you’re sitting on the edge of your seat. They’re thoroughly implausible but completely enjoyable! There are several points in the movie where, in real life, they would have been dead without a chance. For example, you cannot fly a small bi-plane through a volcanic cloud and just pull really hard on the stick to get out of it – no matter how much everyone is yelling at you to go faster!

The effects (many of which you may have seen in the trailers) are absolutely breath-taking when they are showing California and other areas completely falling apart. There is a volcano explosion that is an amazingly done sequence and the scenes of 115 foot walls of ocean coming at you are fantastic! This movie would have really benefited from the 4D effects that they have at Disney and other places like spraying you with water, blowing air in your face and at your feet. I think that adding those would have given some people a heart attack due to already being so intensely wound up, but I would have loved it!

Overall I really enjoyed this movie – I would give it 4 out of 5 stars. The 3 other preppers that I saw it with gave it pretty much the same rating.  I recommend it – especially for preppers – to anyone who really enjoys good, intense action movies. It’s a long movie and it does drag a bit in a couple places but they’re short and overall the time flies by. There are some characters that are absolutely annoying with their attitudes but that’s to be expected. There are also some scenes/scenarios that were completely ridiculous but they don’t overwhelm the entire movie. One thing I really liked about the show is that, to my recollection, there are no gratuitous shots of people dying horrifically. There are several scenes where you know they’re dead, but they pan away instead of zooming in for the kill shot. This is a movie I can definitely feel ok about my kids seeing.

If you haven’t seen one yet, here is a trailer for 2012:

5 Replies to “Survival Movie Review: 2012”

  1. Aren't the movies where everything blows up for two hours supposed to come out in the summer? I thought the fall was when they released cerebral, artsy films.

  2. I just saw this last night with my husband and 14 yr old son. I, like you, I thought it was over all a pretty good movie. There were a couple of places where it was obvious what was going to happen, but not enough to dislike it all together. The scenes of the destruction was a bit hard for me to take since I don't like the feeling of the earth falling from under my feet, which is why I don't enjoy flying. I would be careful about what age I would show this movie to since it did have a couple of places where the were some pretty bad swearing. I enjoy seeing what peoples perceptions are about end of the world scenarios. Thanks for reviewing.

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