Universal Soldier (1992)

Title: Universal Soldier (1992)

Director: Roland Emerich

Cast: Jean-Claude Van Damme, Dolph Lundgren, Ally Walker

Universal Soldier is a film that’s primarily known for uniting two huge action stars from the 80’s/90’s; I of course talk of Jean Claude Van Damme and Dolph Lundgren. Now, back in the day this was a big deal because Van Damme was the action star of the moment. Before Universal Soldier came along, he’d done a string of extremely successful action films like Cyborg (1989), Kickboxer (1989), Lionheart (1990) and Death Warrant (1990). The good thing that Van Damme had going for him was these films were low budget action films that managed to make their money back. Just as an example: Cyborg cost about 500,000 dollars to make yet grossed more than 10 million! Kickboxer cost 1.5 million yet grossed more than 14 million! Van Damme career kept growing, each movie getting just a little bigger. Universal Soldier was the biggest film Van Damme had been a part of up to that point. On the other side of the ring we have Dolph Lundgren who started his career with a small role as a henchman on A View to a Kill (1985), then hit the big time by starring as ‘Ivan Drago’ in Sylvester Stallone’s Rocky IV (1985). He then  took a stab at starting a franchise (and failed miserably) with Masters of the Universe (1987), then worked on a series of low budget yet enjoyable flicks like The Punisher (1989);  which by the way is still the best Punisher film out there if you ask me. He also made the sci-fi action film I Come in Peace (1990) which I’m dying to re-watch, I Come In Peace is such an obscure sci-fi flick that seems to have simply slipped through the cracksn and disappeared. As you can see, both of these actors had respectable action star careers at the time when their careers crossed paths on Universal Soldier, so of course, it was a major event to see them working together on a project. Question is was this movie big enough for the both of them?

Universal Soldier starts out with these two American soldiers on active duty in Vietnam. One of them goes completely bonkers (Lundgren) and starts killing off innocent Vietnamese people without mercy, even going as far as cutting off their ears and making a necklace out of them! In comes Van Damme, the good natured soldier, to try and put an end to his madness and bring the crazed soldier back to reason. Unfortunately Lundgren’s character is too far gone into his madness and so they end up kicking each other’s asses until they kill each other! In comes a special military unit who bags their bodies and ships them off to somewhere. That somewhere ends up being this special program called UNISOL, which basically brings soldiers back from the dead and turns them into these zombie soldiers which the government has complete control over, or so they think! These zombie soldiers don’t look anything like zombies, far from it! You see, the government has apparently developed away to get the Unisol’s skin to regenerate when exposed to the cold. Don’t ask me why; just chalk it up to bullshit movie science. Anyway, it isn’t long before the animosity between these two soldiers reawakens and blamo, we are right back where we started, with these two soldiers trying to kick the living crap out of each other.

This film was directed by Roland Emmerich, a director who is currently known for directing big budget summer blockbusters like Independence Day (1996), Stargate (1994) and 2012 (2009). Recently he directed White House Down (2013). But back in 1992, it was Universal Soldier that ended up being his first truly big budget Hollywood film, it was Emmerich’s big break to prove himself to the big Hollywood moguls. Before it, he’d made a string of small pictures like the supernatural family film Making Contact (1985) and the Michael Pare starring sci-fi film Moon 44 (1990). Universal Soldier ended up being Emmerich’s Hollywood training wheels, after that there was no stopping Emmerich from becoming the successful filmmaker he became. I mean, here’s a filmmaker that plays the Hollywood game every step of the way, he makes the movies that Hollywood producers love. How so? Well, if Hollywood likes PG-13 films because they’ll make more money, then he’ll give them a PG-13 rated film! Hollywood likes a happy ending? Emmerich will give it to them! They don’t like nudity or foul language? He’ll go with that as well. There’s no denying that Emmerich’s films are squeaky clean, he gives Hollywood the formula they want, he plays by their rules and they love it. Now, here’s the interesting thing about Universal Soldier: it comes from another time in Hollywood, another era, and so, here we have a Roland Emmerich film that’s actually rated R, filled with nudity and violence! Who would’ve thought it?

Universal Soldier is a well thought out film in some ways, it was made by a group of people who knew the kind of film they were making and who they were making it for. For example, yeah sure, action films are largely seen by a male audience because we like the action, the explosions, the guns, but it’s no secret that both Dolph Lundgren and Van Damme were a huge hit with the ladies as well, this is probably the reason why the filmmakers decided to include many a scene in which Van Damme’s character stripping. Now if you’ve seen many of Van Damme’s films, then you know that he was in the habit of showing his bare on ass on most of his films. I mean in terms of ass shots, Universal Soldier has got to be some kind of record for Van Damme! There’s this whole scene that revolves around the female protagonist having to look through Van Damme’s whole body for some sort of a tracking device that is hidden beneath his skin, the scene takes a while as the girl slowly but surely makes her way through Van Dammes pectoral muscles and thighs…you get the picture. The filmmakers knew the ladies would get a kick out of these scenes, in fact, just the fact that they had a woman as the lead lets you know that the filmmakers kept the female audience in mind. There’s even a scene with an old lady checking out Van Damme as he walks naked through the street and her son tells her “shame on you!” So yeah, the film is both aimed to please the dudes in the audience (with the action) as well as the ladies, with all of Van Damme’s nude scenes. 

   

In terms of the action, the film satasfied but didn't exceed my expectations. There’s a couple of action set pieces that are pretty cool, like a chase sequence between a bus and the UNISOLS big ass tank/truck/laboratory thing that takes place in around the Grand Canyon, it’s pretty explosive. And the ‘piece de resistance’ is of course, the big final fight between Van Damme and Dolph Lundgren which is satisfying. By the way, Dolph Lundgren is completely over the top as “GR-13” the crazed UNISOL who goes on a rampage, killing women and children, cutting off peoples ears and then saying sarcastic lines like “I’m all ears!”. Van Damme plays the good guy, he plays the role with a naivete and a vulnerability that goes in clash with Lundgren’s whacked out performance.

The film ended up reminding me of a couple of films, like for example Robocop (1987) because just like officer Alex Murphy worked for the police department in Robocop, these Unisol’s used to be soldiers for the U.S. Army. In both films the robots/zombies are experimental in nature and in both films the units in question begin to remember when they used to be human, so their human memories come rushing in at some point and clash with their robotic natures. But most of all Universal Soldier felt a bit like The Terminator (1984), some scenes seem to be copy pasted from both Terminator films. Even the musical score sounds like the pounding electrical sounds from The Terminator soundtrack. All these similarities with The Terminator franchise make perfect sense when we take in consideration that this film was produced by Mario Kassar, one of the biggest producers to ever walk through Hollywood and also the guys behind Carolco Pictures and one of their biggest hits: Terminator 2: Judgment Day (1991). By the time Universal Soldier was being made, Carolco Pictures was knee deep in debt, and so they needed for Universal Soldier to be a huge hit, if not, it would go completely bankrupt. Now here’s something I’ll never understand, how a studio can have a hit as huge as T2 yet still manage to be bankrupt? I guess it goes to show how deep in debt these guys get in order to make these big budget movies. It also shows that to play the Hollywood game you have to have nerves of freaking steel. So yeah, a lot was riding on this film; a whole freaking studio to be precise! Thankfully, though Universal Soldier wasn’t as big a hit as they expected, it did make its money back in the U.S. with some healthy earnings from abroad. So with the success of Universal Soldier and a couple of other hits like Cliffhanger (1993) and Stargate (1994), Carolco Pictures kept on living for a couple of more years, until the dreadful year of 1995, when they decided to produce Renny Harlin’s Cutthroat Island (1995), a film that ended up being a gargantuan failure and also the last nail on Carolco Pictures coffin.

So anyhow, what we got here ladies and gents is a decent action flick from the time when action flicks where still violent and graphic; when Hollywood produced violence unabashedly. Sadly, those days are gone and we’re left with washed out action pictures that are nothing like the blood drenched, explosion filled action films of the 80’s and early 90’s. By the way, the dvd includes some nifty extras including a retrospective featurette in which Van Dammage and Lundgren muse about their experiences making the film, also, it includes the original ending which was a whole lot grimmer then the one we actually got, it’s worth a watch. This film was followed by a bunch of lesser sequels like Universal Soldier 2: Brothers in Arms (1998), Universal Soldier: The Return (1999), Universal Soldier Regeneration (2009) and Universal Soldier Day of Reckoning (2012), this last one reunited Van Damme and Lundgren once again, alas in a far smaller take on the Universal Soldiers universe. Now don’t ask me about these cheap ass sequels because I’ve never bothered seeing them, they all look like they’re not worth my time, but this first one? A decent action flick which served as a stepping stone for Emmerich’s career.

Rating: 3 ½ out of 4 

   

The Four American Godzilla Films

One of the few times that Hollywood has taken a stab at producing a Godzilla film; the result was the universally panned Godzilla (1998) directed by big budget event film specialist Roland Emmerich. The anticipation for that film was pretty high; I remember everyone wanted to know what the King of All Monsters was going to look like on this new film because Sony was keeping the look of the creature under wraps. Their plan was that the only way you would get a chance to see the beast is by going to see the film. Concept art leaked onto the internet, but no one was really sure if it was the creatures’ true look. When audiences finally paid their movie ticket and got a look at this new Godzilla, most where disappointed because it wasn’t really Godzilla, at least not the way they remembered him from all of his Japanese adventures. 

Even though Godzilla’s new design displeased many a Godzilla fan, this didn’t stop American audiences from seeing this new Godzilla, which went on to make 379 million at the box office. And though a lot of people hated it, I personally had a lot of fun with it. I mean, yeah, technically this wasn’t really Godzilla; it was more of a lame attempt to make Godzilla “cooler” or un-cheesy. But as a monster movie? I think it has its moments. And it has some awesome special effects sequences. Those scenes with Godzilla tangled on the San Francisco Bridge? Classic monster movie mayhem! I think this film would have garnered less hatred if it had completely disassociated itself from the Godzilla franchise. People were expecting Godzilla, and they didn’t get it, so they hated the film. Problem is that this particular Godzilla movie was missing a lot of what makes a Godzilla movie a Godzilla movie. For example, Godzilla doesn’t fight other giant monsters! Godzilla doesn’t fire laser beams out of his mouth! His back doesn’t light up! Roland Emerich’s prime concern with making this film was to get away from the cheese factor as much as possible. Unfortunately, anyone who’s watched Godzilla films knows that cheesiness and Godzilla go hand in hand. It just goes with the territory. You can’t fight it, you have to accept it, engulf it. Only then will you enjoy a film where Godzilla fights giant Moths that shoot laser beams from their eyes. But no, from day one Emmerich was always thinking about getting away from the cheesiness. Was this a good move? Well, it certainly made no dent in the films box office intake, but Godzilla fans were not pleased. 

Godzilla thrashes the streets of New York City

Emmerich’s approach for making this film was to totally redesign Godzilla; to get as far away as he could from the original Japanese design. Truth be told, at first Roland Emmerich and Dean Devlin wanted nothing to do with this new Godzilla movie. Another bad omen if you ask me. Why try and get two guys to make a film that they don’t have any passion for? But Sony had their hearts set on getting Devlin and Emmerich to make their new Godzilla because these were the guys who made the multi million dollar box office success known as Independence Day (1994). Surely they knew a thing or two about making a successful summer blockbuster, let alone a new Godzilla movie! Emmerich thought Godzilla was simply too silly a concept for him to develop. His outlook on the project changed when Patrick Tatopoulos redesigned the creature from the ground up. Understandably so, Emmerich didn’t want a man in a suit for his film. So he got Patrick Tatopoulos to give Godzilla a new look. Tatopoulos had previously worked for Devlin and Emmerich designing the creatures of Stargate (1994) and the aliens for Independence Day (1996). Once Emmerich saw Tatopoulos’s new design, he liked it so much that he knew that this was they way he wanted to go with his new take on Godzilla! 

Concept art for Godzilla (1998)

When the time came to start production, Patrick Tatopoulos actually traveled to Japan to meet with 30 Toho Studios officials to reveal his new Godzilla designs. When he unraveled his creation to them in drawing and sculpture form, they were met with a resounding silence. Tatopoulos went back home thinking the meeting had gone wrong, but to his surprise, the next day he was informed that Toho had approved the new creature design. That even though it was different, it still captured what Godzilla was all about. All they saw was a big budget summer blockbuster being produced by Hollywood which would eventually reap monetary results if the film became a hit. In the end Japanese audiences loathed the new film calling it “Godzilla in name only”. Kenpachiro Satsuma, an actor who’s portrayed Godzilla in various Japanese films walked out of a Tokyo screening saying that “It’s not Godzilla, it does not have the spirit” Essentially, what Emmerich’s film did was turn Godzilla into a big animal searching for food and looking for a place to procreate, while in the Japanese movies Godzilla was something closer to a God walking the earth. In the original Japanese films Godzilla would emerge to punish humanity for their abuse of the earth, other times he’d be the protector of the earth. Sometimes he’s a mix of both! But on Emmerich’s film he is neither of those. Emmerich stripped Godzilla of its godliness. Japanese have referenced Godzilla (1998) in some of their subsequent Godzilla films. For example in Godzilla: Final Wars (2004) the Japanese Godzilla actually goes up against the American Godzilla which they call ‘Zilla’. The battle transpires rather quickly, and Japanese Godzilla kicks Zilla’s ass in a matter of seconds. Then one of the characters in the movie calls Zilla a “Good for nothing Tuna eating monster” Which I guess pretty much surmises how the Japanese felt about Emmerich’s film. It was an insult to their beloved icon. 

Godzilla gets up close and personal with his American co-stars

But Emmerich’s Godzilla film wasn’t the first time Hollywood tried to take a stab at making a Godzilla film. Actually, they tried twice before! And both times, the projects came close to getting made, then caput; nothing. Whatever came of those projects? Why didn’t they ever come into fruition? Well, as some of you might already know, I am a huge fan of conceptual artwork, if you havent done so already, check out my article on Conceptual Artwork for Films That Never Got Made. For me its always fun to go through these projects that never got to exist. Well, in my thirst for knowledge on all things Godzilla I came upon not one but two American Godzilla films that never happened. And they actually looked like they were going to be cool films! They both had great creative teams behind them! Sadly, at the time studios had no faith in putting so many millions on a what they considered to be ‘children’s films’. And in order to do these films right, these filmmakers were going to need mucho dinero, which the studios were reluctant to give. So both projects were shelved. But there are pictures and storyboards of these projects, which I’ve posted for your viewing enjoyment. So without further ado, I give you the Two Godzilla’s that Never Where! 

GODZILLA KING OF ALL MONSTERS 3-D (1983-1984) 

Director: Steve Miner

Writer: Fred Dekker

The first of the two shelved Godzilla projects was going to be directed by Steve Miner, the main driving force behind this project. Right now Steve Miner isnt regarded as much of a director. Recently he was responsible for the abortion that was Day of the Dead (2008). Boy was that a bad movie and not in a fun way. It wasn’t even a proper remake of George Romero’s original Day of the Dead film. But, once upon a time, he was a director making profitable horror movies like Friday the 13th Part 2 and 3. He’d also directed the fun haunted house flick House (1986) and the first Warlock (1989) film. He knew his way around a film, and this Godzilla was shaping up to be his biggest endeavor yet.

Story Boards for Steve Miner's proposed Godzilla film by William Stout

Miner had a respectable filmography at the time, a bunch of profitable horror films under his belt. He looked like the right guy for the job! His experience in working with 3-D on Friday the 13th 3D was going to be put to good use because his proposed Godzilla film was going to be 3-D! In fact, it was going to be called Godzilla: King of the Monsters 3-D, nifty title right? The writer behind this proposed Godzilla flick was non other than Fred Dekker, the director behind Night of the Creeps (1986) and Monster Squad (1987), not a bad couple of films if you ask me. Plus, he’d written a bunch of Tales from the Crypt episodes, and he’d worked with Miner before writing the script for House (1986). Fred Dekker is a connoisseur of sci-fi and monster films from all eras, so he knew a thing or two about what a good Godzilla movie was all about. Dekker’s story was going to have a meteorite hitting one of the U.S. militaries satellites and accidentally setting off a nuclear attack that would ultimately end up resurrecting Godzilla. The film was going to end with an all out battle between the U.S. army and Godzilla on Alcatraz island!

Godzilla animatronic made for Godzilla: King of the Monsters 3-D, sadly, it was never used

And finally, conceptual artwork and storyboards were handled by artist extraordinaire, William Stout. Even special make up effects legend Rick Baker was called in to make an animatronic head for Godzilla’s close ups! They even built an animatronic of Godzilla that was never used! ILM and Dreamquest would have worked in conjunction to deal with the films extensive fx work! The proposed budget for the project was a measly 30 million. Tame by today’s standards, but back then the studios considered it a big price tag for what they considered a children’s film, so the project was scrapped. Considering how many talented inviduals were going to be involved in making this film, I’d say the studio was getting a bargain price for this awesome movie! 

But Godzilla was not ready to die just yet…. the next attempt to resurrect Godzilla in Hollywood would be:

Concept art  by Stan Winston Studios for what would have been Godzilla '94  

GODZILLA ’94 a.k.a. GODZILLA VS. THE GRYPHON 

Director: Jan De Bont

Writers: Terry Rossio, Ted Elliott, Donald McPherson

This project was the precursor to Devlin and Emmerich’s eventual film. Tristar had been aching to do a Godzilla movie and they’d hired Terry Rossi and Ted Elliott to write a script for the proposed film. Terry Rossio and Ted Elliott are two guys who have lots of experience writing big budget money makers for studios like Disney and Dreamworks. These are the guys responsible for writing the whole Pirates of the Caribbean franchise. So Tristar hired them for the script. Next, they brought in Jan De Bont who wanted to make a Godzilla that would be faithful to the spirit of the Japanese Godzilla films but at the same time offer up some cutting edge special effects. He employed the talents of Stan Winston Studios for the creature designs. The designs speak for themselves. The Gryphon creature was going to be an awesome villain!

The 'Probe-Bat' creatures for Godzilla '94 by Stan Winston Studios, sadly they were never used! 

I have to say, I think this was going to be an awesome Godzilla movie. Of these two projects that never came to be, I think this one was going to be the most faithful to the old Godzilla films. It was going to have Godzilla go up against another giant monster called The Gryphon! It was going to have aliens, ancient civilizations and the two creatures destroying all of Manhattan during their cataclysmic fight!  Godzilla was going to have that classic Godzilla look, yet at the same time look pretty freaking cool! The final fight was going to take place on Ellis Island with Godzilla taking the Gryphon’s head and placing it on the Statue of Liberties torch!

The awesomeness that could have been Godzilla '94

This project went as far as building sets, but once again, it was the budget that scared the studio away. De Bont wanted 130 million and the studio wanted to make the film with much less, so De Bont stepped down. Ironic thing is that even though Emmerich agreed to make the film for 65 million, Emmerich’s film ended up costing more then 150 million plus promotional costs. So in the end, it would have cost them less to more or less the same to make it with Jan De Bont, by the looks of it, it would have  been an even better film than Godzilla (1998) was, but I guess we'll never really know will we?

Conceptual artwork for The Grypon 

Well, that’s it folks. I guess what these two defunct projects show us is that a lot of planning and work can go into planning a film, but if in the end you don’t convince the studios (read: the guys with the money) then chances are your project will go nowhere.  Even if you are a big shot director like De Bont was at the time. Also, it shows us that Hollywood doesnt know a good deal when they see it. The creative teams behind these flicks were beyond cool, and I would've loved to see both of these movies get made. But alas, Hollywood likes to play it too safe some times.  Gareth Edward's the director behind Monsters (2010) is the next director to attempt making a Godzilla film for Hollywood. He seems to have a genuine love for monster movies, so lets see what happens. The project is happening under Legendary Pictures, here's some conceptual artwork for how Godzilla might end up looking in that picture, what say you guys?

Well, thats it for now boys and girls. Look forward to more Godzilla movie reviews; I will be posting a couple more in the coming days! As always thanks for reading. And if you want to read more reviews on Godzilla films, go here!

2012 (2009)

Title: 2012 (2009)

Director: Roland Emmerich

Cast: John Cusack, Amanda Peet, Woody Harrelson, Chiwetel Ejiofor, Danny Glover, Oliver Platt

Review:

There’s a couple of directors out there who’s names are synonymous with bad films. Guys like Uwe Boll for example. You say his name people immediately think of low budget bad filmmaking. The kind that makes you want to pull your hairs out. Roland Emmerich has unfortunately fallen somewhere along those lines as well, only difference between him and Boll is that Emmerich makes overpriced, big budget bad films. I mean honestly, what the hell was 10,000 B.C. if not one of the worst films ever made? That film was awful beyond description. To Emmerich’s credit, not everything he has made is shit. I enjoyed Independence Day as much as the next guy, though I enjoy it a lot less nowadays. Stargate is a pretty respectable science fiction flick if you ask me. And as a kid, I even enjoyed one of his first flicks. An evil possessed dummy flick called Making Contact.

But what Roland Emmerich is most known for nowadays is his “end of the world” movies. It seems he has become some sort of an expert on these kind of films. He enjoys blowing up famous landmarks, destroying everything in site, putting humanity in peril. On Independence Day he blows up the white house! On The Day After Tomorrow, the New York Public Library gets drowned by a gigantic water wave! In Godzilla the oversized lizard tares up the streets of Manhattan and plants all of its eggs on the Madison Square Garden! So he has sort of become some what of an expert in disaster flicks. And its understandable that he wants to make these kinds of films, he is just commenting on the self destructive nature that humanity continues to display. His message is, "if we keep this up, its eventually going to bite us in the ass! And a lot sooner then we think!". So, what’s Emmerich been up to with 2012? Does it somehow surpass his previous destruction fests? Or is it more of the same?

In 2012, the sun is sending these heat waves to earth, over heating it and basically turning our planet into one huge microwave! The rivers and lakes are drying up, theres heat waves everywhere and the weather is completely out of whack! The scientists of the world have realized what’s going on and are trying to warn the governments of the upcoming “end of the world” but they are only taking it as a joke! Meanwhile, John Cusack is taking his kids out for a holiday in Yellow Stone Park, as the end of the world is about to begin! Will humanity survive the coming apocalypse? Where the Mayans right all along about 2012?

There’s lots of talk all over the world about the upcoming year. 2012. Some idiots out there actually believe that something might happen, that its going to be the year in which the world will end by some sort of cataclysmic catastrophe. A meteor? The weather will kill us? The oceans will engulf us? There are all kinds of wild theories. Supposedly, according to the Mayan calendar, the end of the world is going to come on December 21 or 23, 2012. The film takew advantage of peoples fears on this subject matter. Weird thing is The Mayan calendar doesn’t even compose a big part of the movie, its all reduced to one guy saying “The Mayans were right all along” and that’s it. They don’t go into some big explanation or tie in with the whole Mayan calendar thing. This film leans more towards the “nature can wipe us out of existence whenever it wants” school of thought, which of course is a more believable way of seeing things for me. I mean if the world was truly going to end some day, I would say it was going to happen as a result of some cataclysmic event like a meteor hitting us or the earth deciding to move around a bit; as opposed to some ancient prophecy bull crap.

So how about that destruction of the world? How did it unfold? Well, Ill tell ya, its one of the most amazing displays of destruction I have seen on any movie to date! I do not think I will see a film in which the world is destroyed in a more gargantuan way then the way it was destroyed on this film. It’s the biggest display of destruction I have ever seen! How can Emmerich top this level of destruction? He cant, he just cant. There’s no way that more destruction can be shown on any movie. All other end of the world flicks will have to look at this one as reference because this one is the king of all “end of the world” flicks. Meteors, gigantic earthquakes, buildings colliding with one another, streets being ripped apart, giant ocean waves engulfing the land; you name it and its here! Kudos to the special effects guys! I mean, yeah, it’s over the top! But its done so well. I was literally saying “wow!” every five seconds. There’s a scene in which John Cusack and his family are flying over a plane while all the destruction is going on that’s just amazing.

But is it all a hollow special effects spectacle? Well, as is expected in a catastrophe film, we follow lots of different stories, with different families and people facing the end of the world. But the main story is that of John Cusack and his family pulling together in the middle of all the chaos. He has divorced his wife, and they have joint custody over the kids. Will the end of the world bring mom and dad back together again?

What I enjoyed the most about this movie though was that it really is epic. It takes the story further then I had expected. It’s not just about the end of the world, with all the destruction taking center stage, it’s also about he survival of the human race. How can humanity go on and survive in spite of the upcoming apocalypse? This is where I found the story got really interesting! Darren Aronofsky, the director of Requiem for a Dream, Pi and The Wrestler had an idea for a film that’s very similar to this one, but he never got around to making it. In that proposed flick, the world was coming to an end, and humans find a way to escape by building spaceships and escaping the destruction, mirroring the biblical Noahs Ark story. The same idea was approached by Pixar’s Wall-E, where humanity had to escape the garbage filled earth. On 2012, humanity manages to escape, but in a very different way.

A word of warning though. This is the kind of film where the good guys always escape at the last second, where they will be as close to death as possible without dying at all. Behind them, the world can be falling apart, but they will escape at just the last moment. I knew this is the kind of film I was going to watch, so I was just having fun with it, cause you know, this movie is a big budget studio production, millions of dollars are being spent here so of course non of the good guys are going to die! Only people to die are secondary characters or extras, and lots of those die that’s for sure! Roland Emmerich destroys many legendary landmarks on this one, like The Vatican, which gets blown to smithereens! The Christ of Corcovado gets ripped in half! The white house gets destroyed again! Yellow Stone Park goes up in flames! But somehow, the main characters always find a way to escape all of it at the last second!

Performance wise, the film has an excellent cast. John Cusack as the main character is great, to me he is always likable in whatever he is in. I loved the fact that they gave such an important role to Chiwetel Ejiofor, a great actor every step of the way, he plays the scientist trying to warn the government of the United States about whats going to happen. I was so happy to see Danny Glover in a film again! Its been so long since he was in a major film, and on this one he plays the president of the U.S. Woody Harrelson plays a bit of comedy relief on this one. It seems he is great for these kind of whacky crazy characters, he also did a fine job in Zombieland playing Talahasee, on this one, he appears briefly (his appearance plays out like something of an extended cameo) but it is one of the characters that kind of lightens up things in the film in the middle of all the chaos. Also, Oliver Platt deserves a mention here. He plays the evil polititian who cares only about himself. He lies, he is selfish, and he doesnt give a damn about the people, you know, your basic evil polititian. (Are there any good ones anyway?)  On this flick, Oliver Platt demonstrated that he has potential to play villains very well. Some director out there should take advantage of that at some point and give him more villainous roles.

On the negative side of things, the film does have similarities at one point with films like Titanic and Poseidon. You know, the kind of scene where everyone is looking out for themselves? When things get really tense and everyone goes batshit insane cause they know they that they are going to have to get really selfish in order to survive? Like those scenes where everyone is trying to get on the lifeboats in Titanic? Same type of situation here. These kind of scenes always lend themselves for lots of juicy chaos.  I hate movies that use that common scenario where people are trapped inside of a boat or something thats being flooded with water, and then someone has to go and swim underwater to do something that will save everyone else! Thats so freaking cliche! And its been done to death in hundreds of films before! And to top things off, they go with the, "but he was right behind me" bit, where you think the main character drowned on his way back...but suddenly bursts out of the water to show us that he is okay! He survived! Please, I would have been so happy without that bit in the film, but whatever, it's a minor glitch in an other wise fun and entertaining flick.

Do you think the audience will notice were standing in front of a green screen John?

The film deals with the end of the world, which is a depressing thought on its own, but it adds a bit of comedy relief thanks to the inclusion of Woody Harrelson who plays a crazy conspiracy nut, who’s up to date on all the crazy things that are going on in the world. He has one of the coolest moments in the film! Which brings me to my next point, the film is never too dark, like for example the upcoming post apocalyptic film called The Road, which presents us with a really dark out look on the post apocalyptic world. On 2012, Roland Emmerich tried his best to end things on a positive and uplifting note, because you know, this is a multi-million dollar production, and we gotta give the audience that happy ending. But multi-million dollar production hiccups aside, this movie was an entertaining ride. It’s a non stop spectacle of awesome effects from beginning to end. Highly recommend it if you want to overdose on awesome fx and an end of the world storyline. Roland Emmerich has vindicated himself with this movie. Let’s see how long he can keep himself on my good side.

Rating: 3 out of 5