Well, there you go: “2012” blasted into theatres and obliterated its competition, grossing $65 million domestically — and $225 million worldwide — in its first three days of release.
Quite the haul, particularly for a movie that runs over two and a half hours and pulled reviews that were, at best, mixed. But then you can’t go wrong with a disaster movie, especially if you’re Roland Emmerich; this is really the only thing he’s ever been any good at.
I mean, “Godzilla”? “The Patriot”? “10,000 B.C.”? Come on, that’s just running in place; the world wants you to smash the White House again and bury New York under a tsunami of ice. Embrace your destiny.
In their latest podcast, the fine folks at the Onion A.V. Club point out that Emmerich has become the Irwin Allen of his day, and if nothing else, “2012” does embrace that — it’s “Earthquake”, “The Towering Inferno” and “The Poseidon Adventure” all rolled into one. Of course, he’s mostly referencing the “Poseidon” remake, but I don’t think anybody will notice.
So fess up, folks: Did you catch a little mass destruction over the weekend? Were you part of Hurricane Roland?
I was a little nervous about the bad reviews and two a half hour duration but I actually really liked it. Don’t think I’ve ever seen cgi quite like it and the whole thing went by in a flash. After about 40 minutes even the woman in a nearby row who kept checking her text messages didn’t distract me.