Last night I committed the cardinal sin of movie viewing. In the heat of Oscar season, I watched a non-Oscar nominated movie, 2012. And while 2012 was nominated for, and even won some awards, in my eyes it was a cataclysmic failure. The Academy got it right in shutting 2012 out. Fellow Netflixsters: I urge you not to get sucked in by the “end of the world” chatter that our Mayan, Egyptian and other predecessors put on the calendar.
There are lessons to be learned in what the 2012 movie got wrong. Here are my top 3 observations on how to put a lot of time and effort into creating something mediocre, or worse, something short of mediocre.
1) Bad Storytelling. The end of the world is not a new subject. It’s an interesting topic and it captures our imagination. But that’s just it, 2012 lacked imagination and lacked a clever, fresh story line. Earthquakes, volcanic activity, and tidal waves are to be expected. For a supposed “action thriller” this lacked surprises and thrill. Hollywood has the freedom to take us to new and unexpected places, to capture our imagination. 2012 lacked inspiration and aspiration. It needed an angle: more authentic, hard core action, a cynical parody or a romance chick flick. It was a story poorly told.
2) Lack of Real Emotion. As if the storytelling wasn’t bad enough…they throw in a few supposedly tense situations and a mini-romance. The “hero” scene of the action thriller was incredibly unsatisfying. Compare this to Avatar where our protagonist captures our heart. We’re really rooting for Jake Sully because he had full character development. In contrast, I truly was rooting for the end of the world in 2012 so that the movie would end.
3) Special Effects without Purpose. I got the sense that the producers recognized the movie was a bit flat and decided to over-compensate with a huge focus on special effects. And the special effects were fine, but they just seemed to lack purpose. It was as though someone said to make cool firing volcanoes and earthquakes with planes swerving. As Simon Cowell recently said on American Idol, “You can’t dance your way out of poor singing.” And in this case, the special effects failed to elevate an otherwise poor movie.
If you haven’t already seen 2012, please don’t. Instead, choose an Oscar flick that lives up to the standards of excellent storytelling, real emotions, and puts in some surprises and special effects that enhance the overall story.
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2012 is great movie with a lot of visual effects and good actor’s play (much better than Alice!!!). It is not 3D, but it is not cartoon so it is fine. For actual movie 3D is not mature enough nowadays, not yet – you always can see some unnatural shadows, movements, second background and all that if you have good vision. And it gathered good audience, so it is really tricky why it was not in Oscar list this year.