Humanities & Social SciencePeter Suderman on 2012, the stupid new film based on the stupid 2012 phenomenon:
And with its never-ending parade of glorious, ludicrous, and utterly improbable catastrophes, it more or less succeeds. 2012 is the sort of movie so aggressively hyperbolic and devoutly over-the-top that it makes traditional descriptive labels obsolete and thus requires the invention of whole new words. My suggestions? How about catastrophaganza--the subgenre to which 2012 (and most of Emmerich's oeuvre) belongs--and retardiculous--a combo word to describe its barfy blend of low-quality yucks; treacly, social-welfare obsessed melodrama; buzz-word-laden psuedo-scientific babble; and gleefully apocalyptic pyrotechnic spectacle.
Comments
What? Hollywood got something wrong. Holy cow the world is ending. Next thing you will tell me is that trucks can't transform into robots. MY GOD!!!
Get a life.
Posted by: robert gotschall | November 14, 2009 5:28 PM
The above comment is retardiculous. I mean, a troll telling someone to get a life. Really.
As for "2012," I feel that all those folks who are committing suicide for fear of the world ending are doing the gene pool a good service.
Posted by: JimPhones | November 14, 2009 8:10 PM
Critics should be careful around Roland Emmerich. Roger Ebert dared to criticize one of his movies and ended up as a character in Godzilla (the pudgy mayor was named after Ebert). Roland has a thin skin apparently.
Posted by: Romeo Vitelli | November 14, 2009 10:33 PM
i watched it. nothing new, boring, stupid plot. many hollywood cliches. it just went on and on. i'm a little sick of these armaggedon movies, even if i'm easily entertained
Posted by: tiag | November 15, 2009 12:20 AM
Movie critics are the most parasitical and worthless breed on the planet. What could be more pompous than someone telling you what you should and shouldn't watch based on the fact that they took a semester of "Movies as a Gut Form" at college? Seriously!
If the movie doesn't allow them to quote the classics or show how much they know about Orson Welles's existential angst, they hate it.
Movies, like novels, music and all forms of art are entirely personal, and anyone who thinks they have some sort of privleged perpective which somehow licenses them to prevail upon others as to not only what they should look at/read/listen to, but also what they should actually like is a moron. It really is that simple.
Posted by: IanW | November 16, 2009 7:39 AM
Eh.
You're probably just insecure because critics have panned some movies that you've enjoyed, and that makes you feel dumb.
Kidding =)
Posted by: tlateloco | November 17, 2009 12:16 AM