2012: Disaster Porn of the Four-X Kind

My review of 2012 is really, I think about, the director. So be warned.

Let’s just get the obvious out of the way: Roland Emmerich directs porn. It may not be porn that shows penises and va-jay-jays, but it is porn. To be precise, he directs disaster porn. Which, like, you know, sexy porn, has a direct correlation between “excitement” and “plausability”.

Stargate was his first real foray into porn. It’s relatively softcore in nature – the type of stuff that shows up on Cinemax late at night. Totally not plausible, but then it’s a movie about aliens and really how often do scads of horny cheerleaders check into super expensive hotels in the Carribbean? Not often, I tell you.

His next film – Independence Day – was his first foray into the XXX genre, and despite some flaws it was a fun ride. High budget, some A-list stars, and a plot that provided moderate entertainment during the “down time”. Still smack full of implausability (who believes anyone when they say “It’s okay; I’ve been snipped!”) but okay.

Then he did Godzilla, which was. . . well. Remember that time you pulled down a movie because it had some great keywords in the description, and it was kind of hot for a while, and then suddenly someone is peeing on someone else and the film has gone to “nonononono” land? Godzilla is like that.

Then he did an artsy porn, The Patriot. This was the disaster porn equivalent of The Story of O: overly long, too much talking, and then the mood is ruined when Udo Kier opens his mouth. Someone gets “stabbed” with a “flagpole”, there are some jingoist words spoken, and we reach for the tissues.

Emmerich returned to his XXX strengths with The Day After Tomorrow, which was also wonderfully implausible but hey, some people find Ron Jeremy attractive.

Let’s just not talk about 10,000 BC because that was more like one of those incomprehensible flicks that get churned out of basement studios in Italy.

This brings us to 2012. In this film, Roland is trying to break that mythical “fourth X” wall. It’s what my friend Christian calls “Spleen Porn”: the film doesn’t fuck around with foreplay; it goes straight for the starfish, do not pass go, do not collect two-hundred dollars. What we call a “plot” is really just the DVD menu flickering around as one picks a “chapter”.

If you like this kind of porn, this movie is for you. It’s long, though, so bring extra kleenex.