2012: Difference between revisions

[[Word of God]] states that this is Emmerich's final disaster flick, so he tried as best as he could to pack enough [[Stuff Blowing Up]] and [[Monumental Damage]] into it to last a lifetime.

 

 

Not to be confused with ''[[Series/Twenty Twelve|Twenty Twelve]]'', a [[Britcom|BBC sitcom]] about the committee preparing for the 2012 Olympic Games, or [[Rush]]'s album ''2112''.

* [[The Everyman]]: Jackson Curtis, a down-on-his-luck divorced writer working as a limo driver to pay the bills.

* [[Face Death With Dignity]]: Satnam and his family, knowing full well that they don't stand a chance in hell of escaping the oncoming tsunami, spend their final moments embracing each other as the others around them panic. Various other examples are also seen, combined with some of the facing the bullets one liners mentioned below.

** "[[Catch Phrase|You heard first from Charlie!]]"

** "I'm coming home, Dorothy".

* [[Neutral Female]]: The female characters don't really ''do'' a whole lot. They comfort the children, sometimes. And the President's daughter exists solely to be Adrian's [[Love Interest]]. Notable especially in the plane sequences. Only Yuri and Jackson ever even go up to see what's happening.

* [[Next Sunday AD]]: Right in the title.

* [[No Celebrities Were Harmed]]:

** The governor of California is never named, but has a strong Austrian accent, and apparently used to be an actor.

** And Germany's Chancellor is female.

** Yuri Karpov looks suspiciously similar in appearance and hairstyle to [http://t3.gstatic.com/images?q=tbn:5Jjf5SHmV-JMeM Shabtay Kalmanovich], a recently murdered oligarch known for his patronage of sporting events. Russian boxer Zultan seems to be a stand-in for [http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Sultan_Ibragimov Sultan Ibragimov]. And, for some weird reason, the Russian president is a look-alike of geriatric Soviet leader [http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Leonid_Brezhnev Leonid Brezhnev].

* [[No One Gets Left Behind]]: Brutally subverted by Anheuser, who tries to leave thousands of refugees behind right at the doors of the Ark. Also qualifies as a [[Moral Event Horizon]].

* [[Obstructive Bureaucrat]]: One of the few moments where this movie decides to be original is subverting this trope with Carl Anheuser. Initially he has all tell-tale signs of a stereotypical self-absorbed, short-sighted government official who is there to ignore Adrian's warning, but when Adrian's outburst prompts him to actually look into the latter's report, he recognizes instantly that this matter should not be red-taped.

* [[Oh Crap]]: Every few minutes, as befits the end of the world

* [[Outrun the Fireball]]: Or, in one case, outrun the earthquake. Luckily, the Earth is sufficiently polite to stop cracking and waits for you to get off your car and onto a plane. And the supervolcano that just erupted behind you while your plane is still sitting on the runway? Every volcanic bomb misses, and the shockwave from the blast just a few miles away barely ruffles the characters' hair.

* [[Our Presidents Are Different]]: President Wilson is both a President Personable and a President Minority, but [[Genre Savvy]] enough to know that he's not a President Action.

{{quote| '''Dara:''' [The scientist] might as well have gone "the electrons... are ''angry''". Or "the light from the sun..." *sniffs* "it's gone off."}}

** Excellent example with Yellowstone. It manages an explosion probably measured in gigatons without any significant blast overpressure. Trees are flattened, but it abates within a mere mile or two - helpfully before obliterating all the major characters.

* [[Product Placement]]:

** Vault, Bentley, Huggies (Goodnites), and many, many other things.

** The continual references to "big ships" {{spoiler|makes one think of spaceships that are going to leave Earth. Nope! They're just big boats.}}

* [[Refuge in Audacity]]: White House. Meet Aircraft carrier.

* [[Rule of Cool]]: Why do they take elephants and giraffes, which ultimately are useless, on the Arks instead of cows, chickens, etc. which they could use as livestock? Because it's more visually impressive to see elephants and giraffes get airlifted by helicopters than it is cows and chickens. It's as simple as that. (You could claim that the livestock was loaded earlier, precisely because they are more important, but the visual still stands.)

* [[Rule of Symbolism]]:

* [[Twenty Fifth Amendment]]: Floated, then immediately ripped up.

* [[Viewer Friendly Interface]]: Both played straight (the computers on the arks with 3D, real-time representations of ''the gears for the doors'') and averted (the scientist who discovers the end is near uses Vista, and everyone else who's not an Ark operator).

* [[Your Princess Is in Another Castle]]: Jackson, after finding out that [[Oh Crap|the ships are in China.]]

{{quote| '''Jackson:''' We're gonna need a bigger plane.}}