So, the Mayans, right? I’ve been keeping an eye on this calendar thing since way before it got trendy. That said, I’m glad it got trendy, because how else am I supposed to get a gem of a movie like 2012, in which the world is destroyed non-stop for two and a half hours? In case you have managed to miss the media blitz, it goes like this. The Mayans had this calendar that predicted star movements, eclipses, pretty much everything going on with the earth’s interactions with the rest of the solar system and possibly galaxy. And this calendar has been around for thousands of years, constantly being right. But, as of the winter solstice, 2012, the calendar just ends. I guess the present day Maya people, of whom there are not many, say it’s this thing like the end of an age, and a new age will start afterward? But it was quickly appropriated[1] as the predictive date of the end of the world. After all, if the world doesn’t end, where did all of our eclipses and tides go, Mayans? Either keep predicting, or give us our orgiastic apocalypse fantasies![2]

I should ought to point out that the world does not immediately begin ending once the credits have concluded; in fact, the film opens in 2009, because someone decided we needed a scientific reason for the inevitable carnage. Please note that we were not provided with a scientific reason, at all, but, you know how these things go. All the same, Roland Emmerich clearly understood that his audience would not be pleased by the lack of instant carnage, because the evidence montage was suffused with rapid tension music from the orchestra pit. Then, after a brief pause to introduce John Cusack, the rest of the film actually was the non-stop destructive roller coaster I had jokingly promised my double-dates for the evening. I’m not even kidding; if there was a scene after the 30 minute mark that did not include either an explosion, a tidal wave, an earthquake, flowing lava or (at the bare minimum) floating ash, I genuinely don’t remember it. And every time the film thought about being emotionally serious or speaking intelligently on the loss of worldwide culture or the death of an entire sentient species, Roland’s steady hand was there on the script to pull back from that brink and resume the carnival-of-the-ridiculous the film was clearly meant to be.

The only problem I had, the only problem, was with the audience. Because except for me and my dates, there was nobody laughing every two to five minutes at the newest bit of over-the-top parody of disaster film that I’m positive Emmerich intended to make. I’m pretty sure nobody else laughed the entire time! The director clearly got it. The sprawling cast of Hollywood notables appeared to get it. I certainly got it. Why didn’t they?

[1] Probably by The Man.
[2] Actual orgies, while likely, are not necessarily included. This was meant to be more in the metaphorical doomsday-excitement sense.