2012 (spoilers)

[J Ryan]

They had to refuel at Hawaii to make it all the way to Tibet. Where is it stated they were going to run out of fuel at Hawaii?

Also what time-scale is given for this move? They managed to find Hawaii easily enough so the move can't have taken place by this point. If they were expecting to make it to the South China Sea, google maps puts that at around 7,500 miles which is around an 8 hour flight time on an An-124.

If the crust started to move after they left Hawaii 1000km in 8 hours is 125km/h. No idea how survivable that would be, but sounds much easier to ride out that 8500kph.

[Gandalf]

It was a horrible horrible film, but enjoyable in parts. I like that every few years, we get treated to landmarks being destroyed by assorted crazy stuff. It's often a fun sight.

I wish Woody Harrelson would have lived a little longer, as he was somewhat interesting. Also, I didn't like the way that Gordon died, it really ground my gears.

Thank the gods for John Billingsley playing... his usual character.

[Terralthra]

This movie got *everything* wrong. I would peek my head in to see one minute or another, and see yet another thing they got wrong. In some cases, they went far out of their way to get things wrong. Sometimes, they'd get one thing wrong, which hid another thing they got wrong, which in turn covered ANOTHER thing they got wrong. It was like the matryoska doll of wrongness.

[CaptainChewbacca]

As I understood it, Tibet didn't move to where Hawaii was, it just moved about 1400 miles further east than where it was supposed to be.

[Oskuro]

Just came back from it and I have mixed feelings. It certainly needed more cowbell destruction, more quakes, volcanoes and whatnot, maybe animals stampeeding, rivers of lava invading the cities, violent storms, tornadoes, the whole thing. It also lacked a closer perspective on the disaster, we get very few close looks at the tragedy of it all, as it's been said, the best parts were the driving through the earthquake, those really had a good feeling of the magnitude of it all, but as soon as they are airborne, it's starts to feel like a documentary.

As for the family, yeah, too long, it kind of gets in the way, and I don't like how they resolved it, mainly because the characters I did like where the ones that died. Spoiler

Firstly, Shasha, a likeable character who dies due to a very stupid cliche. If the guy was half as resourceful as he is presented to be, he would be bolting from his seat at the plane (Awesome to have that plane in the movie, by the way) as soon as the thing was sliding to a halt before the chasm. Darn, as soon as the thing began sliding and he was out of any control! But no, he had to stay and watch the thing come to a stop, and instead of bolting then, he just waits for the whole thing to fall. Argh.

Tamara I liked too because... Ok, she was hot. In restrospect, she should have died when she was calling for her stupid dog.

And Gordon, this really riled me up because I saw it coming from the beginning of the fucking movie: Divorcerd main character whose wife and children are living with another man = the other man will die. Isn't there a novel way to solve this love triangle? Why has the biological father always got to be the right one(tm)? Couldn't that be left open? Way to teach kids to deal with divorced parents, by the way. No worries kids! Some disaster will kill your step-father and magically have your biological parents fall in love again! In a day! Yeah, it grinded my gears too.

I also disliked the later part of the movie, with the speech, the forced critical situation, the giraffe, and the fucking Everest. This is a movie about the world blowing up, not Titanic 2012! I was honestly playing the Titanic theme in my mind at the end.

[Guardsman Bass]

Spoiler

I was actually a bit surprised that Gordon ended up dying at the end. There seemed to be hints beforehand that they were reconciling (Gordon,his ex-wife, and Cusack's character), with the ex-wife saying that she loved Gordon, and Cusack seeming to accept that. I almost wonder if that was a "test audience" change, seeing as how after Gordon dies Cusack's ex-wife doesn't really seem bothered by the loss that much after the initial shock.

To be honest, I think "Day After Tomorrow" was a much better disaster movie than this. Better characters, better-used special effects, and so forth.

[Vympel]

I watched it for cheap on tight-arse Tuesday (cheapest day to watch a movie here). It sucked. Was just way too long, and the fact that the endless series of crises didn't stop when they got to the boat just blew chunks. The characters were all caricatures (those Russians were ridiculous) and the only good effects were the ones of LA being wrecked. The rest didn't get a rise out of me.

[Oskuro]

Oh, I just remembered.... The fucking Air Force One! Whose retarded idea was to leave a field of potentially dangerous debris just in front of the ships? ARGH!

[Darth Tanner]

I thought it was a fantastic no brain spectacular. The car chase through the earth quake and early flight through the collapsing city were absolutely fantastic. Rest of the film was a bit meh though.

I wish that the idiotic decision to let all the people on the boats at the end had actually had a consequence though, perhaps have them informed their all going to starve to death now, or at least have the guy who complains he could fit another ten people in his cabin have to actually share his cabin with all the people he let in rather than just leaving everyone to sleep outside while he gets the girl. Having them be able to fit two or three times as many people as intended on the boats without any consequences makes the governments of the world look like murdering bastards.

Also why the hell was private money needed to build the boats, just borrow the money its not like your going to have to pay it back! The whole of idea of people buying seats for the survival of the species is pretty ridiculous and from the boarding scenes likely resulted in a huge male to female imbalance.

To be fair they were expecting to have to ditch in the South China Sea. When they find out they are over land the pilot says the continent moved over 1,000 miles. I've no idea where this 8500 kph figure has come from.

I don't really see why they had to make some crap up about continents whizzing about at hundreds of mph. Its not going to detract from the realism of the film to have the plane loose fuel/engines just when they get into the area of the mountain port regardless of the real fuel capacity of the plane.

even a healthy dose of stock hollywood US-centrism

Do you mean because the major disaster scenes occurred in the US? Because plot wise the 'cause' of the disaster is discovered by an Indian lab and the ships are built by the Chinese so I don't see much USA wanking there other than the fact that the USA gets a ship to itself while everyone else has to share. (Why didn't the Chinese just kick everyone else off the ships and fill it with their people as they built the bloody things and have their troops on the gates?)

[tim31]

Well, I enjoyed it, possibly because I've had nightmares where I'm trying to save my family from an apocolypse scenario. This was pretty much them brought to life. Like others have said, it wasn't perfect; a ball of cliches really. This bit of dialogue though:

What happened to the landing gear?

We lost it all in Vegas

HAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHA!!!

[Gandalf]

Was it me, or did NYC get off easily relative to other disaster films?

Also why the hell was private money needed to build the boats, just borrow the money its not like your going to have to pay it back! The whole of idea of people buying seats for the survival of the species is pretty ridiculous and from the boarding scenes likely resulted in a huge male to female imbalance.

I rationalised this as the governments worrying about budget oversights and things akin to that.

[tim31]

I agree; with the economic climate at around the time the project was drafted, massive overspending wouldn't have been as easy to palm off.

I know Australia probably wasn't involved in the funding, but if they were you can bet your arse Nick Xenophon would have been assassinated for trying to Keep the Bastards Honest.

[Zor]

Do you mean because the major disaster scenes occurred in the US? Because plot wise the 'cause' of the disaster is discovered by an Indian lab and the ships are built by the Chinese so I don't see much USA wanking there other than the fact that the USA gets a ship to itself while everyone else has to share. (Why didn't the Chinese just kick everyone else off the ships and fill it with their people as they built the bloody things and have their troops on the gates?)

Maybe because someone might have a boomer sub around with orders to do a serious "Fuck You" to the chinese if they did such a thing.

On that same not, scrambling submarines to sea full of people might allow a few thousand more survive.

Zor

[Oskuro]

Having them be able to fit two or three times as many people as intended on the boats without any consequences makes the governments of the world look like murdering bastards.

That was pretty much the point of the whole "this could fit ten more people" scene, the Arks were planned more as luxury cruisers than as cargo haulers (cargo being people) as they should've been. And to be honest, I don't think that's too far off from what might happen in reality. Maybe the notion was that the remaining unbuilt Arks were more of an economy class and had more crowded rooms.

[tim31]

I thought it was just the one that wasn't going to sail, and it was damaged because roof framework fell on on it during the pole shift(or something).

Plus if the intention was to save 400,000, there were eight[citation needed] arks, at fifty thousand passengers per ark... Were they big enough for everyone to have luxury quarters? Or only the paying/government officials?

[FSTargetDrone]

Haven't seen the movie, but how long a period of time was the main disaster portion of the story supposed to have taken place? Sounds like hours or days at the most?

[Gandalf]

Haven't seen the movie, but how long a period of time was the main disaster portion of the story supposed to have taken place? Sounds like hours or days at the most?

Even though some people had seen it coming for years, I'd guess that it took three to four days for humanity to basically be wiped out.

[Grif]

Even though some people had seen it coming for years, I'd guess that it took three to four days for humanity to basically be wiped out.

The majority of humanity was only informed of the disaster AFTER it started to occur. Those in the know were busy preparing to save "humanity's best stock selected by geneticists (and the obligatory ultra-rich)". Is that even ethical? (the film could have empahisised this interesting point, but we got the Air Force One slamming into the ship instead).

As for the length of the disaster, we can roughly estimate it by the length of time it took for the family to fly from... Las Vegas to "somewhere in the South China Sea". (16 hours? I don't know the exact length of time) Add that to the time the family spent running around in LA and Yellowstone, as well as flying to Las Vegas... 48 hours max?

[Oskuro]

The quakes and eruptions were rather quick, and although devastating, not of humanity-wiping magnitude. The himalaya-tall tsunamis, on the other hand, took a while longer to hit land, but where more thourough. Although dialog at the end of the movie implies that Africans probably didn't even notice the whole thing.

[Bedlam]

The quakes and eruptions were rather quick, and although devastating, not of humanity-wiping magnitude. The himalaya-tall tsunamis, on the other hand, took a while longer to hit land, but where more thourough. Although dialog at the end of the movie implies that Africans probably didn't even notice the whole thing.

I wouldn't say the Africans didn't notice anything, the south east of Africa is now taller than Everest. They might have noticed a techtonic upheval great enough to rise a large chunk of a continent by over 1km in a few days.

Its never made clear in the film where the original estimated date of the apocalipse was. It had clearly occured earlier than they originally thought as only 3 out of the 8 arks were completed and everything was being rushed so presumably the original readings suggested thay had another few years.

[CaptainChewbacca]

The deal with Africa was that it didn't FLOOD, which means it had the most immediately useable terrain.

Were only 3 of the 8 arks done? I got the feeling 7 of them were set out and launched.

[Darth Yoshi]

The conferencing only involved 3 or 4 ships. Since the G8 were supposed to have built these, you'd think each head of state would get a separate ship.
Spoiler

My question is, who's bright idea was it to build the arks in the Himalayas? If the problem is that magic radiation is evaporating the core and destabilizing plate tectonics, then shouldn't the mountain range formed because India crashed into China (ie plate tectonics) be the worst place to build humanity's last hope?

[Grif]

The conferencing only involved 3 or 4 ships. Since the G8 were supposed to have built these, you'd think each head of state would get a separate ship.
Spoiler

My question is, who's bright idea was it to build the arks in the Himalayas? If the problem is that magic radiation is evaporating the core and destabilizing plate tectonics, then shouldn't the mountain range formed because India crashed into China (ie plate tectonics) be the worst place to build humanity's last hope?

They must be thinking of those big giant tsunamis that occurred after the initial quakes occurred. And no, it wasn't the G8 building these, it was explicitly stated that the Chinese built the arks.

[Darth Tanner]

I agree; with the economic climate at around the time the project was drafted, massive overspending wouldn't have been as easy to palm off.

Where do you think all that Stimulus/bank bailout money went? The UK didn't bailout Lloyds, we built an ark.

On that same not, scrambling submarines to sea full of people might allow a few thousand more survive.

How far down would you have to be to survive the super wave? We saw atleast one sub get picked up and smashed during the Washington scene.

That was pretty much the point of the whole "this could fit ten more people" scene,

I thought they were planning on having to spend a considerable amount of time on the ship, they couldn't rely on Africa having liveable land mass after the disaster after all and might have had to wait until the solar flare ended and the core cooled down enough for the plates to stabilise. Although I'd have thought it would take centuries for the core to cool down after the amount of heat was pumped into it.

I wouldn't say the Africans didn't notice anything, the south east of Africa is now taller than Everest.

A lot of Africa is underwater as well, and the scientist only presumed that the waves hadn't swept whats left clean of life, they had no way to confirm that by that point. Logically a wave large enough to sweep over the Himalayas is going to do the same to Africa since it originated in the Indian ocean.

[tim31]

I think people are assuming three arks because that's what can be seen in the closing shots of the film. Seeing as these things were carrying the last remnants of humanity, they may have had orders to spread out a bit and not keep the eggs in one basket.

On that note, the people who were going to be left behind were an estimated 50,000. Was this split up between three other ships, or seven? Or did they all wind up on Ark America? For context, the seating capacity of the Louisiana Superdome in football mode is about 73,000; Wembley Stadium is 90,000.