It's a visual spectacle. I was admittedly intrigued when I saw the teaser trailer in the movie theater a few months ago, and I watched intently in my hotel room a few weeks ago when it was showing a free extended trailer. But do you know what, it's sick. And I don't mean that in a colloquial "cool" way, I mean it's sick in a disturbing way.
Mark Harris from Entertainment Weekly wrote a great article a few weeks ago which captures my sentiment:
In the ad's biggest high-five moment, (Cusack's) little escape plane zips between two parallel high-rise towers just seconds before those towers collapse into each other, presumably killing thousands of CGI flyspeck humans. Forget the towers! the trailer seems to say. How cool was it that the plane threaded that needle?! Awesome! Cusack lives!
It would be funny if it wasn't so sad, but Harris is exactly right. We're left with focusing on this one guy who's managing to escape without giving much thought to the fact that billions of people are dying at the same time. The billions of people who are being crushed to death or being burned alive are just background plot and fodder, but audiences shouldn't focus on that - just focus on John Cusack! Doesn't this seem consistent with a society which is so individualistically focused? As Harris says: Forget the towers! Cusack lives!
It truly is "Destructo-Porn", appealing to our basest voyeuristic desires to see things get blown up and people get killed. From the toddlers who like knocking down block towers to the little arsonist or fireworks lover that lives in most teenage boys, it's definitely there. I just hope that films like '2012' don't contribute to what I feel is a growing desensitization that we have towards human suffering and calamity.
I just hope there's something more redemptive in the movie.
Posts
No comments:
Post a Comment