2012 IHC / IHC 2012 / IHC Movie 2012 / 2012 Movie / Institute for Human Continuity

Well it has been long expected by many and now it’s finally here. Hollywood has jumped onto the 2012 subject in the form of Roland Emerich's (think Day After Tomorrow) new movie of the name, '2012'. Sheduled for general release on 13th November.

The trailer does only enough to deliver a flavour of this upcoming production. It’s a disaster flick on a massive doomsday scale. Anyone who has read spoilers knows that this set to be one big rolling catastrophe with minimal legitimate Maya 2012 subject matter.

Above is a five minute sneak preview of the scene in which California is utterly destroyed and slides into the sea. Then for those wondering about the directors thoughts we have an interview with him posted below.

 

2012 MovieIn the upcoming Roland Emmerich film 2012, set for release on November 13th, a global cataclysm brings an end to the world and tells of the heroic struggle of the survivors.

Never before has a date in history been so significant to so many cultures, so many religions, scientists and governments. Inspired by several hypotheses that state that the ancient Mayans predicted a doomsday event that will occur sometime around the 2012 northern hemisphere winter solstice, the film stars John Cusack, Amanda Peet, Danny Glover, Thandie Newton, Oliver Platt, Chiwetel Ejiofor and Woody Harrelson.

During the San Diego Comic-Con, German-born director Roland Emmerich talked to press about his attraction to this sci-fi disaster epic.

Q: What is it about you and the end of the world?

Emmerich: It’s a love affair.

Q: Since that seems to be an on-going theme in most of your work, what is the fascination with thatt?

Emmerich: Well, the first time I was confronted with it was with Independence Day. In that, the world ends on July 4th, which was some sort of absolute statement. Then, I was attracted to it again in The Day After Tomorrow because I had the feeling that, if we keep going, that will be the end. It would be not the total end, but an Ice Age will come, or some other big catastrophe will happen.

And then, this time around, I was discussing possible new projects, and we came up with this idea that maybe a global flood would be a great movie because we could do a re-telling of Noah’s Ark, in a modern way. Then, we played around with who would build these arks. And then, during the course of coming up with the story, we found this phenomenon about 2012, and we incorporated it into our movie.

That’s what it’s at now. It’s not only a disaster movie because disaster movies have to have another extra element, which makes it special. Actually, the whole third act is more if a different kind of movie. It’s about who will survive in the arks.

Q: Did you get into the whole Mayan calendar and the reasons why this is supposed to happen?

Emmerich: Yeah. We tied that in, a little bit in the same way that, in Independence Day, Area 51 was tied in. Even though a lot of people believed in Area 51, no one could really prove it. And, in the same way, we thought it was good to tie in 2012 to our movie. It’s good to tie it into something real, that people believe.

Q: So, the title for the movie came later then?

Emmerich: Yes, that came later. That’s not how movies or ideas work. Most of the time, it’s like you’re interested in some aspect and, out of that aspect, comes a story. And then, from the story comes characters. And then, you do research and sometimes something like this happens that you find. The same thing happened with Independence Day. We found out how many people believe in Area 51, and then we tied it into our story to make it more real.

Q: When you were doing your research, how did you separate the 2012 Mayan theory from other people’s theories that may or may not be true?

Emmerich: Well, there are so many that, in a way, you can just create your own. The most amazing thing, for me, was how many books there are. When you go on Amazon, there are hundreds of books, all about 2012. It’s incredible.

I ordered the first six or seven pages of them, and I had all these books. Every one of them tells a different story. We only used the fact that the Mayan calendar ends. That gave us the year. It’s also mainly because it’s the cycle of the way the sun’s destructive force is going to destroy Earth. We used that a little bit. And, that’s all that we used.

Q: Did you want to destroy the entire world?

Emmerich: When you do a flood movie, a flood has to be global. And then, you have to come up with a theory. We researched a little bit, and we found this one theory which is Earth quest displacement, which is maybe true or not. It doesn’t really matter, but for our movie it was perfect because it pretty much comes with earthquakes, volcano eruptions and the whole crust shifting. Because of that, there are incredible cataclysms and then these enormous tsunamis, and then I had to fill in.

I come from Germany. It’s great to start in America, but I thought the Himalayas would be great. I don’t know exactly how we came up with Himalayas, but I think it was because it’s the roof of the world. When that gets flooded, that’s a flood.

Q: What challenges did you find visually, in creating the flood?

Emmerich: First of all, I hired my old visual effects supervisor, Volker Engel, who I really think was the right person. He partnered with Marc Weigert, who is another German. They were the right people in their approach to this, in a very methodical way. And, we pretty much cast effects houses like actors, with certain people for water and certain people for this and certain people for that.

And then, we had a huge in-house team of 70 or 80 people, who worked tirelessly, over the last year or so, to create the earthquake sequence in L.A., and they did half of it. The other half was Digital Domain. So, we had 15 companies working for us. That’s the biggest visual effects production I have ever done, and I have done pretty big ones. It’s 1,400 shots, which maybe doesn’t sound like so many, but our shots are really, really complicated because we have so many shots with water. What is, famously, the most difficult thing to do.

Q: Has it been a lot of trial and error, for you to try to get it as photo-realistic as possible, since that’s particularly hard to do?

Emmerich: We had more and more to say in our visual effects review, every day. We would sit for two or three hours in a room, and then they would sit there another two or three hours because they review everything before I see it. Everybody has to be happy with the outcome. It’s really a democratic process.

Q: How do you think this will play in 2013?

Emmerich: Well, 2013 doesn’t exist. I don’t know. I thought that, in 2013, the movie would be dated. But, one of my favorite movies is called 2001. So, there’s hope for 2012 to survive.

Q: What was it about John Cusack that you thought was relevant for this role?

Emmerich: We looked for an actor who was an everyman, but also smart, and has some comedic talent. There are not so many actors like that out there. And, I’ve always admired John Cusack, so that’s why we offered it to him. You don’t need a Bruce Willis, or an Arnold Schwarzenegger. If you write good characters, you get really good actors, and I think we’ve got some really good actors in this film.

I always believe that, when you have characters in these kinds of movies, I always tend to like cast actors who have comedic timing. If you can laugh at these characters, you take them more seriously. I think a good joke, once in awhile, keeps the movie light, and tells the people, “This is a movie. This is not reality.”

Q: What is his character’s personality like?

Emmerich: John brings a sly humor. Whenever he talks to somebody, he’s very irreverent. He has very dry humor.

Q: How hard is it to direct your actors when there’s nothing there for them to react to?

Emmerich: We do a comic book version of it, that looks like a very simple, animated movie, where you see every shot. That’s the first thing that we showed to the actors, and we said, “This is what comes towards you.” The first question that they always ask is, “Will it look like that?”

You have to talk to them a lot, and constantly explain to them what’s coming. We have a couple of sequences with some small little plane, and it was really cramped in there. There was a gimble and it was just a nightmare. It’s very hard to keep your actors going and keep them involved because you still need acting.

Q: You’re very fortunate in finding people, like Will Smith. Who, in this movie, do you feel is a break-out actor?

Emmerich: A lot of them are already known. On that is not so known is Chiwetel Ejiofor. I think he will be a big star.

Q: Can you talk about your inspiration for the imagery and how it evolved? Did you sketch stuff out, or did you go from photos?

Emmerich: I started out talking about what could happen and what scenes we could do. And then, out of that, comes images. There are certain things that immediately pop into your mind, or you’ll see some drawing of somebody. We had incredible artists working on this. It’s just a group effort and a lot of work.

Q: Can you describe what the arks look like?

Emmerich: They’re built to withstand the waves, so they had to be very big because they wanted to save a lot of people. But, they also had to be able to withstand incredible forces of water. They’re part submarine and part ship. It’s a mix.

 

Q: Do you explore who gets to go on them and who gets left behind?

Emmerich: Yeah, the movie is about that.

Q: This isn’t the only sci-fi movie lined up for you. Can you talk about Isobar and Foundation?

Emmerich: Isobar was a project that I actually came to Hollywood for. I worked on it for 9 months, and then decided to not do it. So, I don’t think I will do it. That was 20 years ago. And then, The Foundation is just a book series that I was very fortunate to get because a lot of people wanted to have it. I’m actually developing the first of three planned movies. The first one is called Foundation, then Foundation Empire, and then a second Foundation. I hired the writer of Saving Private Ryan, Bob Rodat, to write it.

Q: Will Foundation have a much lighter touch than the bombastic, destroy everything in the world, type of movie?

Emmerich: It’s a different kind of movie altogether. The interesting and difficult thing of Asimov’s Foundation is that he actually wrote it as short stories. And then, out of the short stories, he put the first book out, called Foundation, which was actually several short stories. Then, he wrote the two big novellas, which became the second part. And then, he wrote a novel called The Second Foundation.

So, it was never really meant to be one narrative, but when you make a movie, you need one narrative. You need one character that leads us through. One bad guy leads us through. And, the tricky thing was to figure that one out.

Q: Did you figure it out yet?

Emmerich: Oh, yeah. It was already announced to me that it’s a very long script, so to brace myself.

Q: How many pages is the script?

Emmerich: I don’t know. I haven’t read it yet. But, he’s a writer who just writes it and says that he has to spit it out on paper. He said there is a lot of nonsense, but it’s like pearls, and you have to keep picking. And, he re-writes and keeps picking, until he has something that really works well. He’s not a writer, who when you read a script that’s it. He loves to write then uses you as an editor, who constantly edits him down and condenses it.

Q: Independence Day is one of the highest grossing films, and one of the five most often run films on basic cable. How come you never did a follow-up?

Emmerich: It’s one of these movies that’s very hard to do a follow-up for. Also, in the meantime, Will Smith has become probably the number one movie star, and he has a very busy schedule. I’ve talked with Will about it, recently. He’s really up for it, but then you also need a good story and the economics have to be right. And then, there’s always these other projects that you want to do, which are original. So, it just never happened.

Q: But, you talked about doing a second one?

Emmerich: Yeah. Actually, every two years, we have a weekend somewhere and yack about what it could be.

Q: Does sound design play an important role in 2012?

Emmerich: Yeah, and we’re still like working on it. The sound design is very, very important, and it’s always about level how loud something is, whether the music should be righted, whether we should have the music carry it, or what the sound effects should be.

For example, with certain scenes, we do half without music, and then the music kicks in or takes over because, at a certain point, the noise level is too high and you don’t hear anything anymore, and you have to give them a melody and drive of music. It’s actually quite difficult to do a film and mix it, and then constantly listen back and give notes. It’s quite stressful, sometimes.

Q: What will the character dynamic be?

Emmerich: It’s the story of people who know that the world is coming to an end, and people who don’t know. The people who know, secretly build ships. It’s the government of the world, secretly building ships and not telling the people. And then, they discover that the world comes to an end, much faster than they anticipated. They have to race to these ships. That’s the one story.

The other story is that a totally normal person goes with his kids to Yellowstone, and learns from a crazy radio host that the world is going to end. Because a lot of what this guy says happen, he starts to believe in it. He’s a divorced father, and his first thought is of his children and his ex-wife, so he rescues them. In the rescue attempt, he has to bring them to China, where he reconciles with his wife and kids.

Q: Is the crazy radio host a tribute to Art Bell?

Emmerich: Yeah.

Q: What is the balance between the religious and scientific aspect of the end of the world?

Emmerich: There are a lot of religious symbols that get destroyed in this movie, strangely. There’s not a comment on it, in any way. It’s just people. When bad things happen, they turn to God. When you destroy the Vatican, or the Jesus in Rio de Janeiro, you tell people, “Even God can’t help you.” Then, it becomes very philosophical, in a way. It comes down to what people should do, in a situation like that. What is morally right to do? All those questions occur.

Q: Does the film imply that God is ending the world, or this is just a cosmic flooding?

Emmerich: It’s pretty much nature. It’s a curse, every 40,000 years. I have the feeling, and it’s my feeling, so I cannot prove it or anything, that Earth has a replay and a restart, so this is like a gigantic restart. My last movie actually was based on one of these theories, of the lost civilization. It was the big cataclysm and these cultures were destroyed. It’s just something that I believe in, and that a lot of people actually believe in.

Q: Does 2012 have the have an environmental message?

Emmerich: No, it doesn’t have an environmental message because I would have repeated myself. But, it has a very cool philosophical base that you actually have to see the movie to understand. There are discussions going on, constantly, about whether what we’re doing is right. There is this lingering doubt. And then, throughout the movie, the one who has the lingering doubt is the one who wins out.

Q: Godzilla is coming to Blu-Ray. What are your feelings about Godzilla today?

Emmerich: I’m totally proud of Godzilla. I know there are a lot of nay-sayers, but I’m proud of it.

Q: Would you ever want to do another one?

Emmerich: I’m not a person for sequels. I just want to do something original. Once in awhile, I plan or try to do something that’s a remake, and then, most of the time, original stories win out. And, it has to be a good one.

Q: How do you think the world is actually going to end?

Emmerich: Poof. I’m only kidding. I don’t know. I’m not a prophet. I hope we are not ruining our planet. I really believe that, if we keep going and doing what we are doing, we will not be leaving the planet how it should be, for our kids. That has been going on for generations. And then, we still have these wars going on, and all this energy could go into the environment or other peaceful activities. It’s just very sad to see and read the news, every day, and see what these people are fighting over. It’s like don’t they understand that the clock is ticking.


By Bruce

Shift of the Ages Film