With all the mixed reviews I am seeing for 2012, I am still surprised to see the $225Million it has taken in at the boxoffice worldwide this weekend ($65m US).
Perhaps the puzzling legend of the actual end of the world made people curious enough to take it in?
The Movie Fanatic breaks it down:
Twitter users rate it at 69%, while IMDb users have given the movie a weighted average vote of 6.7 / 10. Almost identical right? Rotten Tomatoes, on the other hand, shows a 39% rating, with the following concensus: Roland Emmerich’s 2012 provides plenty of visual thrills, but lacks a strong enough script to support its massive scope and inflated length.
But with such a wide spread of ratings compared to its impressive boxoffice take on its first weekend (clearing its estimated $200m budget) I am very curious to see who went to see this and how they liked it.
There is a lot of comments on this site that are bashing the film, lessening the anticipation of the movie for those readers. Yet a lot of people on my Twitter and Facebook who went to see it this weekend were mostly impressed with it complaining only about its near 3 hour run time (including trailers).
Did you see 2012 this weekend? Did you like it? Was it brainless visual eyecandy fun?
That’s a lot of money! I really liked the marketing for this movie and it shows that it was effective!
I personally found this movie to be enjoyable. Not an epic film at all but it was a fun watch.
I loved this movie! Great fun escapist entertainment! Finally, a disaster movie with no heavy handed underlying message… just a great way to get away from the depressing realities of the fast declining state of the world.
I went with my husband and his sister. I honestly had no idea it was three hours long because time felt it went so fast. My husband didn’t like it, though I did. He wanted more destruction and less romance. I mean it has two leading romance stories, which really didn’t have to have happened at all. You could have deleted the one with the prez’s daughter complete and no one would have missed it. Some of the deaths were completely stupid. Just nonsensical and just to kill the person off. Spoiler: I agree that I would have liked to have seen all the Chinese workers get on there and maybe they did, but the focus was on the rich snobs trying to board ship instead. The Hope story was just a silly moment where a selfish man takes charge and they have to have a moment… Why the hell didn’t the Chinese president try to save his people? Why is it always one of the cute main characters that have the moment of truth. I liked it, don’t get me wrong. I spent half the time mumbling, “Oh my god.” It was intense, visually beautiful, but like any movie… it could have been stronger.
This movie does not live up to my expectation, the CG was awesome. Apart from that, the story was bored. Independence Day still rocks.
NEVER!!!!! Never trust Rotten Tomatoes!!
Trust you own judgment of the trailer!
RTs is so fucking flawed its not even funny lol
Totally agree.
Near 3 hours? I was enthralled by it the whole time. It was fricken Intense!
This movie was awesome and definitely worth watching. A must for all action fans. No doubt about it.
Bush hangover
I think it did well worldwide cause all those people just like watching the White House get blown away!
It did extremely well in the US too. What does that say?
It is much better than Transformers 2, it is much funnier, and visuals ara beautifully done, maybe better than transformers
Either a coup d’état is coming, or us Americans are masochists.
Haven’t seen it, but I think the main reason it’s doing so well is that most people are drawn to summer disaster blockbusters that have a lot of monuments being destroyed, even if it’s durring fall. That’s just how it is. But hey, they also are very fond of vampire domestic issues and Travolta comedies about how funny middle agedness is (that are directed by “The Wild Hogs” guy), so I don’t know how long “2012”s reign will last.
My gf and I went nowhere near this film. In fact, we took advantage of everyone being distracted to see 2012, and we went and saw A Serious Man, which was excellent! We were also the only ones in the theater, where as at the same time, there were lines out the door waiting for 2012. We didn’t want to see 2012, that movie just looked really goofy to us.
I want to see “A Serious Man” so badly, but I live up in “them there hills”. With one, ten screen, theater, unless you wanna drive an hour and a half, so I won’t be getting what I want anytime soon. Hell, sometimes even bigger films get the shaft up here, not just indie ones. “2012” is on two screens, in a little bit “New Moon” will take up a couple. That will leave room for only six other films and I’m sure much of it will be holiday flicks. Bummer, man.
I feel your pain dude, the theater that played a serious man is about 25-30 mins away from me. It was worth the drive though. Generally, even theaters in miami are like that. 5-7 screens are occupied by movies like twilight and 2012 and unless the theater is over 16 screens, the good ones aren’t even shown here. I didn’t get to see Moon or Tetro and I was lucky to barely have seen The Hurt Locker.
I know that feeling and I get in my car and I drive that hr or more. I hate the theater near me so much I drove and extra hr to see District 9 and Inglourios Bastards
@David Lopan-
The really bizarre thing is my theater did do an extremely rare “Indie Film Showcase” a month ago, where they have two showings of a handful of indie films and I was lucky enough to see “The Hurt Locker”, “Moon”, and “500 Days of Summer”, so I’m really grateful for that (it’ll probably never happen again, fingers crossed though). In my opinion “The Hurt Locker” was the best of the three, so at least you got to catch that one. One of the years best.
@EZELL
Yeah, not a bad idea, I’ve done it before, I’ll probably end up driving a while out of my way to see “A Serious Man” soon and I’m gonna probably do it in December so I can see my first ever 3-D film (Avatar, even though I’m doubting it’ll be worth it, I just gotta see if this 3-D tech is all it claims, for myself).
@ Matt S
The Hurt Locker was an absolute surprise and impressive movie. I can’t wait to get it on DVD.
Yes, I saw it. The first 10 minutes of the film was stellar. For ten full minutes I was hooked, interested and entertained. For a full ten minutes there were well written characters that get introduced and the story it set up well. The pace moves well with no dead spots. Chiwetel Ejiofor (of Serenity and Redbelt) makes his character, a science advisor to the Prez (Danny Glover) likable and intelligent.
I didn’t mind Danny Glover as The Prez. It may seem somewhat topical now considering current affairs, but ten years ago in another disaster pic (Deep Impact) Morgan Freeman played The Man, so I was fine with this.
Then that whole business with the rich and world leaders making back door deals; topped off with art museum switcheroos and lo, a cover up!
An outstanding ten minutes, hands down. Excellent.
Later on, Chiwetel Ejiofor is back with Thandie Newton. He gives this great scene between them, great dialog too. Adrian Helmsley gives this moment of thought: he met the author of a book that only sold 250 copies, one of which was given to him by a relative. Since he’ll be on the ship and the book will be with him, the author may very well be dead but his work lives on- and now it will become part of ‘The New History’.
And that’s also what’s wrong with the rest of this movie. See, it wasn’t about that character it was about that author (Cusack) who has a lot in common with his ex-wife’s boyfriend. Not only is it a “small world after all”, but that surgeon boyfriend flies planes as good as Cusack’s Curtis drives cars.
WARNING: SPOILS
The characters surrounding Curtis (save for the brief encounter with Helmsley) are there to serve only two purposes. : to recite banal dialog and the serve the buffet of overwhelming,repeated yet impressive visual FX. Nothing more, nothing less. Once a character has served their function, they are toast.
What made me more infuriated was the structure of the film (two instances where characters do things that ultimately become in vain) and the time that conspiracy finally comes into play, the last twenty minutes of this film…I just didn’t want that god&^^% dog to DIE, with the exception of some of the scientists such as Adrian Helmsley and the first daughter (yes, Thandie Newton)…I just was CHEERING FOR EVERYONE TO DIE ON THAT GODDAMN BOAT!!!!!
Not to mention the fact that “the world leaders” all agree to pick up those left behind but they don’t because those folks only got on ONE SHIP. The same ship where if some characters had done nothing, the door would not be jammed up at any time. Those small handful of characters would have come aboard with the crowd. That godddamn dog too.
And let’s have a look at that crowd. Most of them were the uber rich who seem to forget that, after the world blows up that they are all now broke, and that a good portion of them have sold out friends and family to take the trip. Those working on the ships were going to get backstabbed, but they too, were forbidden to tell friends and family. Hence, they would have left without them.
See now why I wanted nearly every bastard and bitch (dogs too) DEAD? Those directly involved in the conspiracy will also never be brought to justice! But the real kick in the nuts? A billion people are dead. Buildings in ashes. Real estate is now underwater.
But hey, we’re all alive. Pop the cork off the goddamn wine, throw your papers in the air! CELEBRATE!
The FX are great.
Nothing left for Emmerich to blow up but Mecca, and he couldn’t fucking mess with that.
He couldn’t blow up Mecca cuz what? That alone made me roll my eyes and barf! The world ends, any religion landmarks are destroyed but not Mecca… weird isn’t it? He and his colleagues are just chicken
He didn’t blow up Mecca because he didn’t want to upset the Muslims, I read an article on that. They were afraid it would start something nasty like those riots in Denmark that happened because some artists did a cartoon portrayal of Mohammad. He’s smart and realized that it wouldn’t have been worth it. He actually wanted to, but realized how stupidly crazy it could get.
I think this movie should win best comedy of the year. The effects were awesome, but the acting was god-awful. I couldn’t stop laughing though.
As a big fan of 70’s disaster films I thought 2012 was terrific. It actually was one of the best event films Ive seen in the last decade.
chuck
I hate people for watching his films they suck and always will suck and they always make money so he will always keep making end of the world films.
LoL, I usually try to stay objective cause each to their own, but I am on the same page as you. I loathe Emmerich’s films and wish people would wake up and stop forking money over.
It’s a sad day when utterly stupid movies make twice as much as ones that are actually good.
Didn’t see it this weekend. Watched Crank for the first time instead. But that’s off topic.
I’ve quit smoking…..
Have you? That’s good.
I had, at that point in time :-S
Ha.
I think the movie was fun to watch. Good clean fun, and not always predictable. 39% TM is not fair, sure this movie was stupid and cliché at moments, but fun none the less
cool. It seems like a lot of people actually enjoyed this movie. I thought it looks kind of silly but I’ll have to check it out… John Cusack made me not discredit it entirely hehe.
The destruction of planet Earth as we know it was AWESOME…yet I still felt a bit cheated (I read how Emmerich wanted this to be his last disaster flick, and as such, stuffed the film with as much disaster as he could. I, for one, could’ve handled much more!). As for everything else…..well, there were a lot of tear-jerker moments in the film that just didn’t get me to shed a single tear, because I couldn’t connect that well with the characters….