Filming, planned for Los Angeles, began in Vancouver in early August 2008 and wrapped up in mid-October 2008.[4][5] The film ran a lengthy advertising campaign, which included the creation of a website from its main characters' point of view[6] and a viral marketing website on which filmgoers could register for a lottery number to save them from the ensuing disaster.[7]
In 2010, over forty-six nations begin building nine arks in the Himalayas, in Tibet, and storing artifacts in secure locations. Nima, a Buddhist monk, is evacuated with his grandparents, and his brother Tenzin joins the ark project. Additional funding is secretly raised by selling tickets to the rich for €1 billion per person.
Despite his initial skepticism, Jackson heeds Charlie's warning after seeing indications that validate it. At the Santa Monica Airport, after dropping off Yuri's sons Alec and Oleg, who also warn of impending doom as they board a plane, he rents a Cessna 340A and sets out to rescue his family. As the Pacific Coast suffers a horrific 10.9 earthquake along the San Andreas Fault, Jackson and his family reach the airport and get the Cessna airborne. The group flies to Yellowstone and Jackson retrieves Charlie's map of the arks' location. The Yellowstone Caldera erupts, with Charlie staying behind to finish his broadcast; he is killed by debris. Realizing they need a larger plane to fly to Asia, the group lands at McCarran International Airport south of Downtown Las Vegas to search for one.
Adrian, Carl, and First Daughter Laura fly to the arks, while President Wilson remains in the White House to address the nation. Jackson finds the Karpovs, Yuri's girlfriend Tamara, and their pilot Sasha. Sasha and Gordon fly the families out in an Antonov An-500, as the volcanic ashes from the Caldera envelop the Las Vegas Valley. The planet's crust shifts resulting in billions dead in disasters worldwide, including President Wilson. With the presidential line of succession gone, following the death of the Vice President and the disappearance of the Speaker of the House, Carl appoints himself acting commander-in-chief.
Upon reaching the Himalayas, the Antonov's engines malfunction. As the plane touches down on a glacier, the party uses a Bentley Flying Spur stored in the hold to escape, except Sasha, who stays in the cockpit and is killed when the jet goes over a cliff. The survivors are spotted by Chinese Air Force helicopters, which take only the three ticket-bearing Karpovs, leaving Tamara and Jackson's family behind. The abandoned group later encounters Nima, who, with his own family, takes them to the arks, where they stow away on Ark 4 with Tenzin's help.
With a megatsunami approaching, Carl orders the loading gates closed, though most people have not boarded. Adrian persuades the captain and the other surviving world leaders to allow passengers aboard the arks, but Yuri falls to his death as he pushes his sons onto Ark 4. The gate closes after survivors are on board, injuring Tenzin and fatally crushing Gordon. Tenzin's impact driver used to access the ship gets lodged in the gate mechanism, preventing it from closing completely and disabling the ship's engines. As the tsunami strikes, the ark starts flooding as it is set adrift, heading for Mount Everest. Adrian rushes to clear the gears, but watertight doors close, trapping the stowaways and isolating Tamara. Noah and Jackson dislodge the tool. The crew regains control of the ark, while Jackson and Noah make it back safely.
Twenty-seven days later, the waters are receding. The arks approach the Cape of Good Hope, where the Drakensberg Mountains are the highest mountain range on Earth. Adrian and Laura begin a relationship, while Jackson and Kate reconcile.
Alternate ending
An alternate ending appears in the film's DVD release. After Ark 4's Captain Michaels announces that they are heading for the Cape of Good Hope, Adrian learns by phone that his father, Harry, and Harry's friend Tony Delgatto, survived a megatsunami that capsized their cruise shipGenesis. Adrian and Laura strike up a friendship with the Curtis family, Kate thanks Laura for taking care of Lilly, Laura tells Jackson that she enjoyed his book Farewell Atlantis, and Jackson and Adrian have a conversation reflecting on the events of the worldwide crisis. Carl apologizes to Adrian and Laura for his negligent actions. Jackson returns Noah's cell phone, which he recovered during the Ark 4 flood. Finally, the ark finds the shipwrecked Genesis and its survivors on a beach.[8]
Graham Hancock's Fingerprints of the Gods was listed in 2012's credits as the film's inspiration,[13] and Emmerich said in a Time Out interview: "I always wanted to do a biblical flood movie, but I never felt I had the hook. I first read about the Earth's crust displacement theory in Graham Hancock's Fingerprints of the Gods."[14] He and composer-producer Harald Kloser worked closely together, co-writing a spec script (also titled 2012) which was marketed to studios in February 2008. A number of studios heard budget projection and story plans from Emmerich and his representatives, a process the director had previously undertaken for Independence Day (1996) and The Day After Tomorrow (2004).[15]
Later that month, Sony Pictures Entertainment obtained the rights to the spec script. Planned for distribution by Columbia Pictures,[16]2012 cost less than its budget; according to Emmerich, the film was produced for about $200 million.[2]
The film depicts the destruction of several cultural and historical landmarks around the world. Emmerich said that the Kaaba was considered for selection, but Kloser was concerned about a possible fatwa against him.[19]
2012 was marketed through the fictional Institute for Human Continuity, at a viral marketing website that was created by the movie studio. The website featured main-character Jackson Curtis' book Farewell Atlantis, streaming media, blog updates, and radio broadcasts from zealot Charlie Frost on his website, This Is the End.[6] On November 12, 2008, the studio released the first trailer for 2012, which ended with a suggestion to viewers to "find out the truth" by entering "2012" on a search engine. The Guardian called the film's marketing "deeply flawed", associating it with "websites that make even more spurious claims about 2012".[22]
At the website, filmgoers could register for a lottery number to be part of a small population that would be rescued from the global destruction.[7] David Morrison of NASA, who had received over 1,000 inquiries from people who thought the website was genuine, condemned it. "I've even had cases of teenagers writing to me saying they are contemplating suicide because they don't want to see the world end", Morrison said. "I think when you lie on the internet and scare children to make a buck, that is ethically wrong."[23] Another marketing website promoted Farewell Atlantis.[6]
Comcast organized a "roadblock campaign" to promote the film in which a two-minute scene was broadcast on 450 American commercial television networks, local English-language and Spanish-language stations, and 89 cable outlets during a ten-minute window between 10:50 and 11:00 pm Eastern and Pacific Time on October 1, 2009.[24] The scene featured the destruction of Los Angeles and ended with a cliffhanger, with the entire 5:38 clip available on Comcast's Fancast website. According to Variety, "The stunt will put the footage in front of 90% of all households watching ad-supported TV, or nearly 110 million viewers. When combined with online and mobile streams, that could increase to more than 140 million".[24]
2012 grossed $166.1 million in North America and $603.5 million in other territories for a worldwide total of $769.6 million against a production budget of $200 million,[3] making it the first film to gross over $700 million worldwide without making $200 million domestically.[28] Worldwide, it was the fifth-highest-grossing 2009 film[29] and the fifth-highest-grossing film distributed by Sony-Columbia, (behind Sam Raimi's Spider-Man trilogy and Skyfall).[30]2012 is the second-highest-grossing film directed by Roland Emmerich, behind Independence Day (1996).[31] It earned $230.5 million on its worldwide opening weekend, the fourth-largest opening of 2009 and for Sony-Columbia.[32]
2012 ranked number one on its opening weekend, grossing $65,237,614 on its first weekend (the fourth-largest opening for a disaster film).[33] Outside North America it is the 28th-highest-grossing film, the fourth-highest-grossing 2009 film,[34] and the second-highest-grossing film distributed by Sony-Columbia, after Skyfall. 2012 earned $165.2 million on its opening weekend, the 20th-largest overseas opening.[35] In total earnings, the film's three highest-grossing territories after North America were China ($68.7 million), France and the Maghreb ($44.0 million), and Japan ($42.6 million).[36]
In 2020, the film received renewed interest during the COVID-19 pandemic, becoming the second-most popular film and seventh-most popular overall title on Netflix in March 2020.[37]
Critical response
On Rotten Tomatoes, 2012 has an approval rating of 39% based on 247 reviews and an average rating of 5.20/10. The site's critical consensus reads, "Roland Emmerich's 2012 provides plenty of visual thrills, but lacks a strong enough script to support its massive scope and inflated length."[38] On Metacritic, the film has a score of 49 out of 100 based on 34 critics, indicating "mixed or average reviews".[39] Audiences polled by CinemaScore gave the film an average grade of "B+" on an A+ to F scale.[40]
Roger Ebert praised 2012, giving it 3+1⁄2 stars out of 4 and saying that it "delivers what it promises and since no sentient being will buy a ticket expecting anything else, it will be, for its audiences, one of the most satisfactory films of the year".[41] Ebert and Claudia Puig of USA Today called the film the "mother of all disaster movies".[41][42] Dan Kois of The Washington Post gave the film 4 out of 4 stars, deeming it "the crowning achievement in Emmerich's long, profitable career as a destroyer of worlds."[43] Jim Schembri of The Age gave the film 4 out of 5 stars, describing it as "a great, big, fat, stupid, greasy cheeseburger of a movie designed to show, in vivid detail, what the end of human civilisation will look like according to his vast army of brilliant visual effects artists."[44]
Peter Travers of Rolling Stone compared the film to Transformers: Revenge of the Fallen, writing: "Beware 2012, which works the dubious miracle of almost matching Transformers 2 for sheer, cynical, mind-numbing, time-wasting, money-draining, soul-sucking stupidity."[45] Rick Groen of The Globe and Mail gave the film 1 out of 4 stars, writing: "As always in Emmerich's rollicking Armageddons, the cannon speaks with an expensive bang, while the fodder gets afforded nary a whimper."[46]Christopher Orr of The New Republic wrote that the film's "ludicrous thrills begin burning themselves out by the movie's midpoint", and added: "As the movie approaches its two-and-a-half hour mark, you, too, may feel that The End can't come soon enough."[47] Tim Robey of The Daily Telegraph gave the film 2 out of 5 stars, saying that it was "dim, dim, dim, and so absurdly overscaled that we're not supposed to mind."[48] Linda Barnard of the Toronto Star gave the film 1 out of 4 stars, writing: "the clunky script and kitchen-sink approach to Emmerich's global apocalypse tale... makes the movie fail on a bunch of fronts."[49]
Haarm-Pieter Duiker, Marten Larsson, Ryo Sakaguchi, Hanzhi Tang for "Los Angeles Destruction"
Nominated
Canceled television spin-off
In 2010 Entertainment Weekly reported a planned spin-off television series, 2013, which would have been a sequel to the film.[56]2012 executive producer Mark Gordon told the magazine, "ABC will have an opening in their disaster-related programming after Lost ends, so people would be interested in this topic on a weekly basis. There's hope for the world despite the magnitude of the 2012 disaster as seen in the film. After the movie, there are some people who survive, and the question is how will these survivors build a new world and what will it look like. That might make an interesting TV series."[56] However, plans were canceled for budget reasons.[56] It would have been Emmerich's third film to spawn a spin-off; the first was Stargate (followed by Stargate SG-1, Stargate Infinity, Stargate Atlantis, Stargate Universe), and the second was Godzilla (followed by the animated Godzilla: The Series).
^Connor, Steve (October 17, 2009). "Relax, the end isn't nigh". The Independent. London. Archived from the original on October 20, 2009. Retrieved October 20, 2015.
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