Monday, June 1, 2009

2012 will be a grave, grave year...

It will be the year that I have to graduate and leave college. Maybe.

What? No. No, not me, I don't buy into that 2012 bullshit one bit. I've already lived through one apocalypse, and it made for a terrible New Year's.

Really, what is it about the year 2012 that is so damn significant? Because the Mayan Calendar ends on that year? A cycle of keeping track of time on an ancient calendar will end, so what? Did they accurately determine the age of the earth and the universe itself? What credibility did they have for determining the destiny of existence? The calendar goes by cycles of 5125 years; what happened 5122 years ago that was so earth-shattering? Why should I believe the ancient Mayans knew anything we couldn't find out for ourselves with our more advanced understanding of the cosmos? And no, there's nothing astronomically sigificant about this year. There's no "galactic alignment", and a rearranging of how we view arbitrary constellations will not have any effect on any aspect of your everyday life, much less the fate of civilization.

Oh, and astrologers, you'd be interested to know that our view of the original 12 zodiac signs changes monthly alignment* every 2000 years, so all of your horoscopes are already one sign off. Not that it has any impact on the validity of astrology, because there isn't any.

And this New Age idiocy about a paradigm shift in spirituality? Does anyone really believe that on the 21st of December, 2012, everyone's suddenly going to have a change of heart and live together in peace without explanation? Get real, please. It's hard enough trying to figure out feasible solutions to the world's problems without this nonsense muddying things up.

More importantly, there will be a really bad movie coming out in November of 2009 about this supposed doomsday scenario. Look cool? No? Good. Yes? Keep in mind this is the same idiot (I'm not even going to dignify him by mentioning his name) who made Stargate, Independence Day, Godzilla (the american remake), The Day After Tomorrow, and to top off this shit sundae, 10,000 BC, a movie taking place during the agricultural revolution about cavemen who must do battle with woolly mammoths and horsemen who are capable of building pyramids. Yeah... Why exactly should we think this guy has any say in the significance of specific dates if he can't even get it straight with regards to events in the past. How do you screw that up? "Before the coming of the End Times in 2021, just remember how close humanity came to an abrupt end when the dinosaurs came back in the 19th century, and... Wha- Oh shit."

All of these movies are made to be big and gaudy with trailers designed to pull you in by not letting on the actual plot of the film. 2012's trailer is fairly indicative of this pattern. Fortunately there's never much of a plot to any of these godawful things, so you've got it all figured out from the beginning whether you know it or not. What do you see in the trailer? It's the end of the world, and the incompetent governments of the world can do nothing to save us. No, more than that. They will not try to do anything to save us. That's what the captions say. They've blatantly played the anti-government card to try and hook in as many americans and rebels-without-a-clue as possible. As much as I criticize the United States government for being an overall incompetent political body, I'm not that stupid. I'm not going to be psyched for a movie just because you tell me the government can't be trusted. I know that already, tell me something I don't know. You know, something interesting.

Oh, but they do tell us something. They tell us to "find out the truth". Upyours. Tell me the truth! It's your movie, you do your research! What is it with truth-finding in american pop culture that usually means buying into hyped-up bullshit? The truth is not out there, it's not waiting to be uncovered, it's not hidden, it's not coded, it's not secret. The truth is right in front of you. You may point out that there's too much bullshit to figure out what's real. But that's my point. Watch anything on television, and you'll realize the truth: it's all bullshit. That's the truth. What? You were expecting a thriller to start up when you found it? If you're so damn curious about a specific claim, look up a credible academic or professional source.

But then if everyone thought critically, we wouldn't have hack film-makers informing us that 9/11 was an inside job.

But what's most alarming about this film is not the subject matter or premise or even the sheer idiocy that is bound to flow forth once it's released. It's that this film is most probably going to make a massive profit, despite all forewarning that it's going to be really, really bad. Think I'm too presumptuous? Look at all those movies listed above. Actually, look at the one. The Day After Tomorrow. Can you think of anything that could make 2012 any different? The premise is the same, the effects look (from the trailer) the same, the plot of these movies never deviates in complexity or coherence, and the standard of acting is far from impressive. (Matthew Broderick? Are you FUCKING joking?) And we keep telling ourselves the same thing every time the same guy makes another movie. So why do we keep going to see them?? These films have collectively raked in almost a billion dollars. That's no small amount for a series of terrible disaster movies. Why do we keep giving these guys the benefit of the doubt? I can judge a book by it's cover if the cover treats me like a 12-year-old. This is not impressive material for a high-budget film-maker.

DON'T SEE 2012. DON'T SEE ANY OF THIS GUY'S MOVIES EVER AGAIN. You're doing yourself a favor.

By the way, the music stolen blatantly from the Shining trailer was a nice touch of incompetency.


*I don't know why all the videos of Bill Nye pwning astrology have the ratings and comments disabled. Are people that persistent in their faith in astrology that they make rational discussion impossible? Christ, it's all made up, guys, kids' stuff.

1 comment:

  1. the day after tomorrow was horrible..."oh no wolves! no worries, the weather will kill 'em. oh no the weather! oh don't worry, this wooden door will keep it at bay. and we'll be fine by the heat of this fireplace"

    fail.

    ReplyDelete