Wolf Can Fly, Too

I have just seen the new Hollywood  blockbuster, 2012. One thing is for sure – it is most definitely a Hollywood film; full of unnecessary “climax,” the infamous digital clock counting down, the selfless American President, the unlikely romance, and the barrage of pseudo-science. But since it's Hollywood, and since it's just for entertainment, I'll let those slip.

The story began with some Indian scientist called up his American colleague regarding some geological anomaly. Turned out that he's not the only one making the observation on the abnormal behavior of the neutrino capturing water pit (please ask my friend Pinghan for more information on this,) but is the first one to make the connection that the event was triggered by the solar/galactic activities that happened every 4 billion years or so. The clock has started ticking, and not much time is left for the world as we know it.

The governments around the world decided to combine their effort and start building arks in the Himalayas, collecting animals and precious artworks while raising funds for the project by selling seat/tickets to the very wealthy peoples around the world. Shifting time to 2012, the disasters strike way before the predicted schedule, and the governments were caught off guard: not enough preparations were made to save everyone on the planet. California slips into the Pacific as massive fault line scarred the earth, the Yellowstone becomes the site of a super volcano, and Hawaii is engulfed in flame. The people who have clue as to where to find the arks fought their way towards Tibet. Drama and suspense ensue as everyone trying to get into the arks.

Can the world turn upside down as the movie depicted? Most likely not. Seismic activities  are usually slow, and large cracks in the land, like the East Africa Rift, will generally not happen over a few years, let alone the formation of a hundred feet deep crack over a few minutes. Another major problem with the plot is that they had the main characters flying through/out of volcano clouds, which has been demonstrated to be nearly impossible by multiple incidents of airliner loosing all power from their engines due to fuel injector clogging by the volcano ashes. It's just a movie, so quite worrying about the end of the world.

The entertainment value of the film is great, at least for those who saw it for the first time. I doubt that people would enjoy it as much on revisits, though. The CGs are decent, but at points you can clearly tell that what you're looking at is a CGI object instead of a model/mock-up. Whoever directed this film was using the suspense factor to excess, so the reactions become more like "not again..." instead of "OMG!! RUN!!!!"

On a side note, we've decided to use my credit card for internet movie ticket purchase next time we go to the movie, better discount from my bank.