EVE OF DESTRUCTION
A couple of weeks ago, I saw Roland Emmerich's The Day After Tomorrow. Let's get all the cynical stuff out of the way. The science is bunk, the characterizations as refined as coal, the empty-headed eco-politics as subtle as a gong.
But, oh, the devastation. Natural catastrophes in cinema are so strangely derided. Why? Ecological disasters are a part of everyday life, ours or someone else's. Not a season passes that you aren't pumped full of hysteria about tornadoes in tornado season, hurricanes in hurricane season, earthquakes in Turkey and Iran, floods in China or Missouri, landslides, volcanoes, forest fires, and an occasional Japanese tidal wave to round out the week.
Emmerich's lust for apocalypse is now as obvious as Spielberg's penchant for sentimental cop-outs or George Lucas' obsession with character-free eye candy. In Stargate, he telegraphed this with his pulp-fiction-on-steroids visualization of intergalactic travel and a behemoth starship, sweet and neat when it exploded like a star in the lower atmosphere. In Independence Day, he gave us his uneven but awesome take on War of the Worlds, robbing blithely from Arthur C. Clarke's Childhood's End for a blueprint on scale and magnitude. He happily destroyed New York and Los Angeles in Independence Day. He went back to New York and heaped whoop ass on it in Godzilla, which I had to mention (sorry!) to complete my point.
In The Day After Tomorrow, he shows that he still doesn't give a shit about meaningful characters, and that he'll never yield to the whinging of scientific purists. "I destroy everything in my camera's path," could be his mantra. And that's what makes his empty colossus so delicious.
Yadda yadda blah blah climate conditions set up this raging twin storm that allows Emmerich to -- once again -- wipe out LA and NY. You'd think it would feel old by now, but he finds ways to make catastrophe feel new again. Twister, Volcano, Dante's Peak, Armaggedon, and Deep Impact -- the second age of disaster flicks -- were like R&D projects for The Day After Tomorrow. Emmerich's own ID4 was the template.
In this latest movie, I wish he'd spent as much time destroying Los Angeles as he did New York. The big apple gets clobbered twice in the film, first by the most beautiful tsunami I've seen on screen, and then by some kind of sooper-dooper freeze that turns skyscrapers into shattering husks.
The movie works on another, cathartic, level. This is the first high-profile disaster flick since 9/11. As I said, New York gets it twice. Emmerich avoids the obvious temptation to depict skyscrapers collapsing, but it's nice to see that we're again resilient enough to separate popcorn destruction from the destruction that hurts.
Would I recommend this movie? Let's put it this way: I saw it in IMAX and that's the only way to watch a city get bitch slapped by nature. I'll buy it on DVD. There's just no substituting the ability to watch multiple tornadoes ravage the City of Angels, in slow motion, over and over and over and over...
But, oh, the devastation. Natural catastrophes in cinema are so strangely derided. Why? Ecological disasters are a part of everyday life, ours or someone else's. Not a season passes that you aren't pumped full of hysteria about tornadoes in tornado season, hurricanes in hurricane season, earthquakes in Turkey and Iran, floods in China or Missouri, landslides, volcanoes, forest fires, and an occasional Japanese tidal wave to round out the week.
Emmerich's lust for apocalypse is now as obvious as Spielberg's penchant for sentimental cop-outs or George Lucas' obsession with character-free eye candy. In Stargate, he telegraphed this with his pulp-fiction-on-steroids visualization of intergalactic travel and a behemoth starship, sweet and neat when it exploded like a star in the lower atmosphere. In Independence Day, he gave us his uneven but awesome take on War of the Worlds, robbing blithely from Arthur C. Clarke's Childhood's End for a blueprint on scale and magnitude. He happily destroyed New York and Los Angeles in Independence Day. He went back to New York and heaped whoop ass on it in Godzilla, which I had to mention (sorry!) to complete my point.
In The Day After Tomorrow, he shows that he still doesn't give a shit about meaningful characters, and that he'll never yield to the whinging of scientific purists. "I destroy everything in my camera's path," could be his mantra. And that's what makes his empty colossus so delicious.
Yadda yadda blah blah climate conditions set up this raging twin storm that allows Emmerich to -- once again -- wipe out LA and NY. You'd think it would feel old by now, but he finds ways to make catastrophe feel new again. Twister, Volcano, Dante's Peak, Armaggedon, and Deep Impact -- the second age of disaster flicks -- were like R&D projects for The Day After Tomorrow. Emmerich's own ID4 was the template.
In this latest movie, I wish he'd spent as much time destroying Los Angeles as he did New York. The big apple gets clobbered twice in the film, first by the most beautiful tsunami I've seen on screen, and then by some kind of sooper-dooper freeze that turns skyscrapers into shattering husks.
The movie works on another, cathartic, level. This is the first high-profile disaster flick since 9/11. As I said, New York gets it twice. Emmerich avoids the obvious temptation to depict skyscrapers collapsing, but it's nice to see that we're again resilient enough to separate popcorn destruction from the destruction that hurts.
Would I recommend this movie? Let's put it this way: I saw it in IMAX and that's the only way to watch a city get bitch slapped by nature. I'll buy it on DVD. There's just no substituting the ability to watch multiple tornadoes ravage the City of Angels, in slow motion, over and over and over and over...
posted by Andrew @ 12:56 AM
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