2:11:24 PM Will Edmondson: This week we saw how the world is going to end in "2012," Tara. How do you feel about humanity's fate?
2:11:57 PM Tara Ariano: Here's the best measure of the movie: I'm terrified of the apocalypse, and I laughed my way through the whole two and a half hours of this thing.
2:12:50 PM Will Edmondson: Right. Now, it should be said -- charitably -- that this is a very polarizing movie. The range on Metacritic is 100%-20%. And, it just so happens that both views of "2012" are well represented in this conversation, because I thought it wasn't very good at all.

2:15:25 PM Tara Ariano: I'll go first: this movie is too silly to take at all seriously. Whatever director Roland Emmerich's intentions, it ends up a confused muddle with repeated events, poorly developed characters, and hackneyed dialogue. (How hackneyed? Chiwetel Ejiofor, as a government geologist who figures out the whole world is about to bust up, gets the classic camera-push-in as he murmurs, "My God" -- twice). I'm not going to sit here and say it's not bad -- but it's AWESOMELY bad.
2:16:30 PM Will Edmondson: It's certainly bad, but it's not even Emmerich's best disaster movie -- that would be "Independence Day." Forget taking "2012" seriously; it takes ITSELF too seriously. "Independence Day" had Will Smith punching aliens and snarling, "Welcome to Earth!" That's obviously ridiculous, but in a hysterically bad way. "2012" adds too many poor morality discussions, "evil" characters hoarding supplies, and ridiculous family values. I mean this whole thing was so poorly guided and conceived that calling it a movie isn't fair to other movies. That being said, most of this movie was disaster porn, granted.
2:19:35 PM Tara Ariano: Yes. I didn't care about any of the characters or their relationships because they WEREN'T characters; they were props, to be placed in the paths of various catastrophes.
2:20:30 PM Will Edmondson: Right, they had no business being in the movie. Other than Woody Harrelson playing a ridicluous conspiracy theorist nutjob who's addicted to pickles (a.k.a. himself). He was fantastic.

2:21:16 PM Tara Ariano: Oh, no question. He behaved in the movie the way everyone should have, in that he was absurd and over-the-top, the whole way through.
2:25:00 PM Will Edmondson: The rest of the characters, on the other hand, were absurd. Take for example the scene when John Cusack is talking to his son who doesn't respect him while they're on a plane en route to the vessels that will help them to survive the apocalypse. The son has spent the movie identifying more with his stepfather (he even texts his stepfather while camping with his real dad), and thinking his dad is a joke. So, while flying in a Russian cargo plane, surrounded by ridiculous supercars, he turns to his father and asks, "Why don't you like [the stepfather]?" Because this kid -- who just LITERALLY SAW HIS HOMETOWN CITY OF LOS ANGELES DISINTEGRATE BEFORE HIS EYES -- feels so safe in a rickety cargo plane that he takes the opportunity to solve some real family problems. This movie is full of scenes like that, where it tries to do too much. Which is ironic, because for most of the TWO AND A HALF HOURS that this movie took from my life, I was bored out of my mind.
2:27:10 PM Tara Ariano: Will, they had to establish that the stepfather wasn't a bad guy just because he wears glasses and a Bluetooth. Just kidding, that's totally movie shorthand for "coward."
2:28:52 PM Will Edmondson: Right, so we've established that the characters in this movie get way too much screen time, and are horrible and shouldn't be taken seriously. They also dragged out the movie to an "Are you kidding me!?," check-your-watch-15 times length, and should be viewed as accessories.

2:29:12 PM Will Edmondson: Let's talk about the CGI now -- the computer-aided death and destruction, which is why we went to the movie to begin with.
2:30:14 PM Tara Ariano: Yes. And it was pretty uneven. A lot of times, movies can get away with shoddy animation of stuff where we don't actually know what it looks like. But we've all seen footage of earthquakes, and buildings imploding, so when those scenes look like they were captured from a videogame, it's a problem.
2:31:37 PM Will Edmondson: Right. I thought I was watching "2012: The Videogame," I agree. But I was okay with that; visually, it was very impressive. It definitely, legitimately looked like the Randy's Donut sign was rolling through downtown L.A. Well done, computers. The problem was not the graphical achievement itself, it was what Emmerich and crew decided to make those graphics show.
2:33:22 PM Tara Ariano: As you may have noticed, Will, my favorite thing was calling out each landmark as it crumbled. Not downtown L.A.! Not The Wynn! Not that Jesus in Rio! Nooooo!
2:36:00 PM Will Edmondson: Right, but here's why that was a problem: Because it was too realistic. It wasn't like in "Independence Day," when a spaceship the size of Australia shoots a laser at the White House and blows it up. This was built on a natural apocalyptic disaster premise. To me, seeing skyscrapers smash into each other as they fall to the ground in L.A. is one thing. It's a very, very different thing to then see office workers clinging in vain to the walls as their co-workers plummet to their deaths all around them. One scene reminded me so much of that 9/11 "Falling Man" image that it couldn't have been a coincidence.
2:38:33 PM Tara Ariano: Yes. Even though those were tiny computer-animated pixels, that was in poor taste.
2:40:57 PM Will Edmondson: And it wasn't just that scene: It extended the poor taste to blatant, ridiculous metaphors about religion, wealth, and greed.

2:41:11 PM Tara Ariano: Oh yes -- the movie's secret socialist/Buddhist agenda. No wonder your capitalist WASP ass hated it!
2:43:28 PM Will Edmondson: Look: Was the scene at St. Peter's Basilica in Rome, where the Pope is addressing millions of Catholics praying to be spared in the Apocalypse, before they all die in grandiose earthquake fashion, really an essential plot point? Was there any doubt that in the Sistine Chapel, once the structure started cracking in the earthquake, that one of those cracks would artfully go right between the fingers of God and man?
2:43:46 PM Tara Ariano: No, there wasn't. Which is why it cracked me up. (No pun intended.)
2:47:01 PM Will Edmondson: See, to me that seems cheap and ridiculous, and definitely not funny. Regardless of your view of religion, the Catholic church, whatever: This movie is about six billion people dying. That's the subtext in all of this. How those dying people react to their fates, whether that's through prayer, or figuring out a scientific way to build A.R.K.s (oh, like arks...from the Bible! I get it, Roland Emmerich!) to survive, or whatever, is not something that should be used for laughs.
2:47:39 PM Tara Ariano: Okay. On the other hand, they're not real, and neither is this apocalypse.

2:54:48 PM Will Edmondson: Well, all fictional movies aren't real. But most have the decency to not use a world-ending apocalyptic event to give their audience a fun way to enjoy the demise of the institutions, groups, and nations that they disagree with. if the whole "morality" argument at the end of the movie is to be believed -- again, this movie is full of ridiculousness, but bear with me -- and "we're all people," then, then how can "2012" take so many pot shots at specific groups of "our" humanity and have that somehow not be hypocritical?
2:55:55 PM Tara Ariano: I guess -- I've just seen the same exact thing before sooooo many times. This movie has a ton in common with, for instance, "Deep Impact." (Ironically titled, since no one remembers it but me.) And in that one they DO use a lottery to determine who gets to go in the bunkers.
2:56:45 PM Will Edmondson: Which is a completely utopian, unrealistic, ridiculous thing. Take Oliver Platt, the "bad guy" in "2012," who plays the evil Chief of Staff for the President. (Aside: Danny Glover plays the president, and Danny Glover is the man.)
2:58:33 PM Tara Ariano: Right. We're supposed to think Platt's character is a monster because he doesn't want to move his elderly, senile mother into an A.R.K., but...doesn't he kind of have a point?

3:01:37 PM Will Edmondson: That's one issue. The other one is that he is the one that tells the utopian Chiwetel Ejiofor that the seats on the A.R.K.s were sold for one billion Euros apiece. Why? Well, because running a top-secret world-saving A.R.K. development program in the side of the Himalayas takes money, and they'd have to appeal to the private sector for funding, of course! Let alone the obvious real-world fact that the rich and connected would find a way to save themselves. That's the world we live in, for better or for worse, you supposedly-brilliant scientist!
3:02:05 PM Tara Ariano: I don't know that the movie necessarily disagrees with you, since the plan does work.
3:02:45 PM Will Edmondson: That scene was definitely supposed to further Platt's position as "the bad guy" for not wanting to save the Chinese dockworkers and wanting to save his rich "customers" instead. Also: All the "customers" were screened carefully for eugenics to prolong the human race, and the "brilliant scientist" is cool with that morality quandary?
3:03:42 PM Tara Ariano: Pretty sure that was a lie, anyway, to cover up who they actually were (rich people).
3:04:18 PM Will Edmondson: Whether or not it was true is irrelevant; if this scientist is such a moral stickler, he should've caught on to that little crumb.
3:05:09 PM Tara Ariano: I can't argue with anything you're saying: the movie was dumb. But I thought it was entertainingly dumb, and you didn't. I expect to find us both on the same side next week.
3:06:43 PM Will Edmondson: It's a question of what you find entertaining. I felt like I did during "Inglourious Basterds" when I realized the juxtaposition between the fake-Nazis cheering the fake-Americans being massacred in the propaganda film and the actual, real-life audience cheering the laughing Nazis being butchered by the Americans in the movie theater bomb scene. That's not a fun feeling, for me anyway. Also not fun: Teenage vampires. (How about that for a transition, sports fans!?)

3:08:18 PM Tara Ariano: Yes. "The Twilight Saga: New Moon" is opening on the most screens, and is also the most critic-proof. There's no way it won't come in first.
3:09:18 PM Will Edmondson: Right, and I did assert during the podcast we taped after watching "Twilight" that I would never in a million years ever see "New Moon." But this is the Internet, and I lie all the time. I'm not excited about it, though.
3:09:41 PM Tara Ariano: I'd be concerned if you were.