But the waters... receded
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| Sextant (NOAA), Public Domain |
It looks like the neutrinos coming from the sun have mutated into a new kind of nuclear particle. They're heating up the Earth's core and suddenly act like microwaves.
-Infamous line from 2012
Emmerich's prior release, 10,000BC, was an historiographical jumble of nonsense - an anachronistic nightmare that made our hunter-gatherer ancestors weep (and not because of the well-written characters and their dilemma). I'd liked to have seen something remotely accurate about Eurasian pre-history in the vain of Apocalypto, but the resultant mess of a whole range of studies was simply a pre-echo of the scientific dogshit that '2012' trampled into the red carpet. The voice rises again: "it's not meant to be scientifically accurate!". Au contraire, the problem with '2012' or, say, another diabolical film like The Core being 'science-fiction' is that they do not establish logical fictitious science. In Arthur C Clarke's 2061: Odyssey Three he described the engines of a craft as being powered by "muon catalysed fusion" which is credible from the perspective of real science (even if it hasn't been achieved as yet in the present) but the idea, seen in '2012', of neutrinos mutating into microwaves (or whatever else to the same effect) for no discernible reason and then just as miraculously changing back by the end of the film to leave a habitable world for the survivors is more suited to the mysterious ways of the god of the bible than science-fiction - fitting, given the heavy allusions toward Noah's Ark in the final shots. And let's not even get started on the razor-thin premise of said turd that gave more airtime to this irritating meme concerning the "Mayan Calendar". Too late. Calendars are cyclical. It's about as existentially relevant as the 31st of December. It's all about the celestial sphere: clocks measure magnitudes of angles of movement and calendars mark the positions of objects. If the galactic and solar ecliptic planes do align, well it's the Age of Aquarius. To all intents the destruction of anything at the end of the count should be understood metaphorically. The word 'apocalypse' is Greek for Revelation, which is something itself that is theologically considered allegory these days.
Defining science-fiction as above is not to say there isn't room for the magical, paranormal or theological in a good story. It's just that if you take it too far you end up with a space opera and if you don't create any consistent logic in your supposedly scientific world you end up with Star Trek Voyager. My dad is a big Arthur C Clarke fan and I noted a long time ago the spiritual themes in work like The Star and The Nine Billion Names of God. Even before that I remember seeing a book in the house called The Hammer of God and that spoke for itself even if it was just a title. The aforementioned book is very relevant to this post because it was the origin of the film Deep Impact - a film I have long meant to praise over the corpse of Armageddon. Don't even let that voice start up again - I own The Rock, but the rest of Bay's oeuvre I can quite happily die without ever seeing (I'll get round to watching Bad Boys, though) - but there's no way I could ever see Armageddon for a second time without something giving way in my brain. Not because of all the nitpicking I'd have to do, but because of the moronic tone. It looks like the shallow crib-sheet rewrite of Deep Impact that it's alleged to be; and Deep Impact (herein DI) is not a modern Citizen Kane by any means. The only thing Bay's film about helicopters flying at sunset has over Speilberg's production is a good song. There's plenty of inaccuracies in DI, just as in Armageddon, and I could nitpick quite happily whilst watching it (and did subconsciously as I enjoyed seeing it again for the first time in years), but it is essentially a far more engaging disaster movie than any other, in my opinion. If you haven't seen this fourteen year old film...
««Spoilers for Deep Impact throughout»»
In so many of Emmerich's disaster films we see a lot of people, but never really know anyone. The world is populated by stock characters, nobodies who will die in the impending doom, and the main characters who have a nice top-down view of events but are fairly two dimensional.
In Stargate, James Spader is an egyptologist who uncovers the secret of utilising the portal and subsequently becomes part of the expedition to the other side which places him at the centre of the story.
In Independence Day, Jeff Goldblum is a cable television engineer who is a computer whizz kid and figures out the plans of the aliens, expounds said plans, and develops a means to combat it which places him at the centre of the story.
In Godzilla, Matthew Broderick is a biologist who specialises in the effects of radiation on wildlife and figures out the creature is pregnant after becoming part of the military effort to stop the giant lizard's rampage, which places him at the centre of the story.
In The Day After Tomorrow, Dennis Quaid is a scientist who has the only climate model that can explain what's going on and therefore can exposit forthcoming challenges in the narrative. Breaking the mould here, it's actually his son Jake Gyllenhaal that's the focus of much of the running time using knowledge his father imparts at the onset of the disaster.
In DI we have a story told from three perspectives; maybe three and a half if you include the scenes of Morgan Freeman as the President of the United States, though his scenes are all broadcasts and in that sense we are only seeing what our primary characters on the ground are viewing. Elijah Wood is a teenaged amateur astronomer who spots the approaching comet and Téa Leoni is a junior television reporter who believes she has uncovered a presidential affair. During events we weave between each perspective, in many cases as Wood watching Leoni on television reporting on the actions of the third vantage - the crew of the spacecraft sent to destroy the comet. Admittedly, by the introduction of the crew of the 'Messiah' the space for characterisation is minimal. Of them only Robert Duvall's old Apollo astronaut gets much insight.
A multitude of characters does not necessarily confuse an audience and harm their understanding of the narrative if each is clearly defined. Predator is a classic example of making even the minor members of a group memorable by giving each an unique trait. Most action films are populated by the lead star and a bunch of expendables who we will never have the slightest emotional investment in - so when the inevitable scene in which one of them must sacrifice himself for the group rolls around, it's rendered completely meaningless. The emotional impact of the sacrifice of the Messiah crew to save Earth is buoyed by the scene of their final goodbyes, but still blunted by the relative absence of characterisation in prior appearances. Expanding their stories was likely never possible as there is evidence that further details of our two primary characters hit the cutting-room floor to bring the film under three hours. Dougray Scott's cameraman was seemingly involved in some kind of relationship with Leoni's reporter that quite obviously got cut from the film as he phases in and out of existence like Schrödinger's Cat throughout. Téa Leoni's acting comes in for harsh criticisms (IMDB comment: "she seems quite high on weed throughout the film"), though I believe it's a case of performance lost in the translation of editing as the on-screen backstory explains her withdrawnness as a result of her childhood.
Deep Impact certainly has better characterisation than most disaster films and for this it is criticised as boring, whereas Armageddon gets a free pass because it's all about oil rig workers sticking it to the man and stuff blowing up. What is it we want from a disaster film? If we want the spectacle of watching shit be destroyed then why bother with story and characters? It's not supposed to be about the disaster itself, but the effects of the disaster on people. You have the character, you have the obstacle, and the character overcomes it and learns something. If you just want to see a huge wave sweep away everything in its path then just watch some hand-held footage of the 2004 Indian Ocean tsunami. Oh, wait, that's not entertainment. When I saw helicopter footage of a car trying to outrun the 2011 tsunami in Japan I wasn't entertained, I was horrified. Now when I think of John Cusack outrunning death in a camper van in '2012' I find it just that bit insensitive, coupled with the fact I suspect he was slumming it for the money.
What I liked about DI was that prominent and main characters could die. Granted, Jenny Lerner is alive for almost the entire duration, but her death at the climax is not throwaway. Had she taken her place on the helicopter and taken refuge from the impact she would have acted on external influences. Her decision to instead join her estranged father on the beach in the face of certain death is irrational unless you understand that a character is motivated by internal desires - in her case to make amends rather than live her life carrying those burdens. It sounds strange to some that not everyone is acting on self-preservation and scrambling to survive, yet we see plenty of people doing just that. We equally see many face their fate (Jenny and her father) and some even taking control of it (Jenny's mother), if that doesn't sound like a romanticisation of suicide. The first three Terminator films were a metaphor for death - you could outrun it for a while, you could postpone it, but in the end it was an inevitability. A lot of the modern disaster films are the hero kicking over the chessboard and giving the finger to Death. The "deep impact" of the title was of that on its characters. Leo Beidermann finds himself growing up very quickly when he marries his close friend Sarah in an attempt to save her and her family. He even goes back for her when his own survival is assured which results in a telling scene in which his father realises this. Sarah too has responsibility foisted upon her when her parents force her to take her baby brother to safety when their own deaths are impending. Personally, I find that scene the most distressing of the whole film.
That said, there's a sense of having your cake and eating it as we end up with the comet fragmented into two providing us with both the disaster (the impact of the smaller piece) and triumph (the sacrifice to destroy the lethal larger piece). Yet we still never really get a street level perspective, we never really approach these fictional disasters from the perspective of someone who isn't rich or powerful or famous and who is absolutely going to die and is forced to realise this. Methinks an audience would find their popcorn a bit harder to swallow if they were to sit through some deep existential questions. All the more because most believe they would survive such incidents. I just hope I haven't spent three days writing two thousand words only for the Y2K Bug to be resurrected by the Mayans who, by the way, couldn't predict the end of their own civilisation.
Written 16th - 19th of December
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