Word: 2012ã
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While Roland Emmerich’s “2012?? was not spectacular as a cinematic effort, its premise wasn’t entirely wrong—the end of history is almost here. It’s slightly more than two years away, though, according to the academic Francis Fukuyama. In “The End of History and the Last Man,” Professor Fukuyama famously argued that liberal democracy will become the last form of government, the final product of the evolutionary mechanism that is history. But both the director of this would...
...only somewhat less-frightening version of “2012?? would involve the end of history arriving with no earthquakes, solar flares, or eruption of mountains in national parks. Instead, the end of history in this epic would arrive incrementally, as societal changes saturate the public sphere with freedom. In this apocalypse, heroism would arise not from a struggle to convince others that the world can be saved from external destruction, but instead that it could be safeguarded from disintegration from within...
...world as we know it on the silver screen every year. This year is no exception—the highly touted apocalyptic vision “2012,” hitting theaters soon, puts a Mesoamerican twist on the conventional doomsday script. Yet though “2012?? promises little in the way of a groundbreaking storyline, it promises nevertheless to be a box office hit—for, like all disaster movies, it portrays some of our culture’s most pressing philosophical concerns through its apocalyptic visions flashing onscreen...
Revolving around the date of Dec. 21, 2012, the supposed end of the Mayan calendar, “2012?? shows few signs of being any different from any of the other disaster films to have graced the cinema marquee in the past half decade or so. The trailer is almost archetypal: towering oceanic waves flatten West Coast metropolises, impossibly schismatic earthquakes swallow vehicles in urban centers, and all of humanity resorts to quasi-primal instincts while still maintaining a sense of decency and hope in times of bleak despair. We all know how this ends, of course: Mankind...
...2012?? opened last weekend and saw its profits go into the black instantly with a worldwide gross of $225 million. The movie probably fell far short of anyone’s expectation of a quality film—but that doesn’t matter. What matters is that it, like its predecessors, allows audiences to escape into their own minds and ponder some of the biggest questions ever asked. And for that reason, it will surely continue to fill entire theatres with the same suckers who succumb to these movies every single year...