2012/Headscratchers

Everything About Fiction You Never Wanted to Know.


  • This has bugged me the entire movie. Woody has a little video that explains what's happening with cute drawings and cartoons. In the video he says "This happens once every six-hundred-fifty-thousand years." I heard that and literally did a double take. 650,000 years? Really?! I don't know if that's a didn't do the research, or if they really think the dinosaurs were around less than a million years ago. So what was that?
  • Los Angeles and Yellowstone National Park are 17 hours apart. How did Jackson get home so quickly?
  • I'd like to point out that both times the glider took off were impossible: the downdraft from a massive crack opening up would have pulled the plane into it, and when the plane is taking off at the volcano, the air is going about as fast as the plane, so no uplift?
    • Rule of Cool anyone? Besides, Emmerich likes this kind of scene. He did something very similiar when Air Force One was taking off in "Independence Day".
  • The apocalypse is supposed to happen just a few days short of Christmas but there are no decorations or even a discussion?
    • It's not. The events are happening 6 months earlier, I believe.
      • As evidenced by the news of the cancellation of the 2012 Summer Olympics.
        • Actually, the Olympics are threatened to be cancelled due to the London riots, NOT due to the world supposedly ending.
          • Actually, the Olympics are threatened to be cancelled due to the London riots which are happening in response to the world ending. Remember, the news report that relates the story of the riots happens after both California has fallen into the ocean and Yellowstone has erupted AND is during the same broadcast that shows the destruction of the Christ the Redeemer statue in Rio de Janeiro. Also, please note that the London Olympics are to run from July 27th to August 12th. If it was December, they should have happened already.
      • Adrian Helmsley states several times before the beginning of the disasters that (paraphrasing) "it was happening sooner than expected" and that he "thought they'd have more time". If the apocalypse was supposed to happen on 12-21-12 and it was actually happening ahead of schedule....well...you do the proverbial math.
      • The weather/seasons do not match winter in the areas shown previous to the disasters. If it was winter, Paris, Yellowstone and Washington, D.C. would have trees with little to no leaves, people bundled up for the cold and so on; at the worst, they'd have snow. What is actually shown is the hotter temperatures, trees in full bloom, people not bundling up, etcetra of the months in the middle of the year.
  • I managed to successfully suspend disbelief thorough the whole film, but the ending just bugged the hell out of me. I mean, are were supposed to accept that after only one month of such cataclysmic geological event tearing apart the planet, mother earth is once again ready to accept humanity on its surface, with the sun smiling in approval at these people about to inherit a brave new world? Just the Yellowstone Caldera becoming a Supervolcano, just that, would have changed earth's climate for decades, if not hundred of years. And similar catastrophic eruptions were happening EVERYWHERE in the world. Not only that, but isn't one month too little time for the earth's crust stabilizing after literally being liquefied by the magical mutant neutrinos? The fact that an entire tectonic plate JUST had risen up like that shows that no, the surface certainly isn't yet a safe place. Plus, wouldn't the continent of Africa (is it even Africa anymore?) be completely inhabitable after all the earthquakes and being underwater for a full month? Too much, too much!
    • Africa was never under water. It had risen several kilometers Before the flooding. The month was because it took that long to contact their satellites to search for land. It still seems kinda silly, but hey.
      • The time between the beginning of the disasters and the survivors coming out of the Arks at the end of the movie isn't a mere month. The actual time they were on the Arks was likely something closer to six months. The disasters seemed to be happening in July(see arguments for that above) and they had been using that new calendar/time system(which would have likely been started at the beginning of the new year or what would otherwise be referred to as January) for 27 days. From July to late January equals six months and maybe some change depending on the exact date they boarded the Arks. However, we aren't given enough info to ascertain when that exactly was.
    • To me it looks like the whole film is built around the arks being spaceships, with every indication that Earth is going to be utterly destroyed, except it inexplicably isn't in the end. The continents just stop sliding around like hot butter for no reason, Africa never moved for no reason, and the whole Earth's inside being a giant microwave issue is forgotten and stops being a problem for no reason. And hey, since we don't have the balls to destroy the Earth as advertised, why don't we make the arks regular ships instead of spaceships? What's that, we already shot three quarters of the movie? Eh, no one will notice. Why do they even make those giant ships at astronomic cost that puts several hundred thousand people in each hard to steer basket if they weren't counting on the ships having to survive indefinitely in space, rather than bobbing around in the sea for a few weeks?
      • The 'Arks being spaceships' is a Red Herring. Also, the neutrino cause is not forgotten; they and their effects just lasted much shorter than they had anticipated and planned for as is evident by what Professor West says near the end of the film.
  • If radios couldn't work, cell phones shouldn't have either.
    • Radios would have worked fine but that's kind of moot if no one is alive to use them.
  • The disturbing fact of the plot of this movie is that the title could have been "Oh thank God we weren't standing there five seconds ago" with no change.
    • What disaster movie doesn't have the hero making at least a few last minute rescues and/or escapes?
  • The arks seem to be rather poorly designed, as two tons of rock dropping on the roof was enough to halt the launching of one, and an extension cord and a jackhammer was enough to stop another. What kind of an idiot designs a boat whose engine can't be used without sealing the hatch? A goddamn submarine can use its engine without sealing its hatch...
    • And the glass windows on the bridge that shatter when some debris falls on them. What the hell? You armour the rest of the ship, but leave the most vital part of it completely unprotected?
      • As an experienced sailor and navigator, I feel I should point out that a vital aspect of navigation at sea is using visual aids and having the ability to see what's ahead of you. Technology is great, but an experienced mariner can navigate very well visually. Covering the windows would have been a terrible idea.
    • YOU do better in the space of just under four years, completely out of sight of the public? Then you can complain!
      • ...How does being built in secret excuse such crippling design flaws?
      • Those seem like problems that should have been resolved during the first preliminary design meeting.
      • The Empire State Building was built in one year, four months. I daresay four years should have been ample time.
      • I was more annoyed by the fact that even though they were counting on being flooded with severe external forces, they placed the arcs next to one another instead of on four different sides of the mountain
      • Or on the opposite side of the mountain, so that the rising water would gently lift and carry the Arks instead of slamming into them at full force and careening them into each other.
      • Hell, it woulda been smarter just to carve out 4 doors: NSEW. That way, if 3 fail, at least one survives.
        • The boats were built on the right side of the mountain, but they got hit by a new tidal wave. If you take into account the recalculation, they probably expected to get launched easily. Aside from that, there are eight arcs so at least four of them were launched on another, better side.
          • Not to mention that the only reason the central Ark was in such dire straits had nothing to do with design but with external forces which really couldn't be planned for(people sneaking into the ship and mucking up the hydraulics and the extra tidal wave causing the planes at the airfield to be washed into the support structures/anchors)
      • I agree(that they had very little time to build the arks). Although, the time they had to build the Arks was likely far less than two years. The G8 summit, if it happened at the same time it did happen in the real world, would have occurred on the 25th and 26th of June, 2010 ; which would leave about 2 years and a month to plan, organize and THEN begin building the Arks.
  • Status quo at the end of the movie: thousands and thousands of humans and maybe 100 (optimistic estimate as there is no real on-screen evidence) other species dumped on one continent together. This is not going to end well.
    • To be fair a lot of the ones shown were from Africa in the first place. Although I wonder how the Africans are going to feel with all these new people showing up? They did escape the flooding after all.
      • This troper was under the impression that Africa HAD been flooded, and had just risen above the water.
    • HOW would they have escaped the flooding? The film ends with "Africa has risen" which kinda involves the continent having been, well, under water for a while. Not to mention the very, very uncomfortable feeling I got from the film of "Oh hey, isn't it great? We finally have Africa without the Africans!"...sigh.
      • One of the characters comments that Africa "probably didn't even flood". "Africa has risen" means that, for whatever reason, Africa rose a few hundred feet rather then sinking like most of the other continents.
        • That would be Professor West making the 'Africa has risen' statement although I'm pretty sure it had been said to have risen several thousand feet and not several hundred.
      • Presumably something needed to rise, as there isn't enough water in the oceans to flood all of the continents at once.
    • What is funny that everybody seems to take for a given that the Africans will welcome a bunch of filthy rich Westerners with open arms. The chances are that they'll be killed for including some of the worst exploiters of the continent in their midst, or else ignored, since the Africans themselves have their hands full surviving after the apocalypse, and a bunch of people with no useful skills or connections get to starve.
      • Maybe Africa suffered from a couple of earthquakes and volcanoes as well, killing lots of people? Or a supertornado that picked up the entire Sahara desert killing everyone in north-Africa by sand bombardment? Leaving it desertless with plenty of empty land? That last one kind of seems to fit the movie.
        • My money's on the eruption of Kilimanjaro.
        • An entire continent(not to mention one of the largest)rising thousands of feet would probably cause more than just a "few" earthquakes. lol Also, any and all volcanic hotspots would likely have erupted. Anyone who managed to survive both of those events would still have to try to breath all of the ash thrown into the air by Yellowstone and any other volcanic eruptions that occured around the world. In other words, if there are survivors in Africa, they are few and far between(which makes anyone whose made jokes about how the Ark survivors will have to deal with Somalian pirates, aids and such when they make landfall look like complete fools).
      • The ending is hilariously lampshaded in "2012 in 15 minutes"

Captain: "We're coming up on Africa. We can land there!"
The many survivors in Africa: "Aw, HELLZ NO!"

      • If Africa has "risen" that means it's a lot bigger (confirmed with the end shot) meaning that the survivors are going to have a lot of walking to do through a barren wasteland that used to be under the ocean. Good luck with that...
        • And, why wouldn't they use the helicopters seen buzzing around the Arks at the end of the film instead of walking? Or one of the many land vehicles they likely took with them on the Arks?
          • I think the landing in Africa part was meant to be symbolic, because the theory of evolution has it that Africa is where all human life began. So by having the survivors landing in (or on) Africa, is like going back to the beginning of the evolution of mankind. Starting over in fact. The film makers probably thought that idea was cool enough not to worry too much about the logistics of it.
  • If the Mayan prediction of the apocalypse is in fact true (and it was), then wouldn't others begin to think that the Mayan religion(s) were as well? Though, a resurgence of followers for those might not be a great idea.
    • Presumably the Mayans either A. made a really lucky guess, B. noticed the effects of the previous upsurge of bosons(?) from the sun and used their knowledge of astronomy and mathematics to predicted the next recurrence, or C. had their perfectly real gods warn them. Of those, Occams Razor points to either A or B being the case. Still, people probably have more on their plate than reviving a dead religion (unless the arks carry a contingent of Mayan priest. Of course, if Battlestar Galactica has taught us anything it's that a charismatic genocidal scientist can convince people to join his cult. So my money's on the black science advisor starting said cult.
    • The Mayans didn't predict the world's end. (They couldn't even predict their own demise). Remember, their calendar was based on Astronomy. The only thing they predicted was the alignment of the planets and the sun. That had nothing to do with the excess bombardment of neutrinos. So really, it was just a coincidence.
      • Their civilization just collapsed; the Mayan people are still around in the Yucatan, and some are still practicing their religion. And they're confused as fuck over the fact that white people believe the world is going to end in 2012. But if something did happen like in the movie, option C actually makes the most sense (Occam's Razor isn't a law, but a heuristic tool) - if the Mayan priesthood made a prediction and it's right, and the event violates all laws of physics, meteorology, and common sense (so is therefore supernatural), and it doesn't seem to correspond with any other religions... well the goddamn Mayan Gods are real.
    • Really, it doesn't matter what the Mayans predicted. They predicted something would happen and something happened. Many would question the coincidence, but some would would find it significant and might look into it. Also, it's possible the alignment of the planets is what caused the upheaval. Similar occurrences have always happened during an alignment, but this time the world is in a state where it creates apocalyptic changes.
    • Name one time a planetary alignment caused anything to happen.
      • Name one time planets aligned "perfectly" period.
      • In 3D space, the planets are always aligned perfectly, depending on the viewpoint.
  • If the viewer is to assume that all the disasters take place and are shown in a chronological order, then how the hell does New York get buried by a pyroclastic cloud that came from Wyoming before Las Vegas?
    • Prevailing winds?
    • Said pyroclastic cloud seems to have magically vanished by the end of the movie. While we're at that, a gigantic eruption like that of Yellowstone didn't have much of an impact on post-crisis climate. Smaller eruptions than that have been known to mess up the climate for months, if not years... What do you mean, it was probably drowned under a megatsunami? But volcano + water = Even more problematic!
      • You can just Hand Wave it, enough crazy shit happens in the movie to ignore it.
      • Or, since the pyroclastic flow is probably busy reacting with water...
        • A pyroclastic flow of that size would interact with water by getting bigger. Also, as happened with Krakatoa in 1883, a pyroclastic flow traveling over water creates a "cushion" of superheated steam that actually allows the flow to reach even farther than it would on land.
  • Gordon dies a horrible self-sacrificing death, and then is never mentioned again by anyone-- including his girlfriend (who quickly gets back together with her ex) and the young boy who idolized him.
  • THE ENTIRE GODDAMN PREMISE OF THE FILM. Good god, it would have been a thousand times better if they hadn't tied it in to that whole Mayan thing.
    • Except it doesn't play a big part of it, minus background exposition that this happened before and the "Mayan calendar" marked the next such event.
    • I agree. Let's not mention that the Mayans saw 2012 as a resetting of time, an entrance into a new age, NOT the end of the world.
      • In counter, I'd like to point out that "a resetting of time, an entrance into a new age" is exactly what happens in this move. The old one just has to be wiped away first, and there is nothing about the Mayan prophecy that precludes that.
      • Technically true, as there is no such Maya prophecy, period.
      • It's essentially like the turn of the millenium to the Mayans - really cool and worth celebrating, but not DOOM.
  • Okay, maybe Anheiser made a few questionable moves, but why did there have to be a "villain" in this movie? He's got his hands full enough trying to keep a semblance of government alive for humanity, I'd think that alone would weigh heavy on the soul. Also, Adrian's little "lecture" about humanity? I can see how that would move some, but he's also got the leaders of Russia and China!
    • For some reason, Hollywood thinks that you have to have some kind of human antagonist in every movie, no matter what it's about. Even in a movie about the earth falling apart because of "natural" reactions, apparently you need a human villain to boo and mock and cheer against when he's defeated.
    • Looked like China was, United States aside, spearheading the entire operation, so why wouldn't the good Chairman want to save as many people as possible? Maybe he was just convinced that they could manage it without damaging the ship (given that he'd probably know the details of the construction), and to be fair, the only reason it was damaged was because of everyone's favourite writer and family. As for including Russia in your argument - don't be so pessimistic! Comrade. Besides, Vladimir Putin jumped into a fucking tiger enclosure to save some journalists, so why wouldn't his fictional counterpart take the same cavalier attitude? TL;DR - China built the damn Arks for humanity and Russia can't really be grouped with that sort of government after, you know, the end of the Cold War.
    • I don't see this at all. Despite his position being clashing with Adrian's on some things, he pretty much is the one who put Adrian there in the first place and has a major role in SAVING THE GODDAMN HUMAN RACE. Also, it's been made pretty clear in the movie that YMMV and both position have their pros and cons and that they both are trying to act for the best of mankind, not For the Evulz. They even deleted the scene where Anheiser resorts to petty insults and Adrian punches him out, exactly to reduce his "villainous" role to a Well-Intentioned Extremist position.
  • You have the full economic, industrial and military resources of the the most powerful nations in the world at your disposal. Why do you need to sell Ark tickets to billionaires again?
    • Prepare to groan and/or be offended: The G8 believed that it's better to hide the Earth doomy-ness since no lay person or NGO initiative could have survived the sequence of disasters that hit, and they believed the resulting mass panics would make any effort at survival similar to the Arks far more difficult. However, without going public they could only commit so much money to the Arks without alerting someone, One way to increase funding without getting the taxpayers to raise eyebrows was, you guessed it, selling tickets to the uber rich. Presumably each one of their tickets bought a space for three or four "plebeians" who would otherwise not live at all. However, griping about the teeny tiny number of people their plan saved compared to what full spending from complete disclosure would have brought may be academic, likely no more than 1% of humanity would survive.
      • It's the end of the world, or at least the end of the current governments and their economies. They could have racked up billions of dollars in debt making the arks but it wouldn't matter. Funding is a non-issue
        • Yes it is, in the early years at least. The funding would need to be publically released, or else hidden in thousands of tiny slush funds. Slush funding works in the small term -- Its how the CIA gets its money for the year, by having Congress hide it in the national budget. You try hiding several trillion dollars a year for one project, especially in multiple funds, especially when those funds need to be public in order to justify the size (ie, 3 trillion for "healthcare" which never surfaces is fishy).
      • The entire premise pissed me off. I really, REALLY hope that the series they're making will have survivors who survived through other means will find their way to Africa and take revenge on the people who, you know, abandoned them to die horribly.
  • What the hell happened to the southern hemisphere?
    • Early on in the film, Brazil is shown to be destroyed by earthquakes and such, so presumably the rest of South America was affected similarly, and Africa is where the Arks went. Australia and Southeast Asia, however, are not shown at all.
      • Aren't the himalayas and thus the last third of the movie in southeast Asia? Aside from that, Tokyo was mentioned to have been wrecked by the same tsunami that wrecked the ship of the dad of the science advisor. I can imagine oceania having suffered the same faith. I don't think I saw a scene in Europe though.
      • Italy was shown, Russia featured and it was shown that Britain had canceled the 2012 Olympic events. Other than that we don't know about Europe.
      • The Himalayas and Tokyo aren't in the southern hemisphere. They're no closer to the southern hemisphere than San Francisco or New York. South East Asia is already a hotbed for floods and earthquakes, so I'd imagine they'd be gone forever.
      • Presumably the same thing that happened to the rest of the planet. It got wrecked by all kinds of fun natural disasters.
  • The rooms on the Arks are large and could easily hold ten people each, as discussed in the movie. So why don't they cut the sizes of some rooms down and sell them for less money, so more people could survive.
    • Because then we wouldn't have all of the wonderful conflict.
    • I thought about it more around the lines of limited food supplies. Yes, you can store food, even for quite a long time, and supplement it by fishing, but if there's a disastrous change to the atmosphere due to the huge amounts of dust... well, how much food can you really store? And how long will it last? Frankly, I thought bringing the elephants were silly for that reason.
    • Indeed. Also, for the time that they expect those ships to be operating, fitting 10 people into that amount space is not really a very good idea. Another thing that needs to be remembered is that the room shown is about the size of an average single person hotel room, not exactly somewhere I'd want ten people living for an extended period.
  • Why the hell would you put all your humanity-saving devices in ONE LOCATION? If the Himilayas were the first to get hit by the destruction instead of LA, everyone but Africa would die because they didn't have a backup plan. Rule one of any plan is to ALWAYS HAVE A BACKUP. At least that's my rule.
    • Because, sometimes, it's better to focus all of your resources on a single project, rather than several competing ones. As for doing it all in China, only China could get away with a secret construction project on that scale. Plus, they have the best manufacturing base to do it.
    • The way I see it... it's because they had scientist working on it since years before, and they pretty much predicted that it would have been a safer spot than, say, California, Japan or Italy, which are placed on critical points and did indeed go destroyed quite soon. Also, the secret operation factor.
    • The Himalayan Mountains are the thickest and most stable part of the crust.
      • Except for being the boundary between a subcontinent and a continent crashing into each other, causing the entire range to rise 5 millimeters a year. It is a very active, very unstable region. That's why the mountains are so high-they formed so quickly erosion hasn't had time to wear them down to a more average level.
  • What bugged me the most is the basic premise of building 4 huge arks and leave the rest of the worlds population to drown. The massive size to withstand the forces of nature of earthquakes and so forth. Why not blanket the world with semi-rigid, 20 person life-rafts/pods? Stock the rafts with food concentrates, water purification/desalination system, seeds and some how to manuals. The semi-rigid nature would allow a lot of banging about and still be functional. And even if half are lost from the disaster, they would still save a much higher portion of the population then they could with 4 arks.
    • Look who the director is.
    • Technically they built seven arks. They only got four finished and one of those got damaged. Granted, we're talking about a difference of maybe a couple hundred thousand people compared to billions dying, but still.
  • What bugged me the most was that humanity was shown to be the wimp Emmerich is, so full of themselves with such degree of fear of death and extinction that they would be selfish cowards that would allow others to die in order to survive themselves with the hope that a Deus Ex Machina will make them Karma Houdini and lead to their successful survival... And they were proven right. If I had the budget to do it I would make a film about my own country facing the same odds with far more chivalrous acceptance of inescapable fate with money directed not at trying to survive through selective boats that shall not be ultimate survival (i.e. I would use some scenes to show how the disaster continues on into the ocean) but at providing people with ways to ensure painless self-euthanasia...
    • Like "One the Beach"? Already been done. And boring at that.
    • Because fuck the survival of the human race when you can ride away to heaven on your moral high horse.
    • Yeah, for all your talk about chivalry and what not, you just don't understand humans. Humans do not like dying. It is in fact a quite basic instinct of living to want to avoid death at all costs. Not to mention that your idea is just...well, stupid. Without even getting into the whole Euthanasia debate, the whole idea of a goverment helping their entire population commit suicide is on par with stories about cult suicide. Honestly, I doubt your countrymen would agree with your ideas on their lack of self-preservation.
      • That's animals you're thinking of. Animals are ruled by their instincts. Humans are also animals, sure, but different in that we can act against our instincts. I sure would have liked a movie more focused on our "noble aspects" and less on us at our worst.
      • When disaster strikes, we revert to animal instincts with what is known as the "mob mentality". Here is the quote from Men in Black: "A person is smart. People are dumb, panicky dangerous animals and you know it."
  • Okay, if this is supposed to take place in December of 2012, why were they suspending the SUMMER Olympic Games in London?! Am I missing something here?
    • I think there was a line in the movie from the main scientist about how the disasters started about 6 months earlier than they'd predicted (which is why the Arks weren't completely ready I think). 6 months earlier than December 2012 puts the movie's events in July 2012, which would be about the same time the London Olympics would be going on. So the timeline works.
      • Still doesn't make any sense. The movie is supposed to be based around Dec. 21, 2012, but as it happens six months early, it's JUNE 21st. The 2012 Olympics start on JULY 27th.
  • Considering that all they ended up doing was build 4 large ships (with engineering so bad that designers should be tried and executed for neglectful incompetence), why exactly did they need the private sector again? Simply going public and diverting as large as possible a portion of available resources to the project could have saved a significant portion of the population rather then focusing on a bunch of bureaucrats and upper class people that can't actually support themselves (even if they didn't go public, wouldn't it be smarted to ditch the now powerless wealthy ones at the last minute in favor of people with a more relevant skill set for post apocalyptic survival on the water?). Sure, going public would have led to a certain state of panic, but good public relations could easily minimize the damage, and then get all national resources diverted to the project ASAP rather then keeping it under the table.
    • Hell, when all you're doing is building a large ship, why complicate things with international cooperation anyhow? Individual nations are more then capable of constructing large flotillas (and even doing so secretly, just pass them off as aircraft carriers for use in the war on terror or something), and the added complication of working with other nations would have significantly bogged down the project with sheer translation, bureaucracy, old tensions, and ego (replaced by a clear chain of command)--all of which could be circumvented with the every nation for itself attitude. Just compare the time, money and effort it takes for the UN to get anything done as opposed to a single state taking up the task by itself.
  • JBM: How exactly would you keep the "End of The World" a "secret?" At least in The Core (A slightly less bad movie than this) actively keeping the public in the dark was "addressed" (handwaved?).In this movie's universe there are apparently no geologists, astrophysicists, seismologists, oil companies, mining companies, investigative journalists, bureaucrats leaking information for personal gain and no Internet.
    • Woody Harrelson's character covered that. Anytime somebody looks to be getting too close to the truth, they suffer an "accident". The point stands though, since there are thousands of scientists who could have found out what was happening and gone public. Nobody can easily silence that many people.
    • for the Trope the movie uses here to handwave, it's Apathetic Citizens.
  • What about the fact that the Himalaya's get flooded in the first place? Where the hell is all this water coming from?
    • Asia was sinking. The water wasn't rising, everything else was falling.
      • So where does it go after that? Land mass sinks all the time in between the tectonic plates, but where at one place the ground sinks in another magma is coming out somewhere, renewing the earth. Either way, land can't just sink into the earth without replacing land elsewhere, but the movie shows the entire earth covered in water...
    • Africa rose up "several thousand of meters". The rest of the world got flooded: Himalayas got flooded last. It couldn't be simpler.
  • The earth is solid. Highly pressurized magma (not a liquid in any conventional sense of the word) topped off by several kilometres of very solid, densely packed rock. The endless destructive sequences show the earth's surface crumbling into a gigantic void - not just cracking to create chasms, but falling away en masse. Ask yourself: where is it all going? There's no room down there. It's already full of earth - that's what makes it the earth. The earth's crust is not made of cotton candy or yeast. Rule of Cool might have covered one or two sequences involving large chasms and holes in the ground, but this goes on and on for most of the movie, to the point where entire regions of America are falling down into some magical Deus Ex Vaccuum.
    • It looked like one of the effects of the Earth's interior heating up was the Earth expanding, like a balloon. Or something, that's the only way to explain the bottomless chasms opening up everywhere without any magma welling out from them. Nearly every movie involving earthquakes does it, though, so it's nothing new.
      • Fridge Logic: if the Earth was indeed expanding, then that would mean more surface for the oceans to cover. More surface covered while keeping the same volume of water would technically translate to a diminution of the water's depth...
  • Why couldn't Roland Emmerich simply wait another three years before making this film? Releasing a film about the 2012 apocalypse in the actual year 2012 would have done wonders for marketing.
    • Two words: panicking masses.
    • Why didn't Kubrick wait until 2001 to release his movie? Because he was a stupid prick.
    • 2012 was the "in thing" at the time, so it could make money. Even now, it's getting close enough that people are getting into "but seriously, nothing's going to happen" mode.
  • How about those Too Dumb to Live emergency services in Las Vegas, eh? You're at an airport, planes everywhere, and a giant ash cloud is moving in. What to do? Move everyone into a building with a glass facade and then scream bloody murder at the one plane taking off because it doesn't have "clearance"...as the ash cloud kills you. How about inspecting that giant Russian aircraft, booting off the cars and saving another 50-60 people minimum?
    • Including those dancers who apparently didn't have time to change out of their enormous, feathery costumes... they go everywhere like that, do they?
    • They have to show the normal brainless population being brainless in all disaster movies, no matter how stupid it looks.
  • The fact that Roland Emmerich was such a greedy douchebag to make a film out of (and therefore promote) something that has some people so terrified they're actually contemplating suicide.
    • I have a friend who failed doing research about the Mayan calendar, and admitted that he'll go around raping girls he fancy when 2012 hits. Huh, The Joker was right. You do know who a person really are in their last moments.
      • The fact that some people take this stuff seriously. The world didn't end when my calendar ran out 3 months ago despite the fact that our civilization is more than a thousand years older, wiser and more advanced. If any calendar running out means Armageddon it would make far more sense for it to be the current civilization's. The Mayans couldn't make their population live about 80 years on average in luxury undreamt of by their kings, send some of them on the moon, use pieces of the sun for weaponry and (hopefully soon) energy, or write the Doom comic. Of course, that kind of thing doesn't happen, I just need to spend some money on a 2011 calendar.
      • Similarly, 32-bit Linux is designed to work until the year 2038; it's not because we figured the world would end before 2038 so we wouldn't need it to go further than that; it's because we decided that 32-bit was more efficient at the time and that we'd have something else figured out by then.
  • OK, I get that Woody explained how every single person trying to expose the years-long international conspiracy met fatal 'accidents' and thus nobody knows about the imminent apocalypse before it's too late. But how frigging stupid were all these would-be whistleblowers that they didn't think to upload all their information to the Internet, spreading the information everywhere and making it virtually impossible to cover up then? Really, a press conference was the best the director of the Louvre could think of?
    • You believe everything you read on the Internet? You shouldn't, not until it's been confirmed by reporters that verify the information through original research...and press conferences.
      • Reporters? They don't do research anymore. You just need other scientists to peer review the paper, which would happen if a notable scientist publishes his paper online and then mysteriously dies. Especially when similar publish-then-die incidents happen all the time.
      • Depending on how efficient the conspiracy is, they'd have trouble proving who they are and publishing the paper to a legitimate site in the time it takes them to be captured or killed.
  • Why did the Pope just stay behind? I can understand the Pope wanting to lead his people in praying but... there are going to be people needing leaders to guide them. Can't the Pope send someone like his second in command to take his place in guiding all the survivors and keeping the Roman Catholic religion going after the apocalypse?
    • Because "religion is an empty promise in a cold, uncaring world" is a major theme of the movie. You can't have the Pope or any high-ranking religious figure survive because, being religious, obviously they would sit in their church or mosque or whatever and pray it out while completely ignoring the lifesaving SCIENCE that only practical, secular governments and businessmen are smart enough to utilize. The only reason the filmmakers didn't show Mecca disappearing into a giant hole in the ground is because they were afraid of getting a fatwa issued against them...but they certainly wished they could have.
      • That's a broken moral then, because the Mayan religion was nothing but a (full?) promise that turned out to be correct. ALL PRAISE KUKULKAN! MAY HE AND THE HOWLER MONKEY GODS PRESERVE OUR CULTURE! WE MUST FEED THE MONKEYS MAIZE!
    • Maybe the pope thought like the US president and didn't go along because of age-related reasons, instead opting to send a younger representative.
    • There are Catholic cardinals in Africa, some of whom probably survived. The Catholic faith would likely be able to keep going, and choose a new Pope.
      • Indeed. Whoever was the most senior or most popular Catholic Cardinal in Africa at the time of the disaster will become--by default--the new Pope. In any case, the world governments probably didn't warn the current Pope about 2012 because they might have feared that he'd warn people out of a sense of moral obligation (YMMV as to whether he actually would or not, but I guess the world gov'ts didn't want to take that chance).
        • Also, the British Queen is still around, along with her heirs, so any Anglicans among the survivors at least still have a figurehead. And there are also Muslim religious leaders in Africa, so Muslim survivors will have leaders as well.
  • Tsunamis don't happen in deep water, they only occur on the shallower continental shelf and places where islands jut up out of the sea. Pack as many ships as you can with as many people and supplies as you can, and send them out into deep water. Residential ships (cruise ships, ocean liners, large passenger ferries, and yachts), hydroponic farm ships (converted supertankers), and cargo ships could support many millions of people for a very long time with four years of planning and deployment.
    • Even if the fuel eventually runs out, wind and solar power on the open ocean would be ideal for a drifting flotilla. Engine screws could even be converted to provide energy from ocean currents.
    • In a movie, tsunamis will rise up and gobble up ships no matter where they are. And one did, the ship carrying the two old guys wasn't safe even out of sight of any land. (an alternate ending had them surviving, though)
      • They were still on the continental shelf between Japan and China, which isn't tsunami-safe.
    • Rogue waves, however, deep water. Rogue waves are also considerably taller (though not nearly as wide) as tsunamis. While the cause of rogue waves isn't completely understood, the fact that literally everything else was going to hell in this movie likely meant that rogue waves running rampant.
  • There's an underwater shot where the ark scrapes bottom and dredges up silt. Umm... we're in newly-flooded mountains which up until a few minutes ago were several miles above sea level. I doubt there would be any silt.
  • Why is it that no one was suffering from altitude sickness when they are at least more than a thousand feet above sea level? In fact, the climax was them almost running into the side of Mt. Everest when the peak was only a hundred feet above them. And for that matter, why is it that they don't freeze to death while swimming in a dark ship in the coldest place on earth!?
    • You need to be way more than 1000 feet above sea level to start getting sick from it. For reference, Denver, Colorado is a mile, 5,000 feet, above sea level.
    • On the other side, it would make some sense if you consider the theory that the sea didn't actually rise much, the whole continent fell down instead...
  • What I don't get is that, even in the trailer, the aircraft carrier that smashes the white house has its name ("USS JOHN F KENNEDY CV-67") printed all over its deck in a screen-filling manner. This is not the case with the real ship, which btw was already decommissioned in 2009. So, did Emmerich want to make some kind of statement abour Mr. Kennedy here?
    • Probably. And let's not question what kind of wave would bring the carrier to DC, considering that after being decomissioned it went to Philadelphia.
  • When I was walking out of cinema and discussing the movie with my dad, he pointed out one huge-ass plot hole: why the hell they were going to save people they were going to save? They saved politicians and millionaires, who will be absolutely useless in rebuilding the civilization. Of course it was stated that instead of millionaires, it was planned to save sportsmen (like saving the earth's best), but thing is that sportsmen are competent only in their given sphere, outside of it they are equal to your average Joe. This doesn't make any freaking sense. And yeah, that guy was selling tickets - did he even think that he won't have any single chance to spend the money, since, you know, the world as we know it is dead. Instead of millionaires and politicians they should've saved scientists and... chinese workers who built the ships!
    • And naturally, nearly all those millionaires and politicians were utterly selfish bastards out to save their own hides. Heaven forbid they should show, say, the Queen of England kissing her grandsons goodbye as they got on board to claim the seats she'd bought for them...
    • It was indicated that they saved a maximum of intellectuals, scientists, the such... The tickets were mostly for the room left after those were already selected. And since there was still room left after that, they ran a lottery.
    • That would be because they were following the Golden Rule - whomever has the gold, makes the rules. Politicians and billionaires and celebrities were saved because, by an astonishing coincidence, they were the ones in position to decide who should be saved. Funny, that.
  • I'm no naval architect, but those Arks dont look like they should float.
  • Does anybody know why they had to have Gordon, Yuri, and Tamara killed off toward the end?
    • Moreover, what did they do with Tamara's body? Did they just leave her in there to marinate, or chuck her overboard, or what?
  • Jackson got the map's location from Charlie, and he's driving the trailer back to the air strip. Why didn't he ask his daughter, who was with him in the car, to search for the map, instead of going back just in time to get swallowed by a fissure and nearly dying?
    • His daughter had no idea where it was. besides, he did not want her looking back at the ash cloud about to overtake them, maybe you missed that.
      • He could have given the instructions for her to look. And yes, I knew there was an ash cloud (and that Jackson was firm on letting her panic, as he kept on saying things were OK to his daughter as they were driving downhill).
    • That little girl couldn't have weighed more than forty-odd pounds, and the camper was jouncing around like crazy. You want him to send his own kid back there to bounce off the walls like a pinball?
    • Alternatively, Jackson could've taken all of the maps from Charlie's trailer instead of trying to look for them there, which would've saved precious seconds.
      • Assuming a nutbar like Charlie actually remembered right about where he'd left the map.
  • The White House Chief of Staff has no formal place in the line of succession. Sure, they explicitly note that the Vice President and the Speaker are MIA, but where the hell is the Secretary of State? Didn't the rest of the Cabinet get a spot on the Ark? Obviously Anheiser needed to take charge in the heat of the moment, but it seems very odd that America's chief diplomat - or the Secretaries of Defense and Treasury - wouldn't be involved in such an international operation.
    • Well since the end of the world started earlier than they intended, the rest of the Cabinet was out of position and couldn't make it to the Ark in time.
  • Why didn't Woody just put the map on the Internet for people to find rather than just keep it in his trailer? He could tell people, "Okay, here is a map to the spaceships. Go there if you want to be saved." Granted, a lot of people would not believe him but I'm sure that there are a few conspiracy nuts who decided to try going to China.
    • For one thing, that would've gotten him on the Killed To Protect The Conspiracy list, rather than written off as a crank. For another, the Chinese would've pumped up their defense of the Ark construction site, and the film's protagonists would've been shot by those soldiers rather than just abandoned in the snow.
  • I don't want to sound distasteful to any Brits on here, but why would the Queen get a ticket for the arks? Wouldn't she stay in England to comfort the people while having Wills and Harry (and maybe a few other of the younger Royals) get away?
    • I think the reason why the Queen was there because the filmmakers knew that (before the Royal Wedding at least,) the Queen is the most recognized member of the royal family outside of Britain. If Harry and Will had been there instead, there would probably have had to be a few lines of dialogue explaining who they are to non-British viewers.
    • That did annoy me - she would definitely have stayed behind. She and her family even stayed in London during the Blitz.
    • Emmerich had the Royal Family die in Day After Tomorrow (when their RAF transports crash). Maybe he was trying to make up for his previous regicide?
      • Actually, in that one we didn't get confirmation that they die. Their RAF transports crashed en route to the castle they were staying in. For all we know, they used a bunker that was built in.
  • So They tried to build 8 arks, presumably one for each of the G8 nations, But with only 3 ready in time, the nations are forced to share. How come the Americans got one all to themselves?
    • It wasn't one per nation, eight was just the number they thought they could manage to finish under the original timeline.
  • I don't understand why some people are so pissed that Roland didn't show Mecca getting destroyed. Having seen the film twice, it would not have added anything and just dragged the film with another identical scene of people getting killed in a religious location.
  • Why is a kid in 2012 playing a mint PSP? Also where are all the smart phones?
  • Am I the only one who kinda want to see a followup of this with survivors that go to Africa and fucking murders the bastards who left them to die horribly? Seriously, not only did the rich and powerful get to lord over us before, but now they get to survive the end of the world? Fuck. That.
    • I think you fought one too many monsters there.
      • Really? So I'm the only person who took personal offense to "Oh by the way, the world is ending, and only the rich, powerful and intelligent get to survive. Guess it sucks to be average"? They got to play around with us like toys before, and now they get to make a whole new world and leave the rest of us to die? Am I the only one who finds that just a little bit infuriating?
      • In a scenario where billions die, it does indeed suck to be average. Morally speaking, you should try to do your best for as many people as you can, certainly, but in this movie, nothing can be done for most people. If you're going to make a whole new world from a tiny core of individuals, would you want those individuals to be average or extraordinary? The real beef of the OP seems to be the selection method for "extraordinariness," which is wealth and power for part of the Arks' passengers. Well, even if you cut them out, would you want extraordinarily intelligent, or charitable, or industrious, or compassionate people to replace them, or average people? And while some of the wealthy and powerful who board the Arks may have come into wealth and power purely by chance, many of them (hopefully most of them) could be extraordinarily savvy or zealous, which may contribute to a better chance of survival for them and their descendents. Being average shouldn't be a crime in everyday life, but it isn't an asset in extreme situations.
        • My main problem with the movie is that they don't even seem to dwell at all on the fact that billions of people are dead, and that they were basically just left to die, while the worlds governments were well aware of what was happening. Understandable? Maybe, but that doesn't change that if there are other survivors, I'd love to see them hunt down the bastards who just left them behind. Not that it's likely to happen since we're supposed to treat the survival of the lucky and powerful as a good thing, but thats my thoughts on it. I just know that I'd be pissed if someone else decided all I get is to be a corpse in the foundation of a new world.
      • This troper, while not as surprised that an awful lot of ordinary people were written off, was annoyed that they didn't show at least some preference for saving women and children. It seems like 90% of the people we see on the Arks are either men, or women past childbearing age, which doesn't bode well for the genetic future of the species. (Yes, the African survivors probably even the sex-ratio out, but nobody who stocked the Arks could've known that continent was going to survive, else they'd have left the freakin' giraffes behind.)
  • So I'm probably the only one that thinks that the repeatedly-brought-up theoretical survivors who take "revenge" on those who "left them to die" would be Complete Monsters, huh? I mean, holy entitlement complex, Batman, exactly why did these people owe you their effort? Especially since you're apparently the type of asshole that would rather spend their time plotting murderous vengeance rather than just try to survive in a new and difficult world.
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