Sunday, May 23, 2010

2012: The number of reasons this movie stinks


It's a long list, so it will take some time...

After a loooooong break, I'm back to finish off my critique of 2012. Suffice to say, it is one of the worst disaster movies ever made and, yet, it has some redeeming value. Most importantly is having Chiwetel Ejiofor play the geophysicist who discovers that neutrinos from the Sun are heating Earth's core and...well you know, death and destruction follow. Portrayal of geoscientists in films is something I take very seriously here at Reel Geology. Ejiofor transcends the material and Roland Emmerich's over-the-top direction. Unfortunately, in real life the geosciences suffer from massive "under-diversity". Hopefully his performance will help to correct this.

Another interesting aspect of 2012 is that there have been previous theories of Earth expansion. One of the early supporters of continental drift, S. Warren Carey of Australia, later switched to be a proponent of an expanding Earth (see en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Expanding_Earth). I had the privilege of attending a series of lectures by Carey when I was in grad school at an esteemed university in the 1980s. I say this because the experience demonstrated beyond any doubt the depths to which academic institutions will sink in the quest to secure money from alumni. On the other hand, that same university awarded a degree to George H. W. Bush so it was nothing new.