《2012》的一个场景

作为罗兰·艾默瑞奇(Roland Emmerich)对地球和观众发起的最新一轮进攻，《2012》不是世界末日，而是感觉如此而已。这部有关世界末日──来自玛雅日历的预测──的畸形大片基本上处于拙劣模仿与白痴中间的死亡地带。你的确也能看到些笑料，但大多数幽默都有些干涩。几个动作场面可能会挑战这种说法，但许多数字效果看起来比较暗淡，累积的效果让人麻木。唯一有些亮点的是伍迪·哈里森(Woody Harrelson)扮演的查理·弗罗斯特(Charlie Frost)，这是一位疯子一样的先知、阴谋论者和海盗电台的播音员，他至少没有让这部影片变成彻头彻尾的烂片。

'2012,' Roland Emmerich's latest assault on planet Earth and its moviegoers, isn't the end of the world: It only feels that way. This oafish epic about the End of Days -- as predicted by the Mayan calendar -- operates in a dead zone roughly equidistant between parody and idiocy. You do get the connection between tongue and cheek, but much of the humor still goes thud. A few action sequences rise to the challenge of the subject, but many of the digital effects look murky, and the cumulative effect is numbness. The only character with genuine, if grotesque, energy is Charlie Frost, a crackpot prophet, conspiracy theorist and pirate radio broadcaster played by Woody Harrelson; he provides a few jolts of Rapture schlock before the movie turns into destructo drek.

更好或应该说更糟的一点是，艾默瑞奇依靠的还是他那些老把戏。在《独立日》(Independence Day)中，他考验了我们对外星入侵者的勇气。在《后天》(The Day After Tomorrow)中，他展示了全球变暖导致全球突然陷入冰河时期。这一次他选择的宇宙武器是从太阳和加热地核中产生的突变微中子束，它导致了地质构造的不稳，破坏了一致性（这种庞大、杂乱的制作可以作为一种对混沌理论的研究）并减少了对话。 （美国总统操着艾默瑞奇的电影中常用的半文半白在亲密的交谈中告诉女儿说，一项前所未有的国际冒险正在进行之中。）

For better or (mainly) worse, Mr. Emmerich is up to his old tricks. In 'Independence Day' he tested our mettle with marauding aliens. In 'The Day After Tomorrow' he unleashed global warming that precipitated global freezing. This time his cosmic weapon of choice is a beam of mutant neutrinos that emanates from the sun and, by heating the earth's core, destabilizes tectonic plates, defeats coherence (though the huge, disjointed production might have been conceived as a study in chaos theory) and degrades dialogue. ('An unprecedented international venture is under way,' the American president tells his daughter during an intimate conversation couched in the near-English favored by Emmerich films.)

这项国际冒险包括弗罗斯特所猜测的宇宙飞船船队，将在地球变成氪星之前拯救达官贵人；这位怒目而视的古怪之人说，为了得到一个位子，你必须成为比尔·盖茨(Bill Gates)、默多克(Rupert Murdoch)或俄罗斯亿万富翁。（三者中，只有俄罗斯一个特别令人讨厌的亿万富翁确认预定到了一个位子。）由于白宫一直对船队的存在守口如瓶，而弗罗斯特怀疑的对象并不是真正的船队，查明真相的任务就落在了奇维特·埃吉弗(Chiwetel Ejiofor)饰演的总统首席科学顾问阿德里安·赫尔姆斯利(Adrian Helmsley)身上。不过，一旦赫尔姆斯利开始工作，他就像他的老板似乎对这项工程的伦理层面漠不关心了，而伦理层面的问题直到影片高潮时才引起争论。（总统最终大声提出飞船上的座位是否应通过抽签决定。除了不应让六、七十亿地球人在等待名单上之外，这听起来像是一个方案。）

The international venture involves building what Charlie suspects to be a fleet of space ships that will save the rich and powerful before our planet goes the way of Krypton; to get a seat, the wild-eyed geezer says, 'you'd have to be Bill Gates or Rupert Murdoch or some Russian billionaire.' (Of the three, only a particularly obnoxious Russian billionaire has a confirmed reservation.) Since the White House has kept a lid of secrecy on the existence of the ships -- which aren't really what Charlie suspects -- it falls to the president's chief science advisor, Adrian Helmsley (Chiwetel Ejiofor), to uncover the truth. Once he does, however, Adrian, like his boss, seems blithely indifferent to the venture's ethical aspects, which aren't debated until the movie's climax. (The president finally wonders aloud if seats on the ships should have been offered in a lottery. That sounds like a plan, except for leaving six or seven billion passengers wait-listed.)

剧本是如此的仓促，以至于似乎没有人能马上理解任何内容；就好像所有的反应都延迟了30分钟。（影片长度为158分钟。）而且，《2012》对于文明的终结并没有明确的态度，除了相信有部与之相关的影片之外。其他演员还包括约翰·库萨克(John Cusack)，他饰演的杰克逊·柯蒂斯(Jackson Curtis)是一位转行成为豪华车司机的科幻小说作家；阿曼达·皮特(Amanda Peet)饰演杰克逊的前妻凯特(Kate)；丹尼·格洛弗(Danny Glover)出演总统；丹迪·牛顿(Thandie Newton)饰演总统的女儿；和奥利弗·普拉特(Oliver Platt)饰演总统冷酷的办公室主任。受到破坏、冲击或毁灭的知名地点有拉斯维加斯、梵蒂冈、喜马拉雅山、南极（移动到了威斯康星州）、华盛顿纪念碑、怀俄明州的大部分和整个加利福尼亚州。这一次，曼哈顿终于免遭厄运。

The script is so scatterbrained that no one ever seems to understand anything in real time; it's as if all reactions are on 30-minute delay. (The running time is 158 minutes.) What's more, '2012' has no discernible attitude toward the end of civilization, apart from the belief that there's a movie in it. The cast includes John Cusack as Jackson Curtis, a sci-fi novelist turned limo driver; Amanda Peet as Jackson's ex-wife, Kate; Danny Glover as the president; Thandie Newton as his daughter; and Oliver Platt as the president's steely chief of staff. Among the points of interest either damaged, disturbed or destroyed are Las Vegas, the Vatican, the Himalayas, the South Pole (relocated to Wisconsin), the Washington Monument, much of Wyoming and all of California. For once, Manhattan meets its fate offstage.