Hollywood's Take on 2012

Disaster movies are a hallowed and longstanding Hollywood tradition. No surprise then that the 2012-related movies that have been released to date are heavily disaster-oriented. In this sense, 2012 apocalyptic thinking and Hollywood have the perfect symbiosis.

The first 2012-themed movie from a major studio I watched was "The Day the Earth Stood Still”, at the recommendation of James O’Dea, one the speakers at our recent conference “Understanding the 2012 Phenomenon”. The movie was a remake of the 1958 original. There was the mandatory disaster theming, of course, for our apocalyptic viewing pleasure but in terms of what I’ll call “enlightened content” at least the movie wasn’t objectionable and had its fair share of thought-provoking moments.

More recently, “Knowing” with Nichloas Cage, was recommended to me by Alan Dougall, my Tai Chi teacher and an avid moviegoer. It’s rife with 2012 themes and in my opinion very well crafted from the standpoint of reasonably structured narrative drama (not always the case these days as the notion of plot becomes more and more malleable.) The story line revolves around a professor of astrophysics at MIT who journeys into the (for him) strange new territory of prophecy and prediction i.e. the realm of purely intuitive knowledge. The disaster vehicle in this case is a massive solar flare that wreaks considerable earthly havoc. (Curiously, despite the role of intervening aliens, the film is being widely discussed on a number of Christian web sites.)

One important and worthy documentary that’s been done on the Shift is “2012: Science or Superstition”, a carefully crafted and well-balanced inquiry that features interviews with Daniel Pinchbeck, John Major Jenkins, and other well-regarded 2012 explicators. Annette has been in touch with one of the co-producers Ralph Bernardo and because we both think highly of the work, on Thursday August 20, The Emergence Project will host a screening of "2012 Science or Superstition" at the Lily Pad in Cambridge, MA. We hope you can attend. (http://www.theemergenceproject.net/events.htm#20090820)