“The Day After Tomorrow” (2004)
Three years after 9/11 and Emmerich was back to his old tricks again, destroying Manhattan anew. Maybe it was because he thought that experiencing the devastation, this time in the relatively safe confines of a movie theater, would be a singular cathartic experience for a nation traumatized by large-scale violence that was far, far too real. Or maybe he thought that the movie, which was festooned with a heavy environmental message, spoke for itself: this is what could happen to us if we keep this thoughtless business up. Either way, “The Day After Tomorrow” harkened back to Emmerich’s heyday and the great seventies disaster films of yore, this time concerning a global apocalypse that wasn’t natural but something that we created. Melting polar ice caps lead to a worldwide meltdown that brings about, of all things, a new ice age. Within this context, a scientist (Dennis Quaid) fights to reconnect with his son (Jake Gyllenhaal) amidst typhoons, tornadoes, devastating snowstorms, and (of course) wolves. There is a spooky vibe to “The Day After Tomorrow,” which is only undercut by the bursts of Emmerich-sized silliness that often get in the way of the actual human drama (the director wisely telescopes in on a handful of characters instead of the dozens that usually populate his movies). Clearly audiences weren’t as offended as some critics claimed to be, with a gross of nearly $600 million. “The Day After Tomorrow” is also noteworthy in that it was the first “carbon neutral” Hollywood production, meaning that the production offset its horrible energy usage by planting trees and contributing to environmental causes. [C]
“2012” (2009)
Remember when 2012 was going to come and the Mayan calendar was going to be right and we were all going to die? Me neither. But Emmerich sure does! “2012” is kind of like the “Love Actually” of disaster movies, with Los Angeles falling into a giant hole, the Vatican’s domed towers crushing believers, and a massive volcano erupting in Yellowstone National Park (it shoots out clumps of liquid hot magma that, in the filmmakers’ imagination, look more like tiny meteors). Oh and a giant tidal wave forms that allows an aircraft carrier to destroy the White House (again). “2012” conversely feels like Emmerich’s “mission statement” and also like he’s totally on autopilot. His love of seventies disaster movies, with their expansive casts and fractured narratives, is both a blessing and a curse – it occasionally adds some dynamism to sequences where entire cities aren’t destroyed in a fiery cataclysm. But just as often they reinforce the leaden dialogue and often laughable scenarios that Emmerich puts his characters (led by John Cusack) in, again and again. (We still remember the screening we attended in 2009, in which the audience erupted in laughter on multiple occasions.) There is often a sense of gee-whiz wonder that breaks through the elaborate visual effects, even if those same effects lack the nuance and artistic integrity of the extensive model work that Emmerich used to do for his movies. Still, it’s hard not to love a movie in which Woody Harrelson plays a nut job survivalist conspiracy theorist who turns out to be right (and is then promptly killed). For goofy apocalyptic one-stop-shop overkill, it’s hard to beat “2012.” [C+]
“Universal Soldier” (1992)
Man this movie rules. The introduction of the Emmerich/Devlin double-team, this high concept, moderately budgeted sci-fi action movie is a bouillabaisse of clichés that somehow manages to be a charming, funny, often positively thrilling B-grade treat. In the opening sequence, a kind of “Casualties of War” prologue, an American soldier (Jean-Claude Van Damme) discovers that one of his own (Dolph Lundgren) has gone all Colonel Kurtz on his ass – he’s wearing a string of Vietnamese ears around his neck and has a young Vietnamese boy held hostage. The two soldiers kill each other in spectacularly violent fashion and the movie then cuts to present day, when a bunch of soldiers are sent into resolve a terrorist situation at the Hoover Dam. The shocking part? Two of those soldiers are Van Damme and Lundgren! Say what!?! So they’re part of a super-soldier program where they’ve been genetically modified to be the most killingest soldiers they can be. The problem is that these two start to recover their memories and start a war against each other. There a number of tropes that are trotted out in “Universal Soldier,” mostly the gag about these guys being borderline “Terminator“-type robots, plus there’s elements of fish-out-of-water comedies, not to mention a bit of time travel thrown in there since they’ve been temporally displaced. The two leads are dynamite – JCVD is weirdly hilarious as the “good” soldier while Lundgren is gleefully over-the-top as the “bad” one (there’s a great moment where he outstretches his arms and almost hugs the widescreen frame). Sure, there’s tons of silly bullshit (the soldiers have to cool off so they’re constantly riding around in trunks full of ice), it hasn’t aged very well, and the movie’s dusty Southwestern locations sometimes give away its low budget edge. But for pure movie-going pleasure, it’s hard to top. If you see this playing on some cable channel late at night, you’re not going to keep flipping. [B-]