2012 vs Speed

Cliff: I can’t believe you saw 2012. You hate the end of the world.

Ryan: And you don’t?

Cliff: Not at the movies. My favorite thing is birds. THE BIRDS ARE TRYING TO TELL US SOMETHING.

Ryan: Yep, there’s a scene of weird flocking or whatever in 2012.

Cliff: Ominous flocking! Better get in your bunker.

Ryan: Won’t do any good. In 2012, a lot of the destruction is caused by earthquakes. And stupidity.

Cliff: What was the dumbest part?

Ryan: It was either the big girl diapers product placement…

Cliff: That is the absolute least cool product placement ever. It got a lingering closeup, and then a call-back at the end of the movie, like it was a big plot point. Am I supposed to run out and buy those after 2012?

Ryan: Ridiculous. But that’s in second place for me. The dumbest part of 2012 is when they’re all loaded into the arks, and—

Cliff: Spoiler.

Ryan: Yeah, sorry. Anyway, the President is all “I know we’ve got people here from all over the world, every walk of life, every race and religion, so I’ve chosen something that applies to everyone.” And then he just goes ahead and recites a Psalm from the Bible. He goes out of his way to say he’s going to be universal, and then isn’t.

Cliff: Well, he’s in the right movie. You have to admit it looked good.

Ryan: Some of it. Each crack or fissure had tiny little pebbles raining down into the ground, like some special effects artist was saying, “We don’t miss a thing!”, but it distracted me every time. I’m more concerned about the people standing around the crack, not that each little pebble is rendered perfectly. Which, by the third or fourth earthquake, I was no longer concerned about the people, and did indeed study the cracks, and they look like they’re happening, I guess, but I still didn’t buy it. It’s like a ride or something.

Cliff: Yeah, there’s no true danger, unless you’re a nameless extra. At least not for an hour or so.

Ryan: 2012 steals a page from Deep Impact, by making everything about issues between parents and children, or husbands and wives. The destruction of the earth is a sign you need to patch things up.

Cliff: 2012 tries way too much to telegraph that the family is going to be okay. There’s a stepdad character, and they set him up to be wrong for the female lead, or a nerd, or a bad guy or something, but he seems okay to me, and more importantly, isn’t that whole cliché out of place in this movie?

Ryan: It’s really bad. It’s a rehash of lame domestic comedies, where Jim Carrey or Tim Allen are a bad dads cause they keep missing soccer games. And it’s stuck in the middle of this disaster movie, to add a human element? Is that it?

Cliff: I guess. We’re faced with two different conflicts: the world is going to implode, and John Cusack doesn’t try hard enough to bond with his kids. And…those are equal conflicts?

Ryan: How many times have John Cusack and Amanda Peet played a bickering married couple? A hundred?

Cliff: Never.

Ryan: Oh.

Cliff: It just goes further to prove that nothing in 2012 feels new.

Ryan: Anyway, there’s a guy who tries to warn the others, played by Chiwetel Ejiofor, who is always good, but there’s not much you can do with The Guy Who Tries To Warn The Others. He even sneaks into a White House dinner with secret documents the President must see.

Cliff: 2012 has two of those guys. The other is a crazy guy who lives in Yellow Stone National Park, even though I’m positive that’s not possible. He’s played by Woody Harrelson with a crazy wig and crazy teeth.

Ryan: Cusack meets him when he takes his kids camping at Yellowstone, which is portrayed as a mix of Area 51 and Death Valley. I like John Cusack, he’s not exactly the first actor I think of when I think of people who are believable camping with children.

Cliff: He’s about as high on that list as he is on the list of people that are believable jumping giant vehicles over gaps in the earth.

Ryan: How many times did that happen?

Cliff: Twice in planes, once in a limo, once in an RV. I might be forgetting something. And they weren’t all driven by Cusack, but still.

Ryan: All the trumpeting of 2012 being the ultimate special-effects movie, and it just keeps copying a scene from Speed over and over.

Cliff: Please say we’re doing Speed.

Ryan: We are.

Cliff: Good. I was afraid we were putting 2012 against Transformers 2. I hated Transformers 2 so much I don’t even want to talk about it. Trashing it here is making it stronger.

Ryan: Well, it’s funny: Speed would seem to be another over-the-top action movie, with bland leads, mindless effects, and an obnoxious plot aimed at 14-year-olds. But, two things: it was probably the smartest action movie of its time since Die Hard, and there have been precious few since that have came close. Speed is pretty thrilling, actually, and has that unusual three-act plot most people forget about. Everyone remembers the bomb on the bus, but there’s a crisis before that, and one after. Speed came at such an odd time in movies. Everything was moving into this indie-movie world, mostly for good, and the one guy who could have benefited from sticking with under-the-radar films bulked up and made the action movie of his generation. It’s probably Speed’s fault Nicolas Cage made so much crap.

Cliff: And compared to Cusack and Peet, who are fine on their own, Keanu Reeves and Sandra Bullock don’t get overwhelmed by the action scenes. They manage to create characters at the center of the storm, and leave us thinking about the characters, and not the storm. 2012 tries to wedge all these subplots and characters in around all the mayhem, but it’s too late. The mayhem is bigger than the characters. Speed has a much simpler set-up: a bomb is going to blow up a bus—not a city, but a bus—unless the main characters can keep it running at 50 mph, forever. And Sandra Bullock ends up driving the bus, with Keanu Reeves as a cop—

Ryan: --FBI agent—

Cliff: Keanu. He plays Keanu, and he helps make a plan to keep the bus going, even if it means…jumping over an unfinished overpass. Once. As cheesy as it sounds, Speed isn’t about a bus, it’s about the girl driving it, and the Keanu who jumps on to save the day. He’s a regular guy, but he’s no slacker. He’s good at what he does. I hate to say this, and don’t kill me: John Cusack is no Keanu Reeves. Usually that’s a good thing.

Ryan: Keanu really is the best Keanu, isn’t he?

Cliff: That might be wisest thing you’ve ever said.

2012: C-

Speed: A-