Flirting with Disaster

We Were Warned says the tagline of 2012, the latest disaster porn to infiltrate movie theaters. Indeed, we were warned...when this movie first came out under the title The Day after Tomorrow...which first came out under the title Independence Day.

I know I know. I spent the money, and what did I expect? And to be totally honest, the movie accomplished more or less what it set out to do: simultaneously thrill and repulse me with breathtakingly realistic visual demonstrations of the horrifying annihilation of Earth and billions of human beings.

Truly, for sheer destruction, I have no idea how 2012 will ever be topped. Perhaps it isn't wise to invite calamitous imagineering, but short of seeing the planet and its every inhabitant gradually consumed by a massive black hole or smacked into the sun with a god-sized baseball bat, what's left? Watching Los Angeles convincingly fall into the ocean more or less ends the fun for me.

Yet why, I wonder, do I not-so-secretly get excited by apocalyptic scenarios? Why do we so enjoy blowing the hell out of ourselves on screen?

This past weekend I was leaving a friend's house in Hollywood when we heard what sounded like artillery going off somewhere nearby. We joined other confused neighbors in rounding a corner to try and see what it might be. Of course, it stopped right as we got a clear look.

Intrigued, I left my friend, jumped in my car, and went several miles out of my way to get a look. I anxiously flipped through radio stations to see if there were any early reports of gunshots fired or a previously unknown chemical plant in the middle of the Fairfax district exploding. I could see what looked like a plume of smoke rising up from the south, and circled around to discover...

...people leaving from The Grove after the Christmas Tree lighting ceremony, with fireworks finale.

And I felt a small twinge of disappointment. It took me a moment to notice the hordes of people streaming away from the Tree Lighting, enjoying an event with their families and loved ones. When I finally did, I returned to myself, ashamed at my dark desire for calamity to spice up my otherwise normal life.

So I suppose that despite 2012 being so formulaic that you could darn near edit together the same movie from pieces of ID4, Day After Tomorrow, and Poseidon, and despite it being downright insulting in the casting of Danny Glover as the President of the United States (who sounds like he just woke up from being whacked with a sock full of quarters), I guess the simple truth is that it appeals to something intrinsic within me, and I daresay us.

Whether that something is good or bad I don't know.