YMMV / 2012

• Alas, Poor Scrappy: Yuri's sons are both rich, spoiled brats like their father, but it's hard not to feel sorry for them when they both have to watch him fall to his death after throwing his two sons to safety.
• Alternative Character Interpretation:
  • Jackson: A Karma Houdini whose attempt to sneak his family aboard the ark is directly responsible for two deaths (which soon after turn out to be pointless), one injury and nearly killed everybody else aboard as well.
  • Anheuser: A Reasonable Authority Figure who bravely confronts and takes responsibility for the unenviable soul-wrenching decisions on how to best preserve the human race.
• Angst? What Angst?: Despite the fact that he saved all their lives multiple times, and has arguably been a better father to them for longer than Jackson has, Gordon's family don't so much as blink after he dies in an incredibly gruesome and pointless fashion. It kind of makes them look like assholes.
• Anvilicious:
  • An earthquake causes a crack right between the reaching fingers of God and Adam in the Sistine Chapel.
  • An aircraft carrier, a physical embodiment of American military might, crashes into the White House.
  • "The whole continent of Africa has risen."
• Awesome Music:
  • Master of Shadows" by Two Steps from Hell in the second trailer for the film. Take a listen.
  • The jazzy, decidedly ironic “It Ain’t The End of the World,” sung by Blu Mankuma and George Segal onboard the Genesis right after LA is wiped off the face of the Earth by a 10.9 earthquake, certainly qualifies as well.
• Cargo Ship: A humorous take, sounding a lot like a one-night stand.
  Sasha: (to Antonov) Come on, baby. Lift your big ass for Sasha!
• Broken Aesop: Dr. Adrian Helmsley gives a rousing speech aboard one of the Arks on the importance of humanity looking out for one another and convinces the captain to open the gates, allowing more people in. While well-intentioned, this decision indirectly results in the Diabolus ex Machina offings of Gordon and Tamara via the ship flooding.
• Designated Hero:
  • Jackson. Sure he's a Badass Driver in a limo but he was a terrible father to his kids. Not only that but his attempt to sneak his family and a couple of others into the ark gets Gordon and Tamara killed, Tenzin injured and almost dooms everyone else onboard. And while he did feel horrible for not saving Gordon, he immediately forgets about him shortly afterwards.
  • Adrian. Every single one of the decisions he argues for (releasing news about the impending catastrophe immediately, without any time to prepare for the results; forcefully cramming as many people as possible onto the ark, regardless of sanitation or morale) are utterly insane, but we're supposed to side with him at every turn.
• Designated Villain:
  • Carl Anheuser. He makes some good points about how to keep as many people alive as possible, namely by not endangering the remaining human race by letting the rest of the refugees on board, racing against time and, if they survive that, the strain on their remaining resources. He doesn't even tell his own mother to board, though he has good reason: she's "89 years old, in a wheelchair, and has slight dementia. And I'm confident that she would want to go ready to meet her maker on her own terms."
  • Also, he has good reasons of chewing Adrian out when he demanded to release the information regarding the Arks plan to the public: to keep everyone calm amidst a catastrophe and let the Arks plan go smoothly.
    "Just want to tell everyone they're doomed? There'd be anarchy. You wanna jeopardize the president?"
• Ensemble Dark Horse:
  • The Russians. Among them, Sasha is probably the biggest for completely avoid any idiot tendencies and being a badass. Tamara for Ms. Fanservice and also being a good person. Both tragically die later on when Sasha's plane crashes in the Himalayan mountains, and Tamara drowns onboard the Ark 4's flooding.
  • While Eight Deadly Words applies to most of John Cusack's family, Lilly seems to be an exception to this for being genuinely cute and funny at several times and a friendly girl overall, the opposite of her brother. She's the only one of the central family that most people actually care about with the only bad thing about her being not mourning Gordon like the rest of her family.
  • Charlie Frost is the role that Woody Harrelson was born to play, and his scenes are a complete joy to watch as a result.
  • Carl Anheuser has some fans thanks to being one of the most sensible people in the whole movie despite the fact that the movie works desperately to convince you he's the bad guy.
  • Captain Michaels, the Reasonable Authority Figure that humanity would desperately need. When the apocalypse comes, it'd be hard not to feel safer with this guy leading the way.
  • Gordon comes off as being an infinitely better father than Jackson ever was, saves the family on multiple occasions thanks to his borderline miraculous piloting skills, and you can't help but feel sorry for the poor bastard when he is cruelly killed in a painful and undignified death literally meters from safety after a journey that took him halfway around the world.
• Esoteric Happy Ending: The film ends with the arks receiving news that the global floodwaters are receding and they're heading to start a new colony on the African continent. Only then you remember that the world had just experienced a huge mess of geological disasters- continent-cracking earthquakes, volcanic eruptions (including Yellowstone), gargantuan tsunamis that drown most of the world, the Earth's crust shifting by 23 degrees, the magnetic fields reversing, etc. In all likelihood, the majority of the Earth's ecosystems have been destroyed and nearly all species wiped out, either from the disasters themselves or the resulting pollution from natural and man-made sources. The Earth is also due for a volcanic winter of hellish proportions with the ash and sulfur dioxide from all the eruptions. To make matters worse, most of the people on the arks are the wealthy elite and are probably not equipped with the skills needed to rebuild all of civilization. The actions by those onboard showcase that most of them are arrogant and will likely be squabbling over who gets to be in charge.
• Fan-Preferred Cut Content:
  • The deleted scene where Helmsley punches Annheuser during an argument about whether or not they should be saving more people has no shortage of fans who think it deserved to stay in.
  • Many people prefer the alternate ending to the final one, given how it keeps Gordon from being a Forgotten Fallen Friend and has Harry and Tony survive, which also indirectly implies that more ships at sea may have survived the disaster.
• Glurge:
  • Noah's anguished tearful moment with Jackson before he goes to repair the gears. It would be a nice heartwarming moment... if not for the fact that the kid (and the rest of the family) is not only not showing any sort of emotion after Gordon (his stepfather who saved everyone's lives twice and whose death he indirectly caused because he was hesitating in climbing inside despite his dad constantly telling him to do so) is killed but is holding his Dad up at a very time-sensitive moment and is risking millions of lives. Rather than sympathizing with the kid, many viewers wanted to punch him for causing Tamara to drown.
  • No one will dispute the kid's general annoyance and uselessness. And yet, he is the one who saw that one of the equipments jamming the gears is the cable.
  • Not to mention the very end of the movie, as summarized by Cracked: The true victory was not surviving the world as we know it completely destroying itself, but of overcoming nocturnal enuresis.
  • There's an extended scene of Yuri's girlfriend's dog making its way onto the ship. We're supposed to be joyful that the dog survives, but it's very difficult to ignore the people falling to their deaths all around it.
• Ham and Cheese: Woody Harrelson gloriously overacts in each of his scenes, completely stealing the show.
• Harsher in Hindsight:
  • When Washington, D.C. is hit by a quake, we witness the collapse of the Washington Monument during the chaos. Cut to 2011, when the Monument was severely damaged in the Virginia quake and shut down for repairs until three years later.
  • The fictional An-500 is destroyed after carrying the main characters to China. In 2022, the real plane it was based on, the An-225 Mriya, was itself destroyed during the early days of the Russian invasion of Ukraine.
• He's Just Hiding: It can be easy to hope this for a lot of the characters, especially Tamara (given that she just might have been able to hold her breath long enough for the water to recede) and Tony, Harry and everyone else on the Genesis which did indeed survive in the alternate ending.
• Hilarious in Hindsight:
  • The line about the Italian Prime Minister praying in his quarters during the Vatican's destruction was met with resounding laughter by Italian audiences. Given that Italy's actual PM at the time was Silvio Berlusconi, almost everyone there joked that he instead surrounded himself with whores, to pass his last moments on Earth as he always lived.
  • This is a movie about a massive apocalyptic disaster in 2012. Cue when the year hit 2013, Marshall Pentecost said that humanity will cancel the apocalypse.
• Informed Wrongness: Adrian is outraged by Anhauser building the Ark for a long-term habitat instead of maximum immediate capacity. However, the movie never acknowledges that, while cramming people onto the Ark like sardines might save more lives at first, overcrowding would cause serious issues and be the perfect environment for disease to spread among the survivors, killing far more people than it saved.
• Karmic Overkill: Gordon dies horribly while breaking into the Ark for no other reason than getting in the way of Jackson uniting with his ex-wife and estranged children. And his great crime was... being a loving stepfather and good husband to Jackson's estranged family.
• Memetic Mutation:
  • "The neutrinos have mutated!"
  • Telling your descendants that you survived this apocalypse is a popular meme.
  • "The Governor just said we're fine now."
    "The guy's an actor! He's reading a script!"
• Moral Event Horizon: Yuri leaving Tamara, Gordon, and the Curtis family for dead. This is despite the fact that Tamara was his girlfriend and that Gordon was one of the two pilots who saved his life. Although Yuri's saving his children before falling at least 50 feet to his demise does show that he did have redeeming qualities, but not enough.
• Narm:
  • Even by the low standards of Roland Emmerich disaster movies, "the neutrinos have mutated" is impressively nonsensical science.
  • The many Action Film, Quiet Drama Scene moments in this film come off as this as well, giving off the impression that the film is taking itself way more seriously than it should have any right to given the absurdity of its premise.
• One-Scene Wonder: The movie's got really strong supporting actors. Perhaps the most memorable is Woody Harrelson, who gleefully chews the entire Yellowstone park as a crackpot conspiracy theorist.
• Rooting for the Empire: Those who don't like any of the characters will find themselves rooting for the massive destruction to just kill them all. To a lesser extent, Carl Anheuser is seen as more likeable, or at the very least more sensible, than the film's actual heroes by a fair amount, so some people find themselves rooting for him instead.
• The Scrappy: Noah. The kid is a dick to his father for the first act and does nothing but scream and complain for the entire disaster. He's also The Load and a borderline Damsel Scrappy. Not only that but he indirectly gets Gordon and Tamara killed and Tenzin injured.
• Signature Scene:
  • The massive Los Angeles earthquake scene.
  • The Yellowstone Caldera eruption scene.
• Special Effects Failure: Very little (Roland Emmerich and all), but the real water in the climax is pretty striking next to the CGI water we've seen throughout the film.
• Spiritual Successor: Of The Day After Tomorrow and Independence Day, of course!
• Strawman Has a Point: The closest thing that the film has to a villain is Oliver Platt's heartless presidential adviser, who's an obvious Take That! to George W. Bush and Dick Cheney — note that his name is Anheuser, presumably after Anheuser-Busch breweries. However, after the fifth or sixth argument where his level-headed pragmatism is contrasted with the Honor Before Reason Save Everyone bleeding-heart attitude of the rest of the cast, you kind of have to wonder if maybe the writers did not secretly agree with him. Some examples:
  • He is heavily criticized for keeping the impending disaster a secret from the general public, although announcing the end of the world would've caused massive panic and hysteria and helped no one.
  • Helmsley complains that "only rich people" are being let onto the Arks, to which Anheuser responds that the money they spent buying tickets is what funded the Arks in the first place. That and snarking "Oh, you mean life isn't fair?!" No one seems to point out that those "rich people" won't be rich after the catastrophe. Even if they could take all their money with them, it'll be worthless in a world without an economy to back it up. They'll have to work just like everyone else, and will find it significantly harder than those who have developed skills that might actually apply in rebuilding society, such as construction, science, logistics, or agriculture. Also, it's not like any debt accumulated from building them would actually matter when the world ends. The countries could have spent themselves into bankruptcy ten times over.
  • When Adrian wants to open up the Ark to save one more family, Anheuser chews him out for wanting to risk everyone's lives just for a slim chance of saving five or six more people. For starters, they had 15 minutes before the water hit the boat (and it took a long time for the door to open), and if the door malfunctioned and wouldn't close (a legitimate concern, considering how quickly such complex boats were made), every person on the boat would be in danger, dooming the human race (which is exactly what almost happened). On top of that, people are going to be on that ark for years, if not decades, therefore they have a limited number of supplies. If they started running out of food, they would have to either start rationing food to ridiculously low extremes, and people would go crazy and kill people so they would have more food for themselves, or some people would just starve to death. Yes, Adrian claimed you could fit 10 people in 1 room, but being confined with 10 people for years would not only be uncomfortable, but create major antagonism between the passengers, something you don't want when they are the last surviving humans. Which is made even more glaring in hindsight after this supposed heroism results in the horrific deaths of Gordon and Tamara.
  • The scientists gave the world governments a set timetable for when the world was supposed to end, and the world governments began their doomsday preparations based upon the timeline given to them. But when the end of the world started earlier than what was projected, Anheuser essentially has to make decisions on the fly which are morally ambiguous but are also realistic. He's supposed to be seen as evil for not wanting to save certain people, but considering the scientists keep feeding data that is consistently wrong, it's hard to blame him for having to make such drastic decisions.
• Tear Jerker: The movie is loaded with these:
  • Adrian's final conversation with his father.
  • Tony attempting to call his son, when his adorable little granddaughter Yoko answers his phone to find out the man calling for her dad is actually her grandfather. Then a massive earthquake followed by a tsunami wipes out Tokyo along with Tony's son's family, with Tony never getting a chance to reunite with them.
  • Anheuser reveals that he chose to not evacuate his own mother from the coming disaster. Anheuser also explains that his mother is 89, wheelchair bound, and suffering from dementia, and that she would prefer to "meet her maker on her own terms", anyway. You can hear Anheuser choking up a bit as he speaks.
  • President Wilson, when the time comes to evacuate, is seen desperately praying in the White House chapel, and you’d be forgiven for thinking he's drowning his sorrows with how heavily he's hanging his head. He then tells Adrian that he is going to be the last president, clearly ashamed that the world is going to end on his watch even if he had no way to stop the disaster, and it's end is his legacy. Wilson then tells Adrian he's going to stay behind and not evacuate so he can address the nation and world one last time, purely to give his viewers the chance to try to find some peace before the end comes. After the evacuating personnel leave, Wilson's address is cut off. Afterwards, as the ash falls from the Yellowstone caldera, Wilson loses any authority he had as he just tries to be a decent human being helping out wherever he can. And ultimately, another earthquake kills most of the people in the vicinity, and Wilson dies seeing an aircraft carrier (the John F. Kennedy) careening towards him in a tsunami, and quietly tells his late wife he's on his way to be reunited with her.
  • Harry seeing his partner, Tony's death before him, and the entire cruise ship gets engulfed by the tsunami.
    HARRRRYYY!!!!
  • The deaths of Sasha and especially Gordon and Tamara. Jackson's futile attempts to help Gordon only to watch in horror as he dies doesn't help. Tamara’s last act is to help a little girl escape, but she's left to drown alone in a quickly filling room, sobbing as she’s forced to accept her fate.
    • Speaking of Gordon, the entire family forgets him almost immediately after his death, which is sad considering that he saved their lives twice and was practically half the reason they got to China in the first place. Poor guy...
  • Yuri's death. Despite all he did and how much you probably wanted him to be punished, the fact he was just trying to save his kids when he finally dies can make it less of a satisfying moment, and more of a Alas, Poor Villain moment.
  • Depending on how you view it. Sometimes the film itself can be a rough watch, as it can be scene after scene of innocent people getting killed by no fault of their own. The cruise ship scene in particular, hearing all those frightened people as the wave sinks the boat. It's rough.
• They Wasted a Perfectly Good Character: It's looking like Tamara and Gordon are going to hook up after Jackson returns to his family, and that at the end of the film Gordon and Jackson will have gained some respect for each other. Gordon and Tamara both die, in extremely stupid and pointless ways no less, and are instantly forgotten about. Many viewers were pissed off.
• Too Cool to Live: Thomas, Gordon, Harry, Tony, and every single Russian character except for Yuri's brat sons and the Russian President.
• Unintentional Period Piece:
  • All televisions featured here are of the CRT variety. Whilst it's not too much of a stretch to imagine a convenience store with one — despite happening after analog television was discontinued — it seems unrealistic to believe that a state-of-the-art cruise liner would have a CRT television rather than a flat-screen television. Noah's hair is also a swooping fringe that comes straight out of the late 2000s. Granted, the film is called 2012 and was released just three years prior to the year in question, so it's pretty blatantly not going for a timeless feel.
  • Minor detail, but still: the "Russian"^note actually Ukrainian plane used for the plan to fly to China is an Antonov AN-225. The only one of its kind ever built was destroyed as collateral damage of the Russian invasion of Ukraine in 2022.
• Unintentionally Unsympathetic: Gordon/Jackson's family come off as this when Gordon dies. After being a better father and husband than Jackson who bonds with Tamara and tries to bond with Jackson himself, and after saving pretty much everyone's lives twice to get to China, not only does he die a horrible death when he was so close to safety but his death is pretty much ignored by the remaining surviving family members. Granted, they were in a life and death situation (even though they caused it no less) and Jackson did try to save him but it makes them come off like assholes. Doesn't help that Gordon and Tamara died and Tenzin got injured because of their attempt to sneak into the Ark. Naturally, many viewers were pissed.
• Visual Effects of Awesome: Well duh, it's a Roland Emmerich film. We dare you to watch the thrilling climax in which a colossal ark careens through the flooded Himlayas and not enjoy it.
• What Do You Mean, It's Not Didactic?: Cheesy disaster movie made to cash in on the Mayan Doomsday craze, or a movie aimed at purposely showing the absurdities of such a scenario, meant to be a Take That! aimed at doomsayers who believed it?

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