Roland Emmerich (Independence Day, The Day After Tomorrow) ushers in another wave of pixel-powered doom, this time wiping out our collective brain cells with his latest movie of mass destruction.

2012 is one of those happy movies; on one hand, serving up a doom-laden prophecy of global annihilation and, on the other, making you utterly resent the characters who survived to rebuild mankind.

The plot can be summed up by an apt analogy; akin to spreading a tiny knife-edge’s worth of butter over a mile of (computer-generated) toast. When the onslaught of global obliteration begins, the plot really is a series of people avoiding cars/buildings/comets/water/dialogue to survive until the next scene.

You could argue that the whole purpose of such an entry in a genre that lacks any type of versatility is not to offer a timeless allegory, but to maximise bang for your buck. You could argue that. But after two and a half hours of this plump running time, though, the end of the world can’t come soon enough.

John Cusack makes for an amicable lead, offering the same type of quirky, off-beat casting that Goldblum, Broderick and Gyllenhaal did in the director’s previous world-ending efforts. Unfortunately, the tired old routine of the torn family and Cusack’s near robotic performance make the central ethos one-note.

It is a decent cast of supporting players, filled with character-actors who deliver the lines with gusto, but the script itself is filled with nothing more than leaden dramatics. In fact, it is a waste of such a talented cast, all having to play second-fiddle to a barrage of special effects that are neither particularly special nor effective. It is all stuff we have seen before, mainly in the director’s previous movies.

Now, this is an odd admission we must make, but this become such a plundering bore that before the halfway point, we fell asleep. What we missed is summed up in roughly seven words on Wikipedia. Seven words to describe half an hour of missing movie.

It’s hard to describe what a mess this film is. It’s bloated, absurd and devoid of any emotional connection. We actually felt sorry for one character, whose spouse found that roughly ten minutes was enough time to move onto another man after his demise. It’s one of those frustrating moments in film, that leave you bewildered at the sheer stupidity of the situation.

You may buy into this as a brainless action movie, the type film that’ll prove perfect Saturday night fodder, but it fails to engage on even the most primordial level. It has bangs for your bucks, but somehow, the enjoyment got buried beneath the rubble. This is the definition of a disaster movie.

‘Spray Rating: 1/5

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It has been a long time coming but the highly-anticipated 2012 trailer has finally been released to the public with much critical and fan adoration.

Following on from the popular trailers for Independence Day, The Day After Tomorrow and Godzilla, Roland Emmerich proves that nobody is directing trailers with the same panache and reckless abandon for US monuments quite like the German trailer auteur.

Set in the not too distant future, the trailer for 2012 tells the story of a desperate families struggle to survive around the apocalypse. John Cusack stars as the father struggling to re-unite his broken family and save their lives from certain doom in this electrifying trailer performance.

“Cusack’s father is the moral core to the trailer’s story” quoted top television journalist Frank Wires of BBC’s Real Film. “The action comes thick and fast but without Cusack the integrity of this two and half minute trailer would be lost!”

Meanwhile Cusack is backed by a stellar supporting cast featuring Oliver Platt as the greasy Presidential Chief of Staff, a villain so despicable that his one line haunts the rest of the proceedings. The trailer also features veteran stage actor Chiwetel Ejiofor, who brings suitable gravitas as a scientist who may hold the key to humanity’s salvation – and Danny Glover appears in a blink-and-you’ll-miss-him cameo. This trailer is packed with star-wattage!

“The cast is electrifying” said one fan at the online premiere “I couldn’t take my eyes off of Chiwetel. His speech to Oliver Platt puts the whole film into relevant social context”.

The initial announcement that Emmerich was set to direct another disaster movie trailer was met with fan trepidation. After all, the trailer could have been an epic disaster. The last trailer released by Emmerich – the much maligned 10,000 BC – left audiences wondering whether the director still had it in him to pack the same two and a half minute punch we were used to. Luckily with everything from comets, floods and avalanches this trailer is sure not to disappoint his die-hard fanbase.

“We really didn’t want to retread old ground with this trailer” said visual effects honcho Carl Griffin. “We wanted people to feel that they were getting basically three or even four minutes of epic action packed into two and a half and that was a real challenge”. Everything from downtown L.A. to even the White House feature amongst the epic destruction - “We’ve all seen the White House destroyed before in the ID4 trailer and that was great! And we also flooded New York to great reaction in The Day After Tomorrow trailer…I think it was about six months into shooting when Roland came to me and said ‘Why don’t mix the two?’ Frankly we never looked back”.

The 2012 trailer is currently playing online everywhere, and proving to be a harrowing, exciting and action-packed production to rival any other trailer output from Paul W S Anderson, Brett Ratner or Michael Bay. It may be the end of the world but it’s hopefully the start of a long and exciting run of trailers from Roland Emmerich.

Here’s the trailer…