For us Brits, the year 2012 means the Olympics, but for the ancient Mayans it signalled the end of the world.
And considering that nothing fuels an action blockbuster like an apocalyptic prophesy, Hollywood has unsurprisingly chosen to sink its teeth into this real-life legend.
2012 is the latest disaster movie from German director Roland Emmerich, the man behind Independence Day and The Day After Tomorrow – and its special effects promise to go where no CGI has gone before.
With just days to go before the Mesoamerican Long Count Calender ticks towards its end, sometime around December 21, 2012, there is only one man who can save the planet – divorced writer, Jackson Curtis.
In Emmerich’s spectacular movie, this unlikely hero is played by John Cusack, an actor better known for indie films such as Grosse Point Blank, High Fidelity and Being John Malkovich, than his action movies.
But as John explains, when it came to being cast as a hero, the role sort of chose him.
“I was just at home doing my thing and I get a call saying Roland (Emmerich) wants you to do this movie,” remembers John, 43.
“It was a big movie, so I met him and read the script and it was actually very well written and surprising in lots of ways.
“It wasn’t like a genre disaster movie, it was very different from what I expected, and so it was kind of an easy choice for me.”
For their latest effort, Emmerich and his co-writer Harald Kloser wanted to tell a contemporary version of Noah’s Ark – the myth of the epic flood that will sweep away civilisation. And the Mayan prophecies were the perfect hook on which to hang their story.
The film also plays on our fears about climate change. Emmerich conjures scenes of mass destruction with the sun heating up the earth’s core, making its crust melt and causing enormous earthquakes and tidal waves across the planet’s surface.
“I think a lot of people are already kind of obsessed with the Mayan prophecies,” says John.
“There’s a real fascination for that kind of thing. I know when I first read about Nostradamus it hooked me. Who doesn’t want to read that – it’s endlessly fascinating right? It just trips you out.
“No matter if you want to believe it or you think it’s all crackpot stuff, I think it’s undeniably compelling. Or if you even read prophecies, like The Book of Revelations, just the imagery and the poetry of it is so intense. And if you’re Catholic too, you’re raised with that in your consciousness.”
Besides John, the film boasts a stellar cast including Thandie Newton, as the daughter of the black American President (Danny Glover) and Chiwetel Ejiofor as the President’s scientific adviser, as well as Woody Harrelson as a trailer-dwelling conspiracy theorist.
The film opens with Jackson turning up late at his ex-wife’s house to take his son and daughter camping in Yellowstone. It turns out the national park is the centre of government activities into monitoring the earth’s core.
No sooner have Jackson and his kids been evacuated from the park back to Los Angeles, than the city is engulfed in massive earthquakes, with the family struggling to escape.
As characters from the ensemble cast finally come together, it transpires there are elaborate plans to save the human race. But is there enough time for them to reach safety?
“I really liked the different storylines and I found it surprising, in a good way,” says John who plays father who is struggling for work and missing his kids.
“It’s all at a very human level – you go inside the corridors of power and it’s about the ethics of what you should and shouldn’t tell people. I thought it was much, much better than some kinds of action films.
“When everything starts to happen and the world is facing the ultimate disaster, my character’s own over-riding instinct is to get to his family and try, somehow, to save them. That’s a powerful emotion – it’s a family literally trying to stay alive as these cataclysmic events are happening all around them.”
With so many special effects, you’d be forgiven for thinking the CGI would overshadow the cast, but Emmerich had everything in proportion, says John.
“There were things that I’ve never seen even attempted on film – the scale of it was incredible.
“And I did think, ’Well, will you have time for the acting?’ And he most certainly did. A lot of attention was paid to that all the way through the shoot. The script was all about these very simple, family things and Roland was very focused on telling that story with all of this other, amazing stuff happening as well.”
The action sequences required a lot of effort on John’s part, but he says they were fine as long as he managed the crew’s expectations.
“The underwater stuff was pretty intense, and some of the physical stuff was too. There were a couple of times, like when they have you on a conveyor belt - when your character is running away from some impending disaster – and you’d have to say, ’You understand that we can do this like six times more and that’s fine. But if we have to do this 15 more times I’m going to pull a hamstring and I won’t be able to walk tomorrow. So you do understand that will be your choice?”’ he says, laughing.
“When you do an action movie, you have to let everyone know what’s about to happen. There’s only so much my hamstrings can take!”
The Illinois-born actor can rest his hamstrings for a while, as he has “nothing on the books” for the remainder of the year.
And as to the Mayan prophesy affecting his future career, John’s fairly hopeful that it won’t.
“No, I don’t think the world will end. I think maybe it will just be a change in consciousness in 2012. I think there will be a big shift in consciousness. Either that or it really will be the end,” he laughs. “I obviously hope it’s not.”
2012 is released in cinemas on Friday November 13
EXTRA TIME – JOHN CUSACK
John was born to showbiz family. His dad Dick was an actor, documentary filmmaker and owned a production company. He has appeared in several films with his sister Joan.
He first got into acting as a child when he joined the Piven Theatre Workshop, run by the father of Entourage actor and John’s close friend Jeremy.
He is notoriously tight-lipped about his private life, although he has been linked to several actresses including Minnie Driver and Neve Campbell.
Last year 30-something Emily Leatherman was convicted of stalking him, by throwing packages and letters into the grounds of his Malibu home.
If the world was to end, John says he wouldn’t be sorry to see reality TV destroyed. “I haven’t watched much of it, but what I have watched, I think I’d blow that up!”
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