2012 (2009) 2012 (2009)DIRECTED BY Roland Emmerich
WRITTEN BY Roland Emmerich and Harald Kloser
COUNTRY OF ORIGIN USA
In 2009, a geophysics team led by Dr. Adrian Helmsley (Chiwetel Ejiofor) learns that the Earth's core is heating up to dangerous levels due to a solar flare (an eruption of high-energy radiation on the sun's surface). Helmsley warns US President Thomas Wilson (Danny Glover) about the cataclysmic natural disasters that are bound to follow, but it isn't until 2010 that international leaders finally address the catastrophe and begin secretly building massive arks to ensure the survival of hundreds of thousands of people.
Three years later, in 2012, an easygoing sci-fi author named Jackson Curtis (John Cusack) has taken his kids camping in Yellowstone National Park. There he meets Charlie Frost (Woody Harrelson), a crazy conspiracy theorist who lives in a trailer and hosts a radio show devoted to the “end of days.” Frost has a map with locations for the government's secret set of arks, and he tells Curtis about them, and about the Earth Crust Displacement—a theory that suggests major geological polar shifts can cause large-scale catastrophes. Frost believes the end is nigh and that the government is murdering officials who have tried to warn people about what's happening.
More Movies Directed by Roland Emmerich
Independence Day (1996)
Godzilla (1998)
The Day After Tomorrow (2004, page 47)
UNFORGETTABLE MOMENT
Curtis's ex-wife and current boyfriend are shopping for supplies in the grocery store when a huge LA earthquake causes a massive rupture in the ground. The ground literally splits underneath their feet, opening up a gaping, cavernous hole and nearly killing them.
When Curtis and his kids get back to LA, they find massive earthquakes rattling the city, while millions of other people are dying in other disasters all across the world. Curtis, his ex-wife Kate (Amanda Peet), her boyfriend Gordon (Thomas McCarthy), and Curtis and Kate's kids rent a plane to escape LA. After flying back to Yellowstone, they use Frost's map to learn where the arks are—in China—and they head there.
EALITY FACTOR
Over the last few decades, the Earth's core has been heating up—the average global temperature of the Earth has gone up at the fastest rate in recorded history, and the ten hottest years on record have all been after 1990. Scientists believe that this warming is from climate change sparked by our mistreatment and pollution of the planet. Though certain aspects of 2012 were based on reality, most people in the scientific community scoffed at the movie for being totally outrageous and unrealistic, and NASA even dubbed it “the most absurd and scientifically flawed sci-fi blockbuster in recent memory.”
When they finally get to China, the group manages to stow away on the ark, and, in the end, the human race endures—at least, the humans lucky enough to have been on the arks.
The Inspiration2012 was partially inspired by Graham Hancock's Fingerprints of the Gods, a nonfiction book about the possibility of a technologically advanced civilization that was destroyed thousands of years ago, and which our contemporary world has for the most part failed to recognize. This ancient civilization was supposedly based in Antarctica; director Roland Emmerich has said that he first learned about the Earth Crust Displacement theory from Hancock's book.
The Impact
QUOTABLES 
“You're telling me that the North Pole is now somewhere in Wisconsin?”
White House Chief of Staff Carl Anheuser, speaking to professor Frederic West about the Earth Crust Displacement theory
“Six months ago, I was made aware of a situation so devastating that, at first, I refused to believe it. However, through the concerted efforts of our brightest scientist we have confirmed its validity. The world, as we know it, will soon come to an end.”
President Thomas Wilson delivering the news about the impending apocalypse to US citizens