Get ready for 2012 – the movie

I’ve decided to devote a whole week of blog posts to the Big Movie Event this week – the release of Sony Picture’s 2012 movie.

I’ll be taking some time each day to play on the many 2012 apocalypse websites that have been created by the imaginative team behind the ‘2012 Movie Experience’ (basically, an Alternate Reality Game or ARG, not unlike the one we created for Joshua Files – THE DESCENDANT.)

And on November 13th I’ll go see the movie and post my review. Yesirree.

Like The Joshua Files books, the central theme of 2012 is the mysterious end-date of the Mayan calendar – 21 December 2012.

Only, 2012 is a Massive Great Disaster Movie from the king of the disaster movie genre, Roland Emmerich. (THE DAY AFTER TOMORROW, INDEPENDENCE DAY). Whereas The Joshua Files is a puzzly, twisty, young adult fantasy technothriller about one teenager’s role in an ancient secret to protect the world from a global catastrophe in 2012. The final book, Joshua#5, will be published in 2012. So I’m not going to say whether it ends up in a big disaster scenario or not. Except that that wouldn’t be terribly original, would it? Not after 2012 – the movie.

So – 2012 the movie! Will it be any good? I hope so. If Emmerich blows the whole 2012 doomy gloomy excitement for Joshua Files, I shall be Very Cross. Let’s hope that that it will be STONKING.

Good indicators are the video trailers (both the 2012 cinema trailer and a new one which shows a brilliantly exciting escape scene as John Cusack and his fictional family escape spectacular doom in LA. ) and the fabulously serious and kooky 2012 Alternate Reality Game (ARG) that has been running since the launch early this year of the website of The Institute for Human Continuity.

(If this all sounds eerily familiar it’s because I have already blogged about this back in March 2009 Let’s Play 2012 Movie Virals.)

The IHC site was set up to inform people of the serious dangers of 2012 and to enter people in the 2012 Survival Lottery to be one of the lucky survivors. Coolio! I myself entered the lottery. Still don’t know if my number has been picked. Fingers crossed!

The whole 2012 thing is of course terribly controversial. If we’re being serious about it. I doubt that Emmerich et al are about any more convinced than me that there’ll be any actual disaster on 21 December 2012. It makes an exciting premise for an adventure story though.

But some people really believe this! And some people were actually taken in by the IHC site. Not that it was real, but that it was part of a global conspiracy to blah blah blah. You know, the usual They Are Out To Control Your Life crowd. For example, check out this earnest debunking of the IHC website. It isn’t real? You don’t say. We couldn’t tell.

It can be hard to distinguish fact and fiction on the Web. For example, one of the sites we created as part of THE DESCENDANT ARG,  the Joshua Files Alternate Reality Game, is archaeologyconspiracies.com As part of the game, I wrote an entirely fictitious article about how the ancient Sumerians had knowledge of advanced biochemistry. Now archaeologyconspiracies.com is getting lots of traffic – around several hundred visitors per day. And the number one story on the site is guess what? Yep – one former biochemist-turned-novelist’s crazy and totally invented story about ancient Sumerians burying a code in amino acids. Yet there’s a clear disclaimer on the site which says that it’s part of the Joshua Files ARG – THE DESCENDANT. Are people reading that? Hmmm.

Fact vs fiction. Sort it out! (For some fact vs fiction guidance re 21 December 2012, see mayan2012kids.com.)