Here's an interesting report from Lily Kuo, writing for the Los Angeles Times from Beijing.

"Welcome to the People's Republic of China," declares an officer of the People's Liberation Army as he crisply salutes an American novelist (played by John Cusack) who has just fled the United States, which -- like much of the world -- has been destroyed by an environmental catastrophe.

It is a line that has thrilled thousands of Chinese filmgoers who have made writer-director Roland Emmerich's “2012” among the most popular Hollywood films of all time on the Chinese mainland. The plot has helped: In Emmerich's ("Independence Day," "The Day After Tomorrow") latest version of the apocalypse, only the goodness of man and Chinese ingenuity can save humanity from extinction.

"It is just like a love letter from Emmerich to China," one enthusiastic Chinese wrote about “2012” on Sohu.com, a popular host for blogs.

Since opening in China on Nov. 13, the global blockbuster has grossed about $65 million in local currency, according to distributor Sony Pictures Entertainment. That puts the studio's end-of-the-world epic on track to top “Transformers: Revenge of the Fallen” as the most successful foreign film ever released in China. Last summer's "Transformers" grossed about $65.8 million at the Chinese box office, beating "Titanic's" 1998 record of $52.7 million.

"It really has been unbelievable," says Jeff Blake, vice chairman of Sony Pictures. "The revenues from the market just keep improving all the time." Blake says "2012" is playing in nearly 2,000 Chinese theaters -- 1,300 of which have state-of-the-art digital projectors. "It's the biggest release for the film outside of the United States," Blake says. "The infrastructure is really exploding in China."

On a recent Thursday afternoon outside the cinema at the Joy City department store in Xidan, a popular shopping district in central Beijing, about a dozen young couples and students stood in line. Another group sat in the carpeted lobby area, sipping Coke and eating caramel popcorn while waiting for their movies to start. Most of them were there to watch "2012," which was playing to crowded auditoriums every half-hour.

"During opening weekend, we added extra showings," said theater ticket collector Liu Ming, 23. Liu said many people still have not seen the film because evening shows are always sold out.

Although it was panned by critics, "2012" has captured the Chinese imagination.

In the movie, the world is facing a massive environmental crisis, and the kindly American president (played by Danny Glover) is powerless to save his citizens.

The planet's core is overheating so quickly that the Earth's crust disintegrates, sending tidal waves of water across the globe. California is among the first to go when an earthquake rips the state into pieces and sends Los Angeles crashing into the ocean. Soon the whole planet will be underwater. In the face of imminent annihilation, the G-8 countries hatch a plan to build a series of massive arks, and China is the only country capable of building the rescue boats in time.

"That's closer to the truth of what China's like. I hope there will be more scenes like that in Hollywood," said Shi Ying, a 20-year-old computer science student who works part time at the movie theater's gift shop.

THERE'S MORE; READ THE REST.

-- Lily Kuo

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Photo: "2012" stars John Cusack and Woody Harrelson. Credit: Columbia Pictures.

Scene Stealer

Liesl Bradner has interviewed many of the masters of Hollywood effects in our Wizards of Hollywood section of Hero Complex and today takes a look at a particular moment during "2012" in this installment of Scene Stealer.

The disaster film "2012" reunites director Roland Emmerich and visual effects supervisor Volker Engel, who first worked together 13 years ago on another end-of-the-world movie, "Independence Day." How apocalyptic times have changed. The key destruction scenes in that earlier film consisted of 90% miniatures, a common practice when things need to be blown up, leaving only 10% of the elements to be computer-generated.

By comparison, nearly half of "2012" is visual effects. Because of the complexity of the destruction scenes it was impossible to use miniatures.

"The limo-in-earthquake was the most challenging scene, as it could not be shot at all but had to be completely created in the computer with inserts of the actors reacting to the mayhem," said Engel from Berlin, where he is collaborating with Emmerich on "Anonymous," a quiet Shakespearean drama.

Except for a few shots of a real limo filmed against a blue screen, the five-second crane shot in a residential neighborhood was completely virtual. The bird’s-eye view of the neighborhood buckling with every crumbling house, swaying palm tree, fence, car, sidewalk, garbage can and the limousine were all computer-generated because each one of those elements had to be simulated to shake, break or tumble.

-- Liesl Bradner

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Los Angeles Times senior film critic Kenneth Turan sat through a popcorn apocalypse. Here's his review, with a few links added by me. -- Geoff Boucher

As far as the new disaster film "2012" is concerned, the world will end with both a bang and a whimper, the bang of undeniably impressive special effects and the whimper of inept writing and characterization. You pays your money, you takes your chances.

In fact, it's hard to say what leaves the more lasting impression, how realistically director Roland Emmerich has destroyed Los Angeles (it's the third try, after "Independence Day" and "The Day After Tomorrow," practice apparently making perfect) or how difficult a time the actors have bringing any life to the script by Emmerich and Harald Kloser.

Nothing, not even a season of Shakespeare at Stratford-upon-Avon, will give you more respect for how difficult it is to be an actor than watching top talent like John Cusack, Chiwetel Ejiofor, Amanda Peet and Oliver Platt struggling to treat the film's ungodly language and situations with perfect seriousness.

The deeper truth, of course, is that it doesn't really matter and everyone with a hand in "2012" knows as much. Audiences with a hankering for the apocalypse shrug off the ridiculous and sit tight for the special effects. In this case, they are worth the wait.

THERE'S MORE, READ THE REST 

-- Kenneth Turan

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Los Angeles Times staff writer John Johnson Jr. writes about science for the paper, not science fiction, so you don't see his name pop up in this blog. That changes today, though, because Johnson and the scientists he covers are busy dealing with pockets of public hysteria regarding "2012," the doomsday year according to the coming disaster film and a growing number of true believers. Here's an excerpt from his thorough and enlightening report; I've added most of the links so you can make up your own mind about the science and the scare. And, by the way, how thrilled is Columbia with all these headlines about the hysteria? -- Geoff Boucher

Is 2012 the end of the world?

If you scan the Internet or believe the marketing campaign behind the movie "2012," scheduled for release in November, you might be forgiven for thinking so. Dozens of books and fake science websites are prophesying the arrival of doomsday that year, by means of a rogue planet colliding with the Earth or some other cataclysmic event.

Normally, scientists regard Internet hysteria with nothing more than a raised eyebrow and a shake of the head. But a few scientists have become so concerned at the level of fear they are seeing that they decided not to remain on the sidelines this time.

"Two years ago, I got a question a week about it," said NASA scientist David Morrison, who hosts a website called Ask an Astrobiologist. "Now I'm getting a dozen a day. Two teenagers said they didn't want to see the end of the world so they were thinking of ending their lives."

Morrison said he tries to reassure people that their fears are groundless, but has received so many inquiries that he has posted a list of 10 questions and answers on the website of the Astronomical Society of the Pacific.

Titled "Doomsday 2012, the Planet Nibiru and Cosmophobia," the article breaks down the sources of the hysteria and assures people that the ancients didn't actually know more about the cosmos than we do.

"The world will not come to an end on Dec. 21, 2012," E.C. Krupp, director of Los Angeles' Griffith Observatory, declared in a statement released Thursday by the observatory and Sky & Telescope magazine. Krupp debunks the 2012 doomsday idea in the cover story of the magazine's November issue.

Morrison said he attributes the excitement to the conflation of several items into one mega-myth. One is the persistent Internet rumor that a planet called Nibiru or Planet X is going to crash into the Earth. Then there's the fact that the Maya calendar ends in 2012, suggesting that the Maya knew something we don't. Finally, end-of-the-worlders have seized upon the hubbub about the 2012 date to proclaim their belief that end times are drawing near.

Morrison, who heads the Lunar Science Institute at the Ames Research Center in Northern California, has coined a term for the phenomenon: "cosmophobia," a fear of the cosmos. According to Morrison, for the most vulnerable among us, all of the things we've learned about the universe in the last century have only increased the number of potential threats to our existence.

Besides fearing a rampaging planet, the worriers think the sun might lash out at the Earth with some calamitous electromagnetic force. They also fear that some sort of alignment between the Earth and the center of our galaxy could unleash catastrophe.

Krupp said that the scare-mongers would have us believe that the "ancient Maya of Mexico and Guatemala kept a calendar that is about to roll up the red carpet of time, swing the solar system into transcendental alignment with the heart of the Milky Way, and turn Earth into a bowling pin for a rogue planet heading down our alley for a strike."

According to Rosemary Joyce, a professor of anthropology at UC Berkeley, the Maya never predicted anything. The 2012 date is approximately when the ancient calendar would roll over, like the odometer on a car; it did not mean the end -- merely the start of a new cycle.

THERE'S MORE, READ THE REST.

-- John Johnson Jr.

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Top photo: Amanda Peet, center, with Morgan Lily and Liam James, stars in "2012," opening next month. Credit: Columbia Pictures. Bottom photo: The Maya Calendar. Credit: Mayan World Studies Center

HOLLYWOOD BACKLOT

The end of the world begins on Nov. 13. That's the release date of "2012," the disaster film from director Roland Emmerich, the German filmmaker who apparently likes to pluck his movie titles from the calendar ("Independence Day," "10,000 B.C." and "The Day After Tomorrow"). Influenced by the disaster classics of the 1970s, Emmerich one again has a deep ensemble cast, with John Cusack, Danny Glover, Oliver Platt, Amanda Peet, Thandie Newton, Chiwetel Ejiofor and Woody Harrelson, who might be putting together a nice career surge after the success of "Zombieland." 

To get an early sense of "2012," you can check out the film's elaborate official website or the trailer below, but to get an idea of what it was like during the filming, check out David Strick's Hollywood Backlot photo gallery from the "2012" set. Strick took the striking shot you see above and 31 others that give you an insider's sense of the production. Regular readers of Hero Complex know I'm a big fan of Strick's work, and for those of you who haven't seen his website I can tell you it's well worth an extended visit, especially if you haven't seen his images from "The Twilight Saga: New Moon" or the collection of "Zombieland" set images. As far as his access and the depth of his collected work, there's really nothing quite like Strick's photo archive anywhere else on the Internet.

And here's that "2012" trailer.

-- Geoff Boucher

Photo credit: David Strick, Hollywood Backlot

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A new poster and art for the world-destroying film "2012" is here. The oceans erupting seems to be the major disaster going on in the film, and here's Mr. John Cusack dealing with what will probably be just one of many watery disasters.

We've seen the action of the poor monk ringing the alarm in the trailer, but the poster gives that image even more weight. Here's a look at it before it's pasted onto a bus stop near you.