HOLLYWOOD — The year 2012, according to the ancient Mayas, is the year Earth destructs and a new cycle of life begins. (The Aztec and other pre-Columbian American calendars also held a cyclical view of the universe, sort of a reincarnation of planets at the end of each eon). So leave it to Hollywood to craft a film titled "2012" in which our planet is destroyed and we vicariously experience the struggles of its few heroic survivors.
The survivors are led by John Cusack — as a researcher — who helps explain the transition from the Age of Pisces to the Age of Aquarius — the subject of a hit song in the 1960s Broadway musical "Hair." What is unusual is that Cusack took on this genre project, directed and cowritten by Roland Emmerich and costarring Thandie Newton, Woody Harrelson, Amanda Peet, George Segal, Danny Glover and Oliver Platt. After all, Cusack has famously turned down such commercial movies as "Apollo 13" (1995) and "Indecent Proposal" (1993; his role went to Woody Harrelson). So what lured him onboard "2012"?
"It's not the usual formula," he explains. "It brings in a lot of ideas, and it's sort of cutting-edge about topics like the self-destructiveness of the human race and how we deal with forces we can't control and with forces that we can control."