Roland Emmerich ups the ante on the disaster movie, trashing the entire globe even more comprehensively than he did in The Day After Tomorrow. John Cusack stars alongside some amazing CGI Back in 1996, we were impressed when the then nascent art of CGI enabled filmmakers to throw a few vehicles and livestock around in Twister. Just a dozen years later, it can be deployed to realistically as to chuck entire cities into the sea. We say "realistically", but this is still a Roland Emmerich movie and the main thrust isn‘t realism, it‘s the rollercoaster ride. This is cinema as spectacle pure and simple. And it works - the screening we attended featured the sort of audience self-expression more usually reserved for sporting events.

Emmerich really has made the ultimate disaster movie. That‘s not the same thing as the best disaster movie - those laurels may still rest with disaster movies from simpler times, such as 1975‘s The Towering Inferno, or Emmerich‘s own previous exercises in world-trashing, 2004‘s The Day After Tomorrow and 1996‘s Independence Day. His previous film 10,000BC might have been utter bunkum, but give the man a budget to end the world, and he‘s in his element.

The premise involves "the biggest solar eruptions in human history" sending out neutrinos that have "mutated into a new kind of nuclear particle." These, it‘s discovered in 2009 by Indian geologist Dr Satnam Tsurutani (Jimi Mistry) are heating up the Earth‘s core to such an extent that the tectonic plates are destabilising.

Tsurutani‘s American buddy Dr Adrian Helmsley (Chiwetel Ejiofor) takes the news straight to White House Chief of Staff Carl Anheuser (Oliver Platt), who galvanises the powers that be. Cut forward a few years to the titular date, and things are getting worse fast.

Alongside the story involving Helmsely, Anheuser, the President (Danny Glover) and his daughter (Thandie Newton), Emmerich and his co-writer (and composer) Harald Kloser give us a hoary story of Everyman Jackson Curtis (John Cusack), a divorcee and failed author whose relationship with his kids is strained. Suffice to say, Cusack, and Amanda Peet, who plays his ex, provide the human interest story. Helmsley, meanwhile, represents the best of human virtues, speaking out when Anheuser‘s plan is basically to favour the rich and powerful, and keep the facts from the rest of humanity. In the mix, there‘s also Woody Harrelson as an eccentric who tries to expose the truth over the airwaves.

The film really kicks off around 50 minutes in (it‘s a two and half hour epic), when the CGI starts ripping up cities, entire high rises and city blocks disappearing into gaping chasms of exposed lava or slipping into the ocean. Curtis, ex, and their kids are saved by the lucky fact that he can drive like a demon and her new man (Thomas McCarthy) has had a few flying lessons. Emmerich likes shots of planes flying through collapsing cities; they‘re pretty awesome if you like CGI spectacle. If you don‘t, don‘t even bother with this film. Really, the CGI is the star - and hats off to the VFX team. Even when the story is at its hokiest nadir, they‘ll perk things up with another unprecedented visual effects shot.

Yellowstone going supervolcano? Check. LA trashed. Check. Vegas smashed. Check. The Vatican vanquished. Check. high tsunamis scouring India and throwing aircraft carriers at the White House? Check. Said tsunamis surging over the Himalayan plateau. Check. And plenty more.

Oh, and in case you wondered, supposedly the Mayans predicted the world would end in 2012 - hence the title, and Emmerich‘s hook for the project.