Roland Emmerich's latest disaster epic begins with well-dressed American scientist Adrian Helmsley struggling to make his way through a chaotic Indian city. Emerging from the din and pouring monsoon rain, his taxi finally draws up to an old mansion, where a man called Satnam greets him, ushers him into the house and then takes him to a disused mine nearby, where they quickly descend into the earth.
The opening sequence doesn't offer anything new: a Westerner's encounter with an exotic Orient, complete with buzzing bazaars, clucking poultry and accented English. But Emmerich plays with the viewer's expectations: the lift doors open to reveal a state-of-the-art underground research facility, where Indian physicists - presided over by Satnam (British actor Jimi Mistry) - are busy investigating cataclysmic changes on the surface of the sun.
In 2012, it's outside the US that such a crucial scientific discovery is made, and we see an American scientist outdone by his Asian counterparts. There's hardly an Authoritative White Expert around.
"There's a sense of international community," says British actor Chiwetel Ejiofor, who plays Helmsley, in the Spanish city of San Sebastian. "One of the great stories in this film is that when faced with another threat, we are all part of the same collective - which is a theme in other films as well, but I think it's explored in more depth here."
Shot last year, Emmerich's new film could be seen as a parting shot at the Bush administration. In the film, US president Thomas Wilson (Danny Glover) is seen discussing how to deal with the impending apocalypse, via live satellite conferences, with political leaders around the world. This time, the key to survival doesn't lie on US soil: in this modern-day reworking of the biblical tale of Noah's Ark, the vessels designed to save humanity are built and kept in China.
"When we were shooting the film it was still during the primaries [of the US presidential elections], so Harald [Kloser, co-screenwriter of 2012 ] and Roland obviously decided that something's going to happen in the elections," says Ejiofor of the film's vision of an African-American president more inclined to consensual than confrontational politics.
"There's a feeling of hope and optimism, and the ability to deal with international relationships. People have invested not only in Barack Obama, but in a change of government direction that satisfies people who, over the past decade, have become increasingly worried."
It's not the first time Emmerich has cast a non-white actor to play an action hero or a statesman in his films: his first disaster epic, 1996's Independence Day, features Will Smith as a US Marine officer who leads human resistance against alien invaders. With prominent rolesfor Glover and Ejiofor, 2012 is another step for the German-born filmmaker, even if the film's bona fide hero is John Cusack's Jackson Curtis, a failed novelist who devotes most of his screen time to protecting his ex-wife (Amanda Peet) and their two children (Liam James and Morgan Lily) from collapsing skyscrapers, parting tectonic plates and extreme weather as they flee the US for China.
"I think the industry is increasing its scope in terms of its character and where and how people are cast," says Ejiofor of the multi-ethnic cast in 2012. "The world is changing, and they want to represent the world in the cinema. And that's how cinema works: people have to feel these are environments they can lose themselves in because they can believe in them."
One can witness such changes in Emmerich's trio of what Ejiofor jokingly describes as "disaster epics in modern contexts". Independence Day is very much explicit in placing the US at the centre, with Americans leading the rest of the world to triumph over an extraterrestrial army on July 4. Eight years later, The Day After Tomorrow offers moments that reverse American perceptions of the world, such as when people cross illegally into Mexico to escape the calamity sweeping the US. And now 2012 debunks the notion that Americans are the sole saviours of the world.
Emmerich's blockbusters have always been panned by critics for being bombastic affairs with silly storylines, and his detractors do have a point. His new film is not going to win the director new fans: inspired by a Mayan prediction of apocalypse on December 21, 2012 - the date on which the ancient race's calendar ends - 2012 sees the earth engulfed by earthquakes and tidal waves, with most of the world's population destined for a sorry end because their leaders have opted not to tell them about the impending doom to prevent panic in the streets.
A longtime campaigner for awareness of global warming, Emmerich says his films manifest the havoc that's been wrought by humans today.
"There're a lot of things [Emmerich] told me about and one of them is the relationship we have as people to the planet," says Ejiofor. "And the relationship we have to money and power, and to science ... and the financial pressure scienceis sometimes put under by governments and businesses to do a certain thing, to present information in a certain way.
"All these themes are coming back to haunt the planet in 2012. Good science fiction [films] are metaphors for current times, so we look briefly into the future to discuss, in a fantastical way, the possibilities for the planet."
Cusack, however, declines to read too much into 2012. "It doesn't have a position or polemic that way," says the actor, well-known in Hollywood for his liberal political views. "It just gives you a sense of waking to your spirits and [realising] what's the better part in your nature, or who you would want to reconcile with most right now.
"It gets your imagination working. It might actually get people to be more conscious, but I don't think the film has a political agenda that way."
2012 opens on Thursday
