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Monday
30Mar2009

Building an Immunity to '2012' Viral Videos

DateMonday, March 30, 2009 at 4:17AM
The disaster movie 2012 has launched a companion website called ThisIsTheEnd.com, a domain name I can't believe was still available. The film uses that whole thing about the Mayan calendar predicting the end of the world in a couple of years as a jumping off point for planetary destruction that could only come from Roland Emmerich.

ThisIsTheEnd is carrying a series of what I'm sure are intended to be viral videos. They feature Woody Harrelson, who plays a doomsday theorist in the film. Regardless of what you think of the idea for the film, anything that has the end of the world as its premise should deliver better viral video than this. I mean, wow...this stuff just isn't very good.

Who's to blame? Everybody, I think. For starters, Woody Harrelson is not the most captivating public speaker I've ever heard. Secondly, there are just static talking head pieces that tend to go on way too long and really don't hint at the end of the world so much as they sound like paranoid history lessons.

Beyond that, though, someone at Sony actually thought these would pass the test. Here's how I know they didn't: There are about twice as many videos as I'm going to show you, and I'm only showing them to prove how misguided a lot of this "viral" marketing really is.

Honestly, I wouldn't want to see any more ThisIsTheEnd videos for free, and I damn sure wouldn't but a movie ticket based on what I've just seen. Perhaps the anti-viral marketing will improve in the next few months, or else the end of the world for 2012 may come right around its November 13th release date.

AuthorColin Boyd | | in , , , | Print ArticlePrint Article | | Comment1 Comment |

Reader Comments (1)

"2012: Time for Change"
is a feature-length documentary, directed by Joao Amorim of Curious Pictures and featuring Daniel Pinchbeck, the bestselling author of "2012: The Return of Quetzalcoatl" (Penguin, 2006). In the style of "An Inconvenient Truth", "What the Bleep Do We Know", and "Waking Life", our film explores ideas about what the immediate future may hold, symbolized by the myths and prophecies of the Mayan culture of Mexico. Interviews with design scientists, anthropologists, physicists such as Dean Radin, Barbara Marx Hubbard, Nassim Haramein John Todd and Paul Stamets and celebrities such as Sting, Ellen Page and Gilberto Gil. 2012 combines film and animation in an innovative way, taking us on a journey through our own evolution.

http://www.2012timeforchange.com/

Monday, March 30, 2009 | Unregistered CommenterEtznab

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