New 2012 Footage Offers Pleasing, L.A.-Centric Look At The End Times

This is how you know the world is ending: John Cusack's brazenly flouting the hands-free phone law, practically begging to be ticketed, just so that he can have this manic exchange with his (seemingly) estranged family:

"California is going down!"

"God, you sound like a crazy person! The governor just said we're fine now."

"They guy's an actor he's reading a script! When they tell you not to panic, that's when you run!"

"Hey, you call me back when you calm down?"

"Mommy, why is Daddy so crazy?"

"Finish your pancakes."

(on television, the Governor, reading from a script: "...it zeemz to me that de verst iz over."

Cut to: CALIFORNIA GOING DOWN.

Yes, folks, we're once again being played expertly by the marketing professionals at Sony, who've progressed their 2012 promotional assault from a three-image, just-the-tip in strategy, to a full-on, jackhammering, too-drunk-to-remember-most-of-it-tomorrow penetration, offering up a five-minute clip of the mind-buggering cinematic mayhem coming soon to a multiplex near you. And we're more than OK with that. Drill away, Sony, drill away until you pass out on top of us, exhausted and stinking of cheap whiskey.

Here's the moment, at precisely 1:39, that won us over: As Mr. Cusack's Wild Ride Through Apocalyptic Los Angeles hits cruising speed, someone screams, "DONUT!" And then, as if conjured by a panicked hankering for some fried dough, a dangerously unmoored Randy's Donut comes careening through, and you know that Los Angeles is utterly screwed. (And in an uncharacteristic show of restraint, director Roland "I've Never Met A Major City I Wouldn't Like To Reduce To Smoldering Rubble" Emmerich does not have Cusack's vehicle take an epic, flying f*ck through the center of the rolling pastry; he must've been a little under the weather the day they were storyboarding that scene). As an over-the-top, LA-specific sight gag, it might place second only to a failing helicopter crashing into the Hollywood sign, scattering the letters up into the air so that they spell HOLY DOOM. When your mission is to get us excited about watching the end of the world unfold, subtlety's not a virtue; the quickest way to induce a disaster boner is a punch in the face, not a whisper in the ear. So nicely played, Sony.

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