Are You Ready for Dec. 21, "2012"?

(CBS)  The next time the world ends, apparently, is in just over three years time. But CBS News correspondent Mark Phillips reports it's coming to a theater near you, in one day.

"Our movie, '2012,' is all about the preparation for the end of the world," producer Mark Gordon says bluntly.

An end of the world predicted, the movie informs us, by the ancient Mayan culture of what is now Mexico, whose sophisticated calendar ends on Dec. 21, 2012, at precisely 11 minutes and 11 seconds past six in the morning, Eastern time - if you're counting.

Exactly how the world ends, the Mayans generously left to Hollywood's imagination. And so we get the usual hail of meteors and monstrous tsunamis.

And the requisite heroic struggle of one family to survive, this time led by actor John Cusak.

The Mayans were surprisingly good at calendar making, and they developed a series of time measures including a "long cycle" of 5,125 years - a cycle that ends on Dec. 21, 2012.

End of the World for John Cusack?
Related: NASA's Take on 2012
Related: Mayan Elder Tired of 2012 Queries

"It will be the birth of a new era," says Lawrence Joseph, author of "Apocalypse 2012," a book based, like the movie, on the Mayan prophecy. "And like any other birth it will be accompanied by joy and blood and pain."

More joy than pain is the hope in Hollywood. "2012" is just the first of several films linked to the doomsday prophesies for that year.

"The extraordinary thing is that mindless films linked to disasters do so well at the box office during a period of economic difficulty," says film critic Richard Fitzwilliams. "This is not a film interested in truth, but it's been shown clearly in several recent films that bogus prophecies make excellent box office."

As for the director of "2012," Roland Emmerich, whose repertoire of disaster movies includes "The Day After Tomorrow" and "Independence Day," he already has plans for December 21, of 2012.

He'll be skiing on a very tall mountain. If the big waves don't come, he'll just keep skiing.

[fractalparadigm]

The mayan myth has some foundation. There are geological proofs of great tsunamis in a cyclical pattern, 200 up folk stories of the dilluvium and astronomical data, which shows black holes cause gravitational waves that can wobble the Earth and change the magnetic path. We will cross soon an open region exposed to the black hole. But perhaps by then we will be a black hole as CERN will attempt to do one this year. In the fractal paradigm the Universe has infinite self-similar sizes and humans are nothing. Black holes rule. A galaxy is self-similar to a rudimentary cell with 2 species, 'energetic mithocondria', stars that evolve into in-formative, gravitational black holes- the self-similar dna. Black holes migrate - recently found - to the center of the galaxy, short of a nuclei, where they swarm around. From the upper scale we observe networks of galaxies, like tissue. Humans are nothing at that scale. Maybe our purpose is to destroy ourselves and evolve this planet into black holes. The fermi paradox seems to confirm it: thousands of planets lurk but none has sign of life. All radio signals come from black holes. Smolin, a leading scientist considers black hole creation the goal of the Universe. The myth of the mayans is fascinating as it says after the world ends it will 'migrate' towards ouroboros, the center of the galaxy, where the Dark Lord Twins rest. Moreover in the fractal paradigm there is no bigbang. So the Background radiation can only be produced according to Einstein by a black hole the size of the moon, which will redshift by gravitational lensing light at exact 2.7k degrees. Being the most common planetoid on the galaxy, millions of moon MACHOS (massive Halo Objects), might be radiating already. CERN says moons never become black holes and its experiment is safe. In the fractal paradigm the opposite is truth, all moons become black holes. Now that the LHC is gearing up, we have lost our suits, the press ignores the issue, and politicians as usual just smile on tvs, 2012 might find all of us travelling to 'xibalba', the mythic saggitarius head of 'the milky way' where the 'dark lords of death' live. Of course this ?real? scenario would not appeal to Hollywood. But a documentary has been made which explains it all in great detail at www.lhcdefence.org

[sly_64]

Fun to think about and make movies about. But... if the world ends, it will be a self-fulfilled prophecy.

[nirak2-2009]

I am waiting for this movie even so we all have seen movies like that before. Cusack is worth watching and to top it of, Adam Lambert sings the theme song which is fantastic.

[anitaymoore]

I'm putting my money on the fact that we'll still be here. The end of the world has been predicted multitudes of times...an amazingly, we're still here. A huge catastrophic event was supposed to happen during Y2K too...didn't, life went on as normal. It's just a movie people...and the Mayan calendar is open to interpretation, just as any human writing is. Get a grip already. Of course Hollywood is going to try to cash in on the hub bub...it's what they always do. No one made such a huge stink about the movie Knowing...and it's about the end of the world as well.

[toldyouso21]

There is this sort of hostility to this movie by a lot of people who vehemently deny the world is ending? Why such an investment? If it does end--oh well...If it doesn't oh well...but there is something unnerving about many people proclaiming this movie is a lie--did it ever purport to be more than a movie? why the hostility? it is almost as if it IS really going to happen and people believe they must stand against it as a talisman.

I want to see this flick because I love disaster movies. The most amazing thing is the cinematography then the plot or the lack of one. From the trailers--it will be awesome--one to watch a few times and if, after 12/21/12 the world is still standing, one can watch it like we watch day after tommorrow on that fateful day and on the next day--yuck it up. Who cares? Everyone needs to chill. It is a disaster movie. Go see it or don't but save your fears and jeers about the end of the world--because repudiating it won't stop it and embracing it won't cause it--the world WILL end someday--and for all of us--it always ends one way or another with our own deaths--so who cares.

ENJOY THE MOVIE...I've got my midnight premiere tickets and will be in line by 9:30 to hold down the 5 seats for my group---DOES EVERYONE ELSE HAVE THEIRS? hEH , HEH, HEH.

[displeased]

I just hope the nutcases who want the world to end for religious reasons don't try to make it happen.

[barbaram99]

I gon't think the worls will end on that date. Nobody really knows. I think human kind will still be here.