If there's anything Roland Emmerich's 2012 has inspired — besides hundreds of thousands of moviegoers who want to see everything on earth get destroyed — its a revival of 2012 conspiracy theories and doomsday predictions. Enter Nostradamus: 2012, a History Channel miniseries now on DVD that attempts to link the 16th-century soothsayer's recently recovered "lost book" (which consists of seven bizarre images) to several other prophesies from a wide array of cultures and religions that predict The End to be nigh on December 21, 2012.
As someone who watched the Orson Welles-narrated The Man Who Saw Tomorrow at an impressionable age, I have always been — hmm, how do I say this? — FREAKED THE HELL OUT by the interpretations of Nostradamus' riddle-like quatrains. Therefore, you'd think I'd find a bit of comfort in the fact that in the aforementioned 1981 documentary, it was stated that the Apocalypse According to Nostradamus was probably going to go down in 1999. Yet here we are ten years later; even the Y2K computer glitch (which yes, I was totally scared about as well) failed to disrupt much of anything. For whatever reason, however, I'm still disturbed by Nostradamus and his warnings.
So it was with much trepidation that I popped in Nostradamus: 2012. Thankfully, for a seasoned conspiracy theorist/doomsday-prophecy-fearer such as myself, there wasn't much new ground covered. I thought the interpretations of the drawings in the lost book were grasping at straws, and the rehash of other predictions about the end of time didn't have as much impact on me now that I've heard or read about them dozens of times since I was a teenager. But if you are relatively new to the Apocalypse Prognostication scene and/or want to understand what the big deal about 12/21/2012 is in the first place (even if you've never been particularly interested in Nostradamus' writings), this series does a good job of pulling together all of the most pertinent information in less than two hours. You'll have to put up with a bit of repetition (it's really obvious where the show cut for and returned from breaks when it originally aired on the History Channel), but since a lot of what's covered is kind of confusing to begin with, that's probably not a bad thing.
After watching this DVD, I was left with two questions: If December 21 comes and goes three years from now and the earth's still turning and we're still on it, what will be the next Time's Up date that scholars will inevitably claim is really what Nostradamus, the Mayans, the Egyptians, the Hopi Indians, the Freemasons and that crazy tarot card reader from the traveling carnival (you know the one) were trying to warn us about? And can we count on Roland Emmerich to make a movie about it? (The answer to that second question is "Yes, of course… he's already written it, he just needs to drop the new doomsday date in the script — and the title.")
Posted on November 25, 2009 at 4:11 pm
Well, first of all, Nostradamus was a prophet of God and we all should know by the Book of Revelations that the end of time is near. I believe that God has used persons to warn us ahead of time so that we can be prepared. Even if it doesn’t happen ON THAT PARTICULAR DAY, I firmly beleive it will be soon. Everyone needs to rent or buy the “Left Behind” movies 1 & 2. It speaks volumes about the antichrist and gives us indepth information about what will happen before and during the tribulation. Jesus will come quickly and if we aren’t ready in our hearts, we will be left on earth to endure the tribulation and it’s not going to be fun.
Posted on January 8, 2010 at 7:37 pm
I did not read the summary before renting this slow, boring documentary. I thought I was renting the movie 2012. Therefore, I was horribly disappointed! However regarding Nostradamus, in contrast to this documentary, his “prophecies” are highly inaccurate and according to scripture of the Holy Bible that makes him a false prophet. Don’t buy into any of the garbage this documentary spreads. Will the end of the world come? If you believe in the Bible, then YES one day, a day that nobody knows… the world WILL end. If you don’t believe, then it’s a completely different debate.
Posted on February 22, 2010 at 9:33 am
I kinda have been expecting this in a way…
But I reali dun think da world is going to end…start a new era maybe but the world is not ending.
That’s not gonna happen till a thousand years later! Ok, I’m not sure bout that either but that’s not the point! The world’s not gonna end! Full stop!
future and past of the earth
– some truth about 2012