As there is no way to stop this cataclysm, which was predicted in 2009 by astrophysicist Adrian Helmsley (Chiwetel Ejiofor) and unsuccessful sci-fi novelist Jackson Curtis (John Cusack), the plot is about preparing for The End. Will anyone exist after the geothermal Judgment Day? And if they do, will it be the survival of the fleetest - or the richest?
Jackson, estranged from wife Kate (Amanda Peet), just happens to take his kids to Yellowstone National Park for a camping trip when he sees a familiar lake has dried up and the geothermal activity is more active.
There he encounters crackpot shock jock Charlie Frost (Woody Harrelson), who alerts his listeners to the End of Days. Charlie claims to have intelligence that the super-rich have booked passage on a high-tech Ark that is humanity's only hope. At Yellowstone, Jackson coincidentally encounters Helmsley, one of the three people to read his sci-fi fable about maintaining human cooperation and democracy during a global cataclysm.
Back in Washington, the president (Danny Glover) joins other world leaders in preparing for the end of the old world and the beginning of the new. In a movie like this, plot is just an excuse to jump from one scenic place to the next, watching as they fall into sea and chasm. (What this movie has to do with a Mayan prophecy of the Earth's destruction is anybody's guess.)
The hope is that the heroes can avoid the toppling buildings, buckling roads, and molten rivers, which for the most part they do. As Jackson drives the kids, ex-wife, and her new beau (Tom McCarthy) through a crumbling Los Angeles, I found myself reaching for a phantom video-game controller to help Our Heroes and Heroine defy certain death.
