The '2012' star said he thinks people bond over films where the world nearly ends because them realise that everybody is fundamentally the same.
He said: "Stories about the apocalypse imagine a time when there's a kind of an event that makes everything equal and all people equal and wipes out all of the divisions between people - and the illusions of all those divisions.
"There are still rich and poor until the very end, but there's no Chinese and Americans and Russians and Christians and Jews and Muslims. Everybody's in the same boat, and all the countries are in the same boat. I think people really want a world like that, and it takes something cataclysmic to imagine how it could ever happen."
In '2012' John plays Jackson Curtis, a writer who gets caught up in the midst of the series of earth shattering calamities, including floods, volcanoes and earthquakes which nearly bring about the end of civilisation.
He also said, however, the film has aspects which resonate with everyday life and is a classic tale of facing up to adversity.
John, 43, added: "I think we play out these apocalyptic things all the time. You see it in government; there are purges.
"It always takes some horrible manifestation of that drama, but when horrible things happen, you can generally see the best in people. Or, at least, you hope that's what will happen."
Leave a comment