Roland Emmerich’s at it again, destroying the world in the upcoming movie 2012. This time, he’s got some theories to back it up. It’s not just aliens or catchy environmental buzzwords. The Mayans have been predicting this one for a while. And then you get to see the floods wipe out landmarks and survivors huddle into arks to rebuild society.
Q: What is it about you and the end of the world?
Roland Emmerich: It’s a love affair. Well, I think the first time I was confronted with it was with Independence Day. The world ends July 4 which was for us, like Dean and me some sort of absolute statement. Then I was attracted to it again in Day After Tomorrow because I had the feeling that if we keep going, that will be the end. It would be not the total end but an Ice Age will come or some other big catastrophe.
Q: And then the 2012 theories came along?
Roland Emmerich: No, that came later. I think that’s not how movies or ideas work. It’s most of the time like you’re interested in some sort of aspect and out of this aspect becomes a story. And then from the story come characters. And then you do research and sometimes something like this happens that you find. Cause the same thing happened with Independence Day. We found out how many people believe in Area 51 and we kind of tied it into our story to make it more real.
Q: How did you imagine the floods as a new way to destroy the world?
Roland Emmerich: Well I kind of start out with Harald talking about what could happen and what kind of scenes we could do and then out of that comes images. There’s always like certain things and there are certain things that immediately pop into your mind. Other things, you see some drawing of somebody. It’s a group effort too. We had incredible artists working on this. It’s just a group effort and a lot of work.
Q: Can you describe what the arks look like?
Roland Emmerich: You’ll see it pretty soon. They’re built to withstand the waves so they had to be very big because they wanted to save a lot of people. But they also had to be able to withstand incredible forces of water. They’re part submarine and part ship, it’s like a mix.
Q: Do you get to explore the moral dilemma of who gets to go on them and who gets left behind?
Roland Emmerich: Yeah, the movie’s about that.
Q: How do you think this will play in 2013?
Roland Emmerich: Well, 2013 doesn’t exist. I mean, yeah, there’s like some land mass still somewhere. I don’t know. That was exactly my discussion with [co-writer] Harald [Klosser]. What are we doing? In 2013 the movie’s dated. But one of my favorite movies is called 2001. So I said, I still like that movie, then there’s hope for 2012 to survive.
Q: What challenges did you find visually to create the flood?
Roland Emmerich: Well first of all, I hired my old visual effects supervisor Volker Engel, which I really think was the right person, in the meantime, he kind of partnered with Marc Weigert also another German and they were like the right people in their approach to this in a very methodical way, and we pretty much cast like effect houses like actors, and then certain people for water and certain people for this and certain people for that, and then we have a huge in house team and it was like 70, 80 people who worked tirelessly since the last year or so to create the earthquake sequence in LA, which they do half of it, and the other half is Digital Domain, and so we have like 15 companies working for us, and that’s the biggest visual effect show I have ever done, and I have done pretty big ones, and it’s like 1,400 shots, it maybe doesn’t sound like so many, but our shots are like really, really complicated, because we have like so many shots with water and water is always like famously the most difficult thing to do.
Q: What was it about John Cusack that you thought that was relevant for this role?
Roland Emmerich: Well, we looked for an actor who was an everyman but also smart, and has some comedic talent. And there’s not so many out there. And I always admired John Cusack, and that’s why we offered it to him. He’s done a little bit, he did this movie about the room number, 1408 and then he did Con-Air, which also was a little bit action, but no, that’s actually great in disaster movies, you don’t have to have somebody, you don’t need a Bruce Willis. You don’t need an Arnold Swarzenegger, just a regular guy. It’s regular people and then naturally if you write good characters you get really good actors. You’ve got I think some really good actors in this film.
Q: What kind of character is he playing?
Roland Emmerich: I always believe that when you have characters in these kind of movies, I always tend to like cast actors who have comedic timing because if you can laugh at these characters, you take them more serious. This is a little like in real life. You cry, you kind of laugh. That’s kind of like the two emotions, people induce you, and I think a good joke once in a while also keeps the movie light, and tells the people, this is a movie, this is not reality. Enjoy this. I think John brings a kind of some sort of sly humor, you know what sly humor is? How do you explain that? It’s kind of like he’s very, whenever he kind of like talks to somebody and he’s like very irreverent. Dry, it’s dry humor, yeah. He has very dry humor.
Q: How hard is it to direct your actors when there’s nothing there and you’re trying to tell them a flood’s coming?
Roland Emmerich: Well, we do Pre-vis, it’s pretty much a comic book version. It looks like an animated movie, a very simple animated movie, where you see every shot. And that’s the first thing what we showed to the actors, and this is what comes towards you, and the first question that they always ask is will it look like that? Then you say, no, there will be a lot of work going into, but it will look better and then you go from there, and then you have to talk a lot, you have to explain to them constantly what’s coming. It’s actually really quite hard to keep actors, we have kind of like a couple of sequences with some small little plane, and it was really cramped in there and there was a gimble and it was just a nightmare and it’s very hard to keep them going and keep them involved and keep them because it’s then like you still need acting, you know? You still need acting and that’s very hard sometimes.
Q: You’re very fortunate in finding people like Will Smith and giving them their big breaks. Who in this movie do you feel is a break out person?
Roland Emmerich: Well, like a lot of them are already known, but one is not so known is called Chiwetel Ejiofor. I think he will be a big star.
Q: Are you still considering doing Isobar?
Roland Emmerich: Isobar was a project, I actually came to Los Angeles. That’s actually how I came to Hollywood. And I was working it for 9 months and then decided to not do it. So I don't think I will do it. It was 20 years ago.
Q: Independence Day is one of the highest grossing films and one of the five most often run films on basic cable, why did you never do a follow up?
Roland Emmerich: It’s one of these movies it’s very hard to do a follow up. Also in the meantime like Will Smith is probably the number one movie star, and he has a very busy schedule. I’ve talked with Will only lately about it. He’s really up for it but then you also need a good story, the economics have to be right. And then there’s always like these other projects you want to do which are original, and so it just never happened.
Q: But you talked about doing a second one?
Roland Emmerich: Well yeah, like actually every two years we have a weekend somewhere and yack about what it could be. And then most of the time we’re reminiscent about our past.
Q: Does sound design play an important role in 2012?
Roland Emmerich: Yeah, and we’re still working on it. The sound design is very, very important and it’s always like about level. How loud is this, or should we kind of have the music kind of carry it, or the sound effects? For example certain scenes where we do half without music and then the music kicks in or the music takes over, because at a certain point the noise level is too high and you don’t hear anything anymore and you have to give them just a melody, give them a drive of music and then, it’s actually quite difficult to do a film and mix it and you constantly listen back and give notes and it’s quite stressful sometimes.
Q: How do you balance the religious an scientific aspects of 2012, with arks surviving the floods?
Roland Emmerich: Well, there’s a lot of like religious symbols that gets destroyed in this movie, strangely. There’s not a comment in any way, it’s just people, when bad things happen, they kind of turn to God. And then you kind of destroy like kind of the Vatican, or the Jesus in Rio De Janeiro. You tell people, “Even God can’t help you.” Then it becomes like very philosophical in a way, then it comes down to what should people do in a situation like that, what is morally right to do, and all these questions occur.
Q: Godzilla is coming to Blu-Ray. What are your feelings about Godzilla today?
Roland Emmerich: I’m totally proud of Godzilla. I’m always saying this, I mean I know there’s a lot of naysayers, but I’m proud of it.
Q: You were still going to do a Godzilla 2 one day. Is that dead?
Roland Emmerich: That’s dead and I don’t know, it’s like I’m not a person for sequels. I just want to do something original, I once in awhile plan or try to do something a remake and then most of the time like original stories win out, just win out. And it has to be a good one.
Q: How do you think the world is actually going to end?
Roland Emmerich: Poof. I’m only kidding. I don’t know, I don’t know, I’m not a prophet, it’s just I think, I hope we kind of are kind of not ruining our planet. I mean surely I really believe that if we keep going and doing what we are doing, we will not be leaving the planet how it should be, for our kids and that’s like I’m thinking this goes on already since generations. And then also I think, we still have these wars going on, and all this energy could go into environment or in other peaceful activities and it’s like just very sad to see, to read the news everyday and see what are these people fighting over? It’s like don’t they understand the clock is ticking.
