What city will the ‘Master of Disaster’ destroy next?

SYDNEY, Australia — New York used to be the favorite city to be destroyed in disaster films, such as Planet of the Apes, Cloverfield, The Day After Tomorrow, Doomsday Prophecy, War of the Worlds 2: The New Wave and Godzilla…with the Statue of Liberty ending up lying headless on the ground or submerged in a deluge; or the Empire State Building in danger of collapsing with King Kong perched on top of it.

But in Independence Day: Resurgence, the follow-up to the 1996 movie, Roland Emmerich (also the director of the first one) is leaving New York intact (thank heavens for my friends who live there!) and looks towards Asia for a new city to be destroyed…Singapore, that’s what!

Asked in an exclusive interview with The STAR during the ID junket in Sydney last week, Emmerich broke into a boyishly naughty smile and said, “We looked for several cities and we found Singapore to be the best. I’ve been to Singapore and I swam in that (boat-shaped) pool at the top of Marina Bay Sands, so I felt like I have a personal connection to Singapore.”

Didn’t he consider, uhm, Manila?
“Manila has no recognizable landmark,” said Emmerich who has established himself as one of today’s most creative and successful directors, proving himself in a variety of genres with success in films like 10,000 BC, Godzilla, The Day After Tomorrow, 2012 and, of course, the blockbuster Independence Day.

What is the enduring appeal of disaster movies?

“Well,” explained Emmerich, with a little joke at the end, “you know what it is. I came to Hollywood at the time when alien movies were being made. When you look at it now, the whole landscape has totally changed. I use aliens as pretty much natural disaster in a way. On top of that, it’s super politically correct; nobody can accuse you of doing racial profile, you know…” (here’s the “joke”)… “I could be in big trouble if aliens finally left. So I did ID with a lot of disaster elements. It’s the biggest movie of my career and with it, I kind of, in a way, created my own genre.”

It’s a genre that gave birth to Emmerich as Master of Disaster in the same sense that Alfred Hitchcock is, up to now, well-loved as the Master of Suspense.

“Hitchcock did only suspense thrillers although once in a while, he did something else but mainly they were thrillers,” continued Emmerich. “I always try to do every disaster movie in a different way. The Day After Tomorrow is about the environment, 2012 is like a retelling of Noah’s Ark. I think my movies are quite different from one another, with different themes. It is my passion to create something new, to do movies that nobody has any clue what’s going on.”

For ID: Resurgence (also produced by Dean Devlin who is half-Filipino), Emmerich assembled an all-star cast that includes, among others, returning actors Bill Pullman reprising his role as President Thomas J. Whitmore and Jeff Goldblum in his original character as MIT-trained satellite expert David Levinson, and newcomers Liam Hemsworth as Jake Morrison, a hotshot fighter pilot whose family was killed in the original alien attack and Sela Ward as the current President.

What, Will Smith has been, uhm, “cast” out?

“As soon as we had the script, we went to Will who agreed that it was a good idea to do another ID movie. But it turned out to be an inappropriate time. Will was shooting After Earth (with his son Jaden as co-star), a kind of science fiction thing, so he opted out. I kind of said, ‘Okay, that was it.’ Most everybody knew what I wanted to do and my friends were saying, ‘You don’t need anybody. You can just come up with something with some of the old actors.’”

So he met with young writers James A. Woods and Nicolas Wright to discuss the idea.

“They said, ‘You could just do a handover, from the old generation to the young generation.’ That kind of got me going. I went to the studio and asked, ‘What do you think?’ They said, ‘That’s perfect. Maybe we could just start a franchise.’ But we didn’t have to. It’s an interesting thing after 20 years — you know, with the father and son. It could also open up to the people who haven’t seen the first movie.”

So that’s why it took Emmerich (and Devlin) 20 years to come up with a sequel.

“I was shooting 2012 in Vancouver and we realized that most everything in the world was blue screen,” related Emmerich. “So I told my visual effects man, ‘Can you imagine what ID movie we could do today with all the visual effects available?’ It’s time we did another ID. That would really be great. Then, something entered my brain and I started thinking about what could be the new images we could do, what could be this, what could be that.”

After two years, Emmerich said that he went to Devlin and told him, “I think we should do a sequel. He said, ‘That’s a good idea; what do you think?’ After more than a year, we finished the script…”

I wondered aloud if they missed Smith on the set. Emmerich said in mock shock, “Ha? No, we did not,” adding with a meaningful smile, “I think he missed us. I did Skype with him and he was asking, ‘How is it going?’ I said, ‘It’s going great.’ I think I read in the papers that he was upset when he learned how his character died.” Or was killed.

Oh no, why “kill” Smith’s character Steven Hiller, the fighter pilot, when they could use him in another ID movie?

“You know,” replied Emmerich, “in five or six years, if there will ever be another ID, you don’t even want to know what it would be like. But it’s kind of interesting for Dylan Hiller, the son (played by Jessie Usher) of Steven Hiller, to develop. Like the Jake Morrison character, he’s also an orphan who has to work hard on the same emotional level.”

By the way, why a lady president this time? Does it have any bearing on the current heated campaign in the US where a lady is in the presidential race?

“You know,” said Emmerich, “we kind of decided to break it up a bit after casting actors as president in my last two movies, two of them Black. So I said, ‘What about Sela Ward (as President Lanford)?’ I’ve worked with her in The Day After Tomorrow and I love her. She has a certain poise and she is credible as a president. The character was not written as a lady president and it’s a nice, refreshing change, though.”

In the closing, Emmerich asked me if I remembered the speech delivered by Pullman/President Whitmore to the US fighter pilot crews before their final attack on the alien invaders in the first ID. Of course, I did, I assured him.

 …We are fighting for our right to live, to exist. And should we win the day, the 4th of July will no longer be known as an American holiday but as the day when the world declared in one voice: “We will not go quietly into the night! We will not vanish without a fight! We’re going to live on! We are going to survive!” Today we celebrate Independence Day!...

Really now, what does Emmerich think is the real threat to Planet Earth, space invaders or climate change?

He broke into another boyishly naughty smile and said, “Climate change. I’m definite about that.”

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