8 Rules For Ending The World
Director Roland Emmerich is known as the disaster pro – he really know how to strike a real disaster on humanity. He did it in Independence Day, Day After Tomorrow and now 2012. IO9 has talked to the apocalypse-master himself, who explained that there are 8 simple rules for ending the world. Read them after the jump.
1. Make It Impossible.
The rules are — what I always say but people forget — the pictures have to be super impossible. I’m only interested in doing the impossible image. That’s really hard to explain. But one of the first things I saw in my mind, was the ground opening up. And I realized what that means, when the bottom falls out under your feet.
2. Stick To What You Know: You Can Always Blow Up The White House Again
[If you are going to destroy something] It has to be very original, otherwise you don’t do it. I remember at one point [during 2012 production] we were discussing what will happen with the White House [in 2012]. I said, “What should happen? I cannot destroy the White House again.” And Harald [Kloser, screenwriter] said, “Well you have to, if you don’t destroy it people will have the same question. Just come up with something new.” … I thought I could have this object crashing into the White House, because we knew that in one of the first waves we’d have to put objects in it so you could see how big it was and thought maybe tankers or war ships. Then we came up with image of [the aircraft carrier John F. Kennedy crashing into the White House, which is like] JFK returns to the White House. I was reading about the Kennedy family a lot at the time and thought that was sort of ironic and interesting in a way.
3. The More Characters The Better
Multi characters help you a lot because you can constantly keep the story moving. And people from all walks of life. Every audience member has different people they like in the movie and will follow them. These movies are so expensive that they have to work for pretty much everybody. For young people, for men and women. Old people probably like Danny Glover, and Harry and Tony, the Jazz musicians. Kids get wrapped up in our two kids. Create characters so everyone in the audience has an identification figure.
4. Superheroes Aren’t Half As Cool As Earthquakes, Tornadoes And Waves
Look at it like this. I’m a person who doesn’t like superhero movies, just personally. I like some of them but I cannot really relate to a superhero. I have trouble with fantasy stories. And famous books — I write my own stuff, a famous book is really not an option for me. There’s very little left in big movie genres. It’s science fiction or it’s disaster movies. And what is the most successful movie of all time? Titanic. And the best part of a disaster movie is: No sequel.
5. Cut Other Would-Be Disaster Porn Directors Off At The Knees
“First when we had the idea, I said, I’m not going to do it. I don’t want to repeat myself. Then we heard inklings that other people were working on something like this, also with the title 2012. Then Harald [the screenwriter] said, “Someone else is going to do it. Don’t you want to be the person to do it? Look at your movies: you are perfect for this. Make it your crowning achievement.”
6. Be G-Rated Political *Winky Wink, Nudge Nudge*
“We kind of felt that not every politician should be on the ark. I don’t know where these ideas come from. We have terrible fun with what we do.”
7. For Every Wrinkled-Shirted Scientist, You Need At Least One Crazy Prophet
[Woody] came out of the fact that there are a lot of crazy people on the internet that believe a lot of crazy things about 2012, so we thought that we have to have a character like that. And then on the other hand we have to explain what the theories are like Earth Crust Displacement. How do you describe them in scientific terms. And we thought, we can have Woody tell the audience how this all works, with a little you tube.
8. Make The Destruction Glamorously Terrible
Source: IO9
November 9th, 2009 at 5:38 am
Wow! You have nailed the grand disasters in movies to the wall. All eight are right on target!
November 10th, 2009 at 3:00 pm
NASA thinks it’s necessary to warn us about this “disaster”
movie. They put a senior scientist on the case, comments here:
http://astrobiology.nasa.gov/ask-an-astrobiologist/intro/nibiru-and-doomsday-2012-questions-and-answers
Nostradamus did include warnings, but no mention of 2012.
What he did say is that an ‘event’ would occur “not far from
the great millennium” – possibly a cosmic one, such as a
supernova, (exploded star)…. Century 5 #53 ….
“I am unable to fail, err or be deceived.” Nostradamus