Roland Emmerich's favorite tool is the mallet. The now 65-year-old filmmaker swings it more impressively than anyone else.
The President of the United States gets on a fighter jet to prevent an alien invasion. A monster cold wave breaks over the world and freezes people in one fell swoop. An English villain is hunted down with the American flag in the War of Independence. If a film contains such crazy scenes, then the chances are good that a certain Roland Emmerich is responsible for the said strip.
The director from Swabia knows like no other how to enrich bombastic action sequences with a good portion of pathos and patriotism. Now the king of the catastrophe celebrates his 65th birthday on November 10th and is as far away from his interim announcement that he no longer wants to let the world go down on the screen as the earth is from the moon. Whereby: Emmerich will soon let the said earth satellite crash down to earth in "Moonfall".
Thrift was never his thing
Born in Stuttgart in 1955 and then raised in Sindelfingen in Swabia, the homosexual director became enthusiastic about the film industry at an early age. The year 1977, when Emmerich studied production design at the University of Television and Film in Munich, fell exactly at the beginning of the blockbuster era. Film studios were increasingly focusing on expensive productions again and the independent film movement of the sixties slowly but surely came to an end.
A very special milestone in the history of cinema has significantly influenced the Swabian career: "Star Wars". After seeing the space fairy tale, Emmerich switched to directing that same year.
The director had a penchant for opulent films from an early age. His thesis "The Noah's Ark Principle" cost the proud sum of one million D-Marks. The science fiction flick went beyond the scope of the film school. The budget for a graduation film at that time was just 20,000 marks. The ambitious project was largely financed by outside sources and celebrated an extremely successful premiere in 1984 at the Berlin International Film Festival.
Overseas took notice early on
With the decision to produce films in Germany but shoot them in English, Emmerich quickly began to attract attention in Hollywood. His breakthrough in the dream factory was when he shot the sci-fi action film "Universal Soldier" in 1992 with Jean-Claude Van Damme (60) and Dolph Lundgren (62). The preference for science fiction and space travel, which was certainly caused by "Star Wars" at the beginning of his career, was also clearly evident in the "Stargate" with Kurt Russell (69) that followed in 1994.
Afterwards Emmerich developed a certain weakness for letting the world end and driving humanity to the brink of extinction. In 1996 the danger came from space when the earth was attacked by destructive aliens on "Independence Day". Shortly afterwards he caused fear and horror with his interpretation of the Japanese cult monster Godzilla in the film of the same name. In "The Day After Tomorrow", the consequences of global warming led to a new ice age that freeze human beings within seconds.
Nothing more to destroy?
"When Alexander saw the greatness of his empire, he began to cry because there was nothing left to conquer." After his film "2012", in which the Maya foresaw the impending apocalypse, Emmerich fared like Alexander the Great: "It's the mother of all destruction films, with effects like you've never seen before. I really don't know what I should destroy it afterwards, "the director told the newspaper" Merian ". Was that the last time he let the world end in 2009?
Emmerich kept his word for around seven years. With the film "Anonymus", the drama about the authorship of the works of William Shakespeare, he struck an unusually calm tone in 2010. There was only one place where he could not manage to lay it to rubble and ashes: the White House. Already blown up by aliens or washed away by a gigantic wave, his 2013 film "White House Down" again required extensive renovation in the president's home.
In 2016, there was finally no trace of his pacifism project. With "Independence Day: Wiederkehr" he continued his cult flick and let the aliens loose with even more unpeaceful intentions than in the first part. In retrospect – and after devastating reviews – Emmerich described the sequel without Will Smith (52) as a "mistake". "I should have said no to the studio at the time. I shouldn't have made the film. We had a much better script with Will Smith," said Emmerich. "It was done way too quickly, it didn't turn out as well as it should have been."
Moon crash and late father joys?
There will also be a crazy catastrophe in his upcoming film. Because in "Moonfall" the name is a bombastic program: For inexplicable reasons the moon gets out of its normal orbit around the earth and therefore threatens to crash down on it. A disgraced NASA astronaut (Patrick Wilson, 47) and his former colleague (Halle Berry, 54) want / should / have to prevent this catastrophe at all costs and also clarify the circumstances.
Professionally, Emmerich still likes to deal with the worst-case scenario, privately it is already more harmonious. He has been happily married to his partner Omar De Soto (32) since 2017, and the two have been together for over ten years. There is only one thing that the two of them regularly disagree with: the issue of children.
"But my husband wants to have children, I have to respect that. We don't talk about this topic every day, but it comes up every six months." As a compromise, he brought a second dog into the house for his better half. "Bandito. I said: 'Omar, let's see how it works with the dogs for a few years'", said the still childless Emmerich about a year ago to the magazine "Bunte".