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2012 director fearful of destroying Islamic site onscreen

Posted by Team Boxwish 15 days ago

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John Woo has his doves, Quentin Tarantino his fictional brands and Hitchcock had his cameos; directors love putting their signature stamp on movies and they come in all shapes and forms. Just look at the cinematic CV of German filmmaker, Roland Emmerich. 1996 – Independence Day, aliens lay siege to earth, taking out the likes of the Empire State Building and the White House. 1998 – Godzilla – New York under attack by a giant Japanese monster. 2004 – The Day After Tomorrow – global warming bites us in the ass with a giant storm that brings a new ice age. And now 2009 – 2012, a tale of global destruction based on the theory that the world will end according to the Mayan Long Count Calendar. Spot the similarities? Not that Emmerich is happy to destroy any old landmark that stands in his wake, with one apparently off limits to the disaster-loving director.

Talking to Sci-fi Wire, Emmerich opened up about the one location he doesn’t feel confident in incinerating on celluloid, namely the Kaaba, considered the most sacred site in Islam. “Well, I wanted to do that, I have to admit,” he admits. “But my co-writer Harald [Kloser] said I will not have a fatwa on my head because of a movie. And he was right. … We have to all … in the Western world … think about this. You can actually … let … Christian symbols fall apart, but if you would do this with [an] Arab symbol, you would have … a fatwa, and that sounds a little bit like what the state of this world is. So it’s just something which I kind of didn’t [think] was [an] important element, anyway, in the film, so I kind of left it out.”

This is one pretty interesting revelation as symbols of Christianity, such as The Sistine Chapel, St. Peter’s Basilica in the Vatican and Brazil’s Christ the Redeemer statue all happily get destroyed in 2012, Emmerich explaining that’s “Because I’m against organised religion.”

Sure, this is loaded with contradiction and many heated online debates have raged as a result, taking in everything from extremist fanaticism versus organised religion to accusations of Emmerich being “a wuss”. It’s certainly a highly sensitive subject and we’d love to hear your thoughts Boxwishers.

[via Sci-fi Wire]

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