Lust for Destruction

I don’t like the film and I neither like Roland Emmerich as a director. But because I’m writing here about ruins, decay and destruction and the iconographic interpretation of it, I cannot prevent to write at least some few words about this nuisance.



First I’m annoyed with what great delight Emmerich celebrates (once more) the destruction of the world. Now it’s not only Godzilla (1998) trampling down New York or wicked aliens blasting away the capitals of the world like in Independence Day (1996). Neither the destruction of half of the world like in The Day After Tomorrow (2004) is enough. All this is kid’s stuff compared to the new apocalypse. Now Emmerich is tearing continents apart and engulfing the Himalayas. And nobody should think that all these disasters are a kind of warnings, how Emmerich sells them sometimes, it’s pure lust of destruction, always more, bigger and faster. Maybe he will trample down the whole universe in his next movie.

But what bothers me most, is that all these films have lost the good old grace of narration. There’s no time for a global warming or freezing, for the continental drift, all has to happen like Mission Impossible in some hours, maybe some days or weeks. Means that there is no story, there is only a hollow spectacle. Maybe that’s the real apocalypse which Emmerich is showing us.