Independence Day director talks old fashioned filmmaking and making big-budget movies

Although the advances in technology have opened up new possibilities, Roland Emmerich insists that directors shouldn’t see computers as a replacement for talent.

Dubai, United Arab Emirates - June 4, 2016. Roland Emmerich ( Director - Independence Day 2 ) at the press conference. The said movie is set to show on Eid Al Fitr. ( Jeffrey E Biteng / The National ) Editor's Note; ID 40343Show less

Movie fans will by now be more than familiar with the scene from Independence Day: Resurgence in which the Burj Khalifa is ripped from its foundations and hurled, like a spear, at London (as if the British capital doesn't have enough problems at the moment).

If director Roland Emmerich had his way, however, Dubai could have fared a lot worse.

“At one point, we hoped to come here and film a whole sequence where Dubai was sucked up into the air, but for cost reasons we had to drop it,” he reveals.

That hasn’t stopped him from producing an effects-laden visual feast, however: “We started out with about 2,100 visual effects charts, but ended up with about 1,800 or so in the movie after we’d made the necessary cuts. The first film was only about 450 or so, so it’s definitely big.”

Some 20 years after the smash hit original movie, it was something of a surprise to find Emmerich returning to the Independence Day franchise, particularly since both he and co-writer Dean Devlin have both stated in the past that there was no logical place to take a sequel.

Emmerich says a number of factors led to the change of heart.

“When I originally made the movie I had no idea how we could continue it. It was kind of stand-alone and that’s how I like it. But then something incredible happened. It wasn’t only incredibly successful on its own, but it had this life of its own too. It’s possibly the most shown of all my movies on TV and kept adding new generations to its fan base. Then technology moved on so much.

“I was shooting 2012 [2009], the first time I had shot with a digital camera and had I think 1,500 visual effects with whole sequences done in the computer. There were a few model shots, but we could have easily done them in the computer too. The quality of the CGI was so good I said ‘Wow – this would be really interesting for Independence Day. The original film itself was a milestone in special effects and I figured if I did another that had to be a milestone, too, and finally the possibility to do that was there.”

Although the advances in technology have opened up new possibilities, Emmerich insists that directors shouldn’t see computers as a replacement for old-fashioned talent.

“I’m very detail-orientated,” he says. “I sit for 5 or 6 hours a day in a dark room, talking to people all over the world about how to improve shots or what detail is missing here and how I could light it differently. It’s intricate work. You have to be very focused to do it. There are no limits anymore. With the first one I felt limited, even though it had a big budget, but we made the most of it and used our ingenuity. Now there’s no boundaries.

“It’s difficult for younger filmmakers to understand. A lot of modern movies look like video games, and that’s bad. Film has its own style, there’s a certain way you have to use the camera, and I’m very happy I grew up in a time where you really had to figure out what movies are.”

The other key element of filmmaking that computers can probably never replace is the story, and 20 years after the original, Emmerich is confident that he and Devlin have correctly solved the dilemma of where to take the sequel.

“We once wrote a script and gave the money back to Fox because it just wasn’t right. The fact is that, now, because of the way the story unfolds and is handed over to a younger generation, there are plans for another sequel and potentially to turn it into a franchise. They even asked me if they could run it past some other writers and directors, but I said ‘No. This is my baby’, and I hope we can maybe do two or three more.”

In fact, in its early stages, Resurgence was itself intended to be a two-film sequel, but Emmerich ultimately abandoned this idea: "This was supposed to be two films at the very beginning, but then everybody did it [see Harry Potter, Hunger Games] and it started to look like when you split a book or a story into two parts, the first part just isn't that good, so we decided against going that way. It's a little bit arrogant for filmmakers to make those sort of demands, too."

Finally, with two decades of fan worship of his 1993 original on the clock, was returning to Independence Day one of the more daunting moments in Emmerich's career?

“Every movie is daunting, especially if it costs more than $150 million dollars, and that’s the world I’m living in.”

• Independence Day resurgence is in cinemas now