On the contrary, I'm outright offended with Emmerich's historical works. Stonewall is already one of the most insulting movies about the gay rights movement ever made but The Patriot is likewise an insulting and historically inaccurate piece of cinematic garbage and Anonymous is Emmerich spitting on Shakespeare's corpse. There's historical inaccuracy and then there's outright propaganda like this.
Have you any dreams you'd like to sell?If your point is that the characters aren't extremely complex, I'm not arguing. But all your claims about them being shallow are nonsense. You can describe any character in three bullet points, that doesn't make them any more or less dynamic. You can also take the simplest character and expand them to as many details as you can gleam. The fact you can follow the characters in Independence Day through a variety of situations and emotions (Whitmore comforting his wife as she dies, Hiller having a shotgun wedding before the last mission) without it feeling weird for their character is a indication of depth. Shallow Characters, by definition, have very little depth to them, typically because the story doesn't take them anywhere.
Any given script will only have the broadest details on personal goals or backstory, it's up to the actor and director to give the character actual complexity. The script for Heat was previously filmed as a tv movie called LA Takedown, without Pacino and DeNiro in the roles the characters were significantly more shallow and bland.
Godzilla kind of works even as a Godzilla movie, the imagery used is pretty spectacular at times. It's literally the acknowledgement that it could be easily killed by conventional weaponry if they got a clean shot that "took the 'god' out of Godzilla." So "Zilla" spent most of its time running away, if she stood her ground and wailed on a few more helicopters and tanks deliberately the movie might have been slightly better received (in fact stated as such by various fans and Toho itself as the biggest problem with the movie). That's the reason the animated version was well liked. Notably, both Emmerich and Devlin have expressed regrets with how the film turned out. Emmerich said it was made on a rushed schedule (partially the reason they got the job) and Devlin said they should have committed to Godzilla being a heroic or villainous character instead of an innocent animal.
edited 13th Dec '17 10:01:13 PM by KJMackley
Eh, let me rephrase what I said when I mentioned finding Emmerich's films mostly inoffensive: I was speaking purely about his blockbusters/disaster films. I'm tired and wasn't really thinking about his historical films (with the exception of Stonewall because it's the one that's really stuck with me).
My bad. Still, it's hard for me to find him worse than Bay.
/crawls back under rockIndependence Day automatically has more merit to it than everything in Bay's filmography. It's at least fun. Now I despise Godzilla for a couple of reasons. As a film it's boring at best, outright plagiarizing from Jurassic Park at worst, and the CGI is awful. As an adaptation of the character, it's spitting in the eye of Toho Studios.
Have you any dreams you'd like to sell?Please, keep Bay out of this. I didn't open the discussion in order to sneak by the original complain threat, but because I felt that the positive discussion about Emmerich was worth continuing.
Anyway, I think Emmerich got away with his historical stuff because the audience barely paid any attention to it. The only movie of the bunch I ever bothered to watch was The Patriot, and that was only to see Heath Ledger's performance (sue me, I had seen him in this shitty TV shows at the very start of his career and pegged him as future movie star, so I had taken an interest). Anyway, that movie is mostly long, ponderous and utterly boring but hey, the battle scenes look kind of great. You have to give it to Emmerich, he manages to give those battles a feeling of glory, but without inserting a healthy dose of toxic masculinity.
What the audience remember is mostly his big catastrophe block busters, especially Independence Day, because they are the best of the genre (feel free to list me better ones) even if they are often stupid and Stargate. Incidentally, Stargate is imho also the movie which has his best main characters.
Independence Day isn't fun in my opinion it's just dumb. Some plot elements make so little sense to me, like the whole satellite/virus nonsense and really the script is saved by Smith, Pullman and Goldblum. How it became iconic I'll never know.
Day After Tomorrow has some nice visuals if you're able to get past the initial silly science (global warming causing an ice apocalypse? Really?)
Stargate is sort of goofy fun; it's definitely the movie of his I'm best disposed to. It is still startlingly generic but that aside it's not bad at all.
"And when the last law was down and the Devil turned round on you, where would you hide, the laws all being flat?"I don't hear Independence Day that often these days, but I don't know how much of that is impacted by the fact that I'm obviously British. This was something even from the time of release, as from a UK perspective it comes across as kind of jingo-ish; but that kind of sort-of inspirational, affirming content is probably part of the reason for its success. Of course American patriotism isn't going to be as invigorating for non-Americans, nor will the Whitehouse being destroyed be as affecting.
Oh, man. Shakespeare being Shakespeare, there have been so many wild theories and speculation about him and his works, and when not speculation simple overt wish fulfilment. What were Shakespeare's religious views? What was his sexuality? I'll tell you: those plays and sonnets have been poured over for any text that might seem to suggest something. Was he a woman? Almost certainly no, but it'd really neat if he was, wouldn't it? So it's maybe unsurprising people have been long-enamoured with finding some sort of authorship conspiracy. A quick Wikipedia overview
is there, but take note that they actually have separate articles on all four of the 'Baconian', 'Oxfordian', 'Marlovian' and and 'Derbite' theories of Shakespeare authorship. Perhaps yet more theories will develop!
Of course, the overwhelming opinion of Shakespeare scholars is that Shakespeare was, in fact, Shakespeare.
edited 14th Dec '17 6:48:33 AM by Lavaeolus
The aforementioned Shakespeare Scholar Kyle from Brows Held High observes that Emmerich's conception of "the man behind Shakespeare" (Edward De Vere, in this case) in Anonymus seems to suspiciously similar to Emmerich himself: a upper class crowd-pleasing artist talking down to the masses so there's definitely an element of Wish Fullfilment at work here.
"All you Fascists bound to lose."And moviebob observes the same thing, from a totally different perspective. I guess they both have a point.
Independence Day is just one of those movies which really shaped the blockbuster landscape for a while. You just have to pay attention to how often the world was destroyed on screen in the years after it was released. It belongs on one list with movies like Die Hard (went from the invincible actionhero to the bleeding every day actionhero) or Star Wars (established the Space Opera as a genre) or The Avengers (made the cinematic universe a thing) or, to go back further, Errol Flyn's Robin Hood, which started a whole string of heroes in tights. Or the original Godzilla. Or the first James Bond movies. Those movies aren't necessarily good, but they are relevant because they were trend-setters or even created a whole genre.
I mean Emmerich is such an imbecile about history that Anonymous has a character talk about the Tudor Rose while holding one, even though the fucking Tudor Rose is not an actual goddamn plant, it was meant as a symbol for the House of Tudor. There's historical inaccuracy and then there's spitting in the eye of history with outright stupidity. It'd be like saying there's an actual eyeball floating on top of the Pyramids.
Have you any dreams you'd like to sell?Not to mention the loathsome politics in Anonymus (as it supports the snobbery found in all anti-stradfordian theories) and all his films.
Honestly I could never enjoy Independence Day due it's insultingly American perspective.
If you asked me which movie of Emmerich's I find least bad, I'd go with The Day After Tomorrow, chiefly over the fact it's the only one with a reasonable message (global warming is bad for fuck's sake do something about it) and I actually find its ending quite bold (the movie ends on a rather grim note as America becomes a frozen wasteland, 1/3 of the cast dies, and Not!Dick Cheney gives a speech how the US population is now fleeing en masse to Mexico and how American hubris brought upon all this chaos).
edited 14th Dec '17 3:10:27 PM by Gaon
"All you Fascists bound to lose."If I remenber well, Emmerich pretty much said he didnt really care about history at all and just a good movie, he is pretty honest about it.
Swan: I find weird how emmerich shit on superhéro movies when if something the battle of new York is independence day with superhéroes.
Emmerich personally believes Shakespeare was a fraud, there's video evidence of this. So this makes Anonymus lean much closer to propaganda than "fun blockbuster film".
Even then, this doesn't excuse it. History matters. Making a travesty of it for some cheap points isn't a good thing.
"All you Fascists bound to lose."Yeah Annonymous was indeed a movie’s whose message I do not agree with in insisting that the theory of Shakesphere being a fraud is factually true. But I still like it for the performance the actors give in making a “true” story seem believable by taking said proposterous theories and treating them as facts.
Tying in with a previous discussion post regarding Independence Day, part of the success of that movie comes in the form of the actors portraying the characters. Will Smith’s character is pretty generic in his description, but with his acting the character is a legitimate badass. Bill Pullman as the president of the movie doesn’t seem much but goddamn that speech before the final battle. The nerdy character would be considered stock character fodder if they haven’t cast Jeff Goldblum for the role. And lets face it: Randy Quaid essentially played the best character in the form of that drunk crops field pilot.
The same can be said for 2012 which I find to be a crappy film similar to other disaster film Emmerich made The Day After Tommorrow. But unlike that movie, 2012 actually have memorable characters who gave great performances to the roles they are given. Case in point, Woody Harrelson.
So count me in as the people who see some of his films success is all in the performance of the actors who are in them.
As I mentioned beforehand, I don't think that Emmerich's perspective in Independence Day is actually American, it is what a German would think an American Perspective would look like, which makes the whole thing (unintentionally) hilarious. Especially if you have cringed for years about the way Hollywood blockbuster portray foreign cultures.
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I think you're giving him far too much credit. You could easily prop up the same argument for Michael Bay, and in Bay's case we have actual evidence his jingoism may be a facade via Pain and Gain, a film built upon thoroughly mocking the american dream. Something no Emmerich movie thus far has done, even considering Emmerich has much more freedom as a director than Bay (who spent some ten years trying to get Pain and Gain off the ground).
On Shakespeare's defense, his bad history was heavily influenced by the political censorship of the time.
Emmerich's bad history was because he wanted to.
"All you Fascists bound to lose."Actually I believe that would be inSIDE YOUR SKULL WITH A GIANT AXE YOU BLASPHEMER HOW DARE YOU QUESTION ME
"All you Fascists bound to lose."The Godzilla babies are a discount version of the Raptors of Jurassic Park, for one.
"All you Fascists bound to lose."

Gotta admit I unironically love Godzilla. I had seen the 2014 movie and some Toho films prior to watching it, and fully expected to hate it, but I ended up loving it for some reason. It's a guilty pleasure of mine and no matter how many times I've seen it, I can't grow tired of it. The cartoon that followed it was leagues better though and closer to what I feel the movie really should've been. And while I'm talking not-so-popular opinions, I really love Godzilla's design in this movie (and the cartoon made it better). It's up there with Millennium, Legendary, and Shin for me.
As for my views on Emmerich's work in general? Always preferred him to Michael Bay, personally, setting aside Stonewall which made my blood boil. I've usually found his movies for the most part fairly... inoffensive? Like putting aside the cliched characters/plotlines and the patriotism, I've never really felt like my sense of personal decency was assaulted like I do with Bay's films.
Plus I can actually see the action in Emmerich's movies. Bay's give me a headache.
/crawls back under rock