‘Moonfall’ director Roland Emmerich says he’s created his own genre

Given that the marketing is leaning heavily into his filmography and legacy by pointing out Moonfall hails from the director of Universal Soldier, Stargate, Independence Day, Godzilla, The Day After Tomorrow, 2012, and more, audiences know exactly what to expect from Roland Emmerich’s latest blockbuster effort.

They don’t call him the Master of Disaster for nothing, and while his output has tended to be fairly inconsistent from a critical standpoint, when he’s placed at the helm of an effects-driven epic that requires a slew of recognizable landmarks to be blown to smithereens, there’s few in the business better than Emmerich.

Based on the footage we’ve seen so far, Moonfall looks ludicrous to the point of being an undeniably fun time at the movies, with the filmmaker admitting to ComicBook that he’s fully aware of his reputation, to the extent his very name has become a genre in itself.

“Well, I think I created my own genre in a way because it’s almost like a different subject matter. First, it was an alien invasion. Then it was Godzilla. Then it was Day After Tomorrow, it was about climate change. 2012 was about an Earth crust displacement. This is just about the Moon falling on Earth, but it isn’t what you think it is.

It’s also interesting because this movie was actually really inspired by one book. It was called Who Built the Moon. It’s an English book, very obscure. It makes a really good point that the Moon is not what we think it is. It’s kind of man-made or alien-made or whatever and makes a really good point. There’s three theories in there about how that could have happened, but we didn’t take any one of them. We kind of created our own.” 

With a budget of $140 million, Moonfall is also one of the most expensive independent films ever made, meaning we’ll be getting Emmerich’s unbridled creative vision. In-depth characters and complex narratives have never been his strongest suit, but we’ll let that slide when the plot follows two astronauts and a conspiracy theorist discovering the Moon is harboring secrets the government was determined to keep under wraps.