Roland Emmerich: Making Pre-History
Steven Strait as D'Leh in 10,000 B.C.
Courtesy of Warner Bros.
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Was historical accuracy important to you?
Well, on the one hand, I wanted to make it really realistic. And on the other hand, it's a movie and not a documentary or a history lesson.
10,000 B.C. is similar to Apocalypto. Did you want to compete with your friend Mel Gibson?
I sold the rights to 10,000 B.C. on the same day that Apocalypto was announced! The two films have many similarities but are also totally different. I knew Mel's movie would make it to theaters before mine. When I saw Apocalypto, I was very relieved because they are actually incomparable; I have a totally different approach to moviemaking.
What was your approach, exactly?
I know Mel because I made a movie with him. He's very into blood and guts. Just loves it. My feeling is that this world has enough violence and brutality, and it's not my job to add to that. I'm really, really appalled sometimes when I look at certain video games. They're only about how realistically you can show somebody covered in blood and guts. You shouldn't disgust people, just shock them once in a while and leave the rest to the imagination.
But don't you think prehistoric times were probably very violent?
Was it more violent than any other time? I actually believe that civilization and technology have brought about more violence. It's one thing to kill somebody, but to torture somebody — to invent technology to kill somebody — that's more brutal than anything. I think prehistoric civilizations were simple and pure and they hadn't even conceived of stuff like that. It was a matter of survival, of kill or be killed.
There is always a subtext in your movies, I think, especially in The Day After Tomorrow or Independence Day. What can we expect from your next movie?
One theme is anti-totalitarianism. Whenever you have a dictator, he wants to make himself God. All the evil in the world comes down to the people who use religion to rule other people. I always wonder why people aren't making more movies about that.
How does one go about selling a prehistoric movie to a studio?
I love visual effects because they help me to make realistic-looking movies I otherwise couldn't do. With every movie I have to think about what kind of effects I can use to sell the movie, because it's easier when you can promise that you'll show an audience something they haven't already seen. When people first started to made movies, they said, "What do we do with this new invention?" And then somebody very smart put a camera on a train track and figured out how to make it look like the train was going to drive right over the audience. I always call this the first visual effect. And the impact on audiences was astounding. At that first screening, people were running away, screaming. But a lot of people came back, because it was the thrill of something they hadn't seen before. And that still happens to audiences today.
Camera operator Peter Taylor and director Roland Emmerich on the set of 10,000 B.C.
Ollie Upton/Courtesy of Warner Bros.
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But isn't it easier to make people believe that a gigantic wave could hit New York than to make them believe in mammoths?
Every movie has a different set of challenges. I always think movies are strongest when you can believe that the thing on the screen could actually happen in your everyday life. But I began to wonder if I could make people buy into a small tribe of mammoth hunters and empathize with their plight. Yes, it's much more difficult, but that doesn't mean that you shouldn't try it. I'm a fan of variety and I believe every director should try to do original movies. I actually talked with James Cameron about this recently because he's also doing something incredibly original. And he's scared shitless.
Are you in competition with Michael Bay, one of the kings of visual effects?
I admire his work because it's very slick and very, very cool. But for my taste it is a little bit too slick. It always looks a little bit too much like a commercial, probably because he comes from being a commercial director. And I always like the first half of his movies and I always don't like the second half. But I definitely think he's an amazing director. It's just stunning what he puts onscreen.
From what we've seen, the visual effects in 10,000 B.C. are also pretty amazing.
I think it's more than that. The film has incredible visual effects but it also has a real and interesting story. It's a very simple story, but it's very emotional because it's a boy who wants to get his girl back and he realizes throughout his journey that he has larger responsibility than that. I think that's a really good life lesson for anybody: there is not only your private interests, there's a common interest. So while at the very beginning I was fascinated by this new world and the effects we could use to create it, along the way I became invested in telling an authentic and good story.
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