It was fitting that amidst a crush of stargazing tourists, we were sent by security to walk all the way around London's Empire Theatre, only to end up five feet from where we had just been. We were there for the May Fair Hotel Gala, aka the premiere of Anonymous (which closed the BFI London Film Festival), a film that runs the viewer in circles around a thrillingly controversial literary assertion: that William Shakespeare was, essentially, a total fake. Once inside, and surrounded by the theater's glorious 19th Century interior, director Roland Emmerich climbed onto the stage and commenced his speech.

With 2012, Roland Emmerich has briefly resurrected and subsequently destroyed the disaster film trend he started. After his mega-hit Independence Day made it a guilty pleasure to watch landmarks get decimated, a slew of movies with names like Volcano and Armageddon ended the world as we know it with sociopathic glee. But long after superheroes and sequels took over the summer blockbuster business, every two years or so Emmerich somehow feels the need to seriously fuck shit up all over again (except New York). He did it with The Day After Tomorrow a few years back, and now he's at it again, for what he says is his disaster curtain call. With earthquakes, tsunamis, and volcanoes all in one movie, there's nothing left to do. We spoke to the director about Obama's influence on his movie, the suspension of disbelief, and why he cast Will Smith in Independence Day. (And can we attribute his iffy quote about Smith's African-American-ness to, um, a language barrier?)

2012 is Roland Emmerich's big destruction epic where after Independence Day, The Day After Tomorrow, Godzilla, and Stargate, he basically threw up his hands, said "fuckit, bring on The Four Horsemen and kill 'em all." Which he tried to do in his other movies, but they weren't "Kill 'Em All" enough, so he decided to make 2012, the selling point of which is the world is definitely going to end, there's no question that it won't, it's just a matter of why and how and how we're going to kill them and who we're going to kill, and let's do this shit. And after we do that shit, you know the world lives, because we're gonna make a goddamned TV show about 2013. As a fan of the End of the World genre, and as someone who counts the epic genius of Independence Day as a Great American Movie, I can no longer stand by and allow Roland Emmerich to cash in on making shit movies anymore. From the tyranny of bad End of the World moviemaking, today is our Independence Day. Here's your 2012 spoiler.

In 2012 Roland Emmerich lays the following things to waste: the Washington Monument, the White House, Yosemite National Park, the city of Los Angeles, Christ the Redeemer, the Vatican, the Himalayas, Las Vegas, Air Force One, and a Buddhist Monastery. Notably absent from the carnage (besides the Kaaba in Mecca) is the fair city of New York, which Emmerich vaporized in Independence Day, flattened in Godzilla, and froze in The Day After Tomorrow. So we have one question: why?

In Roland Emmerich’s baroque apocalypse-fantasy, 2012, you’ll see lots of famous and iconic landmarks (the White House, the Sistine Chapel, Christ the Redeemer, etc.) being destroyed, but one significant monument wont get touched. Emmerich had initially planned to include the annihilation of the Kaaba -- the cuboidal building in Mecca that’s the center of Islamic prayer -- but got cold feet for fear of reprisal from fundamentalists. Wuss!

After watching the trailer for disaster master Roland Emmerich's latest, one has to wonder: Did the Germain director read his own Wikipedia entry and decide that not only is he going to prove it right, but he's going to do it times a million? It reads: "A general consensus amongst critics is that Emmerich's films rely too heavily on visual effects, and suffer from clichéd dialogue, flimsy and formulaic narrative, scientific and historical inaccuracies, illogical plot development, and lack of character depth." And with that, ladies and gentlemen, the trailer for 2012.