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.

The teaser trailer for Roland Emmerich's latest disaster pic, 2012, single-handedly washes away the acrid taste left in mouth from his last two pics, 10,000 B.C., and The Day After Tomorrow -- two films I admit to not seeing, but do you care to disagree with my assessment? Granted, it's not a huge feat to craft an engaging teaser, but I haven't seen one more enrapturing in some time. Listen to that music. It's like a Jodorowsky film. Emmerich teased that in this film, "you'll see the world go to shit," and while we don't see it going to shit just yet, that lone monk is going to have a tough time staying afloat. The film's title refers to the end of the Mayan calendar, which many people believe to be the end of the world, too. Emmerich said what inspired him to make this film was that when he googled 2012, 240 million hits came up. "So many people write about it, believe it, that our world comes to an end in 2012," he says. But that was pre-Obama, obviously.