The Noah’s Ark Principle (1984)
Dec 3, 2000Action Aboard a Weather Satellite
Roland Emmerich's first film, made while he was still a student, involving intrigue aboard a weather control station
Roland Emmerich
Making Contact (1986)
Dec 2, 2017Haunting/Psychic Child
Roland Emmerich's second film, a confused oddity that seems to be trying to model itself as a Spielberg film about a kid who gains psychic powers and whose toys come to life
Moon 44 (1990)
Jan 7, 2000Interstellar Prison
Early Roland Emmerich film with Michael Paré investigating pirates targeting a mining moon. As usual with Emmerich, the focus is on action while neglecting the plausibility of the scenario
Universal Soldier (1992)
Nov 19, 2000Undead Super-Soldiers/Action
The first studio film from Roland Emmerich, a loud, noisy action featuring Jean-Claude Van Damme and Dolph Lundgren as Vietnam Vets resurrected as super-soldiers
The High Crusade (1994)
Nov 17, 2000Bumbling Crusaders in Space
Roland Emmerich produced comedy about a group of crusaders abducted by aliens where their bumbling ends up accidentally winning a space war. A promising idea rendered as idiotic knockabout farce.
Stargate (1994)
Apr 26, 2001Intergalactic Portal/Planetary Adventure
The first of Roland Emmerich's special effects epics. Emmerich rehashes Erich von Daniken's Ancient Astronauts theories but casts it as a planetary adventure on an epic canvas with surprisingly entertaining results
Independence Day (1996)
Apr 12, 2003Alien Invasion
The film that made Roland Emmerich's name as a specialist in mass destruction spectacle. At heart, this rehashes a 1950s alien invasion film on a big-budget and adds blatantly sentimentalised American flag-waving
Godzilla (1998)
Jul 16, 1999Giant Atomic Monster
Much disliked English-language version of Godzilla from Roland Emmerich is a more watchable film than one might think. Emmerich does well when the film allows him to do what he does best - being a big, budget, massively scaled epic of mass destruction
The Thirteenth Floor (1999)
Jun 16, 1999Virtual Reality
A Roland Emmerich produced Virtual Reality film that toys with some ideas that almost make it a great SF film before cliches and a bad twist ending take over
Eight Legged Freaks (2002)
Oct 19, 2002Giant Spiders
Roland Emmerich and Dean Devlin turn their attentions to revamping the 1950s giant insect film. They bring top-drawer effects to bear but everything else plays to standard formula
The Day After Tomorrow (2004)
Jun 1, 2004New Ice Age/Environmental Disaster Movie
In another of his big budget disaster spectacles, Roland Emmerich embraces environmental concerns about Global Warming. Here he (unscientifically) imagines the abrupt onset of a new Ice Age worldwide
10,000 BC (2008)
Mar 8, 2008Prehistoric Drama
Roland Emmerich leaves epic mass destruction behind to make a prehistoric film, but this is one that soon collapses into a remarkable anthropological silliness
2012 (2009)
Nov 14, 2009The End of the World/Disaster Movie
Roland Emmerich mass destruction spectacle loosely based around the supposed Mayan prophecies about the end of the world in 2012. Mostly just an excuse for massively scaled disaster sequences.
Hell (2011)
Apr 14, 2021Earth After a Catastrophic Rise in Global Temperature
A Roland Emmerich produced film that takes place in a future that has been catastrophically affected by a ten-degree rise in temperatures worldwide
Independence Day: Resurgence (2016)
Jul 2, 2016Alien Invasion
Roland Emmerich returns with more of the same. The problem is how to top the first film and here everything is so big and with so much happening that it cannot be taken in and slips into tedium
The Colony (2021)
Aug 8, 2024Astronaut Returns to a Post-Apocalyptic Earth
A Roland Emmerich-produced film about a space expedition returned to a post-apocalyptic Earth to find a very changed world
Moonfall (2022)
Apr 9, 2022Disaster Movie/The Moon on a Collision Course With the Earth
Roland Emmerich returns to mass destruction with a film about The Moon on a collision course with Earth, which heads in some conceptually challenging directions