Independence Day: Resurgence

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- Nick Setchfield

In 2008 Roland Emmerich opened his luxury London home to the world’s media. His taste in interior decor was remarkable: a painting of Jesus in a Wham! T-shirt; a diorama of the doomed Kennedy motorcade; a life-size waxwork of Pope John Paul II, reading his own obituaries.

Did we really have Emmerich wrong all these years? Was the man behind such earnest catastrophe porn as 2012 and The Day After Tomorrow really an exponent of high-end kitsch, more art world prankster Jeff Koons than disaster movie merchant Irwin Allen? Was it too late to wrap quote marks around his schlock-studded oeuvre? Too late to regard it all with a knowing smirk?