Talk:Roland Emmerich

Criticisms
Someone should add that he has been called "derivative" by film maker Terry Gilliam, as one can see in the extras for Terry Gilliam's 2004 film Tideland. — Preceding unsigned comment added by 50.78.183.102 (talk) 10:53, 7 January 2013 (UTC)

Hated some teacher's in school
Why does Emmerich seem to hate history and physics so much? Inaccuracy's in films are perfectly normal, but Emmerich seems to take these to the next level, furthermore he attempts to portray his films as being accurate, despite how radically inaccuratea they usually are. This is all so much so that it really makes me suspect that he must have had some bad experiences with his history and science teachers. — Preceding unsigned comment added by 216.46.5.216 (talk) 15:05, 15 April 2012 (UTC)

Alleged Dragon Ball Z movie
this has been rumored for at least 3 years now, and I can't find a single article to prove that there was ever was a live action version in the works with Emmerich hired to be in the director's chair. please respond to this before posting otherwise -- Jombage 02:01, 1 July 2007 (UTC)


 * looks like this movie is getting made after all, but with James Wong as director -- Jombage (talk) 02:07, 29 January 2008 (UTC)

Kordian Cyberpunk ??
Hello, I would like to ask a thing: is this true that Emmerich will make a movie titled "Kordian Cyberpunk", based on a drama by Juliusz Słowacki? I have seen a few trailers on you tube, however it hink they're fake. Thanks for help

   80.51.236.70 00:05, 9 November 2007 (UTC)


 * fake. those are simply clips from a movie called Equilibrium --Jombage (talk) 10:23, 30 November 2007 (UTC)

Roger Ebert
"In his scathing review of Stargate, noted film critic Roger Ebert compared Emmerich's skills to those of infamous director Ed Wood.[32] Emmerich responded by including an arrogant character named after and based on Ebert in Godzilla. Ebert has since complimented Emmerich's directorial abilities in his positive reviews of The Patriot and The Day After Tomorrow.[33][34]"

The way this is phrased, it makes it sound as though the two clauses are related. —Preceding unsigned comment added by 78.16.233.246 (talk) 20:27, 17 May 2009 (UTC)


 * Hi. I wrote this part a long time ago. Now I see it might go against WP:SYNTH but it was not my intention to say that one thing led the other. Should it just be removed altogether? Because many other critics have had many things to say (good and bad) about Emmerich and this just focuses on one of them, Roger Ebert. -- Jombage (talk) 12:14, 20 November 2009 (UTC)

Criticism of Emmerich and 2012
Centralized discussion moved to Talk:2012_(film)

There is clearly someone who is trying to distant Emmerich from anti-relgious views despite him being so open about the subject. His last 9 interviews you can Google include him talking about his religious views. This is a subject that is very much a part of him. The same person that is excluding his strong feelings against certain religion is also hiding the fact he is Jewish from his bio despite how many different people included it. I AM JEWISH. Yet, I can't seem to include this element on his page. A person's religion is included in many people's wiki pages and should especially be included in a page where the person has a very strong agenda concerning religion. Please STOP excluding this information. You are doing both my faith and wiki readers an injustice by trying to exclude this element. —Preceding unsigned comment added by 69.84.125.216 (talk) 17:01, 23 November 2009 (UTC)

Phrasing
See Talk:Shakespeare authorship question/sandbox draft2 The text reads: "a film that makes the case for Edward de Vere, 17th Earl of Oxford as the real author of the plays and sonnets usually attributed to William Shakespeare" "a film that makes the case for Edward de Vere, 17th Earl of Oxford as the real author of the plays and sonnets of William Shakespeare"

Which of the two is congruent with WP:NPOV? 'Attributed to' suggests that there is some doubt, and reflects the interests of a WP:Fringe congeries of amateur enthusiasts that WS of Stratford did not write the works. Unfortunately for them, there is no evidence for this proposition, despite 160 years of desperate searching in the archives. No scholar of rank in Elizabethan studies has espoused this proposition. It is a non-scholarly doubt. And therefore this phrasing lends some credence to the idea that doubts exist within the only community that knows about this in depth, the academic community of Shakespearean scholars and Elizabethan historians. For them and the world for the past 400 years, these are the 'works of Shakespeare' not plays 'attributed to' Shakespeare.

Were we to accept this, then technically all the wiki pages devoted to the 37 plays of Shakespeare would wear the 'attributed to William Shakespeare' phrase, which is nonsensical. The second version simply states that the film-maker believes the 'real author' of the works of William Shakespeare was the Earl of Oxford. That is perfectly clear, and straightforward. The Iliad and the Odyssey are attributed to Homer, as are other works, but we write 'Homer's Iliad/Odyssey', just as we write, Lucretius's De Rerum Natura, or Petronius's Satyricon, William Langland's Piers Plowman and Thomas à Kempis's De Imitatione Christi, and in these cases real doubt among aademic specialists does exist, which means we use 'attribution' as a technical variant on limited occasions, usually only within scholarly discourse. The evidence for Shakespeare's authorship however is 'irrefutable' (Kenneth Muir) and yet we can use 'attributed to' in certain defined contexts, if we are being neutral, for example in those plays where dual authorship has been proven. Titus Andronicus is usually attributed to Shakespeare, but the fact is George Peele wrote part of it, etc.

John Orloff using the profound erudition he garnered about Shakespeare and his times as an LA advertising executive was perfectly in his rights to create a fantasy about de Vere being Shakespeare, as is Emmerich in making a film of it based on the Percy Allen Tudor theory craziness, which almost nobody even among the doubters thinks believable. That's showbusiness - Shakespeare as someone who screwed his mum and t***burgled their kiddie. Hey wow, they'll make a fortune! But this should no more affect the way the most eruditely informed knowledge of Shakespeare is presented to the reading public, The former are in business. Scholars are concerned, as is wiki, with getting the facts straight, and the prose NPOV. It does not look kindly on attempts to tweak fringe ideology into biographies for promotional purposes.

usually gives the game away. Not an adjective to employ in describing a universal academic consensus.

This is particularly important to get clear given that the film is forthcoming and a huge frothy bubble of Much Ado About Nothing will break over wikipedia to try and get publicity and leverage for the folks who, perhaps for want of a proper religion, take to this conspiracy theory like a duck to water as the greatest secret not yet deconstructed for mankind. Nishidani (talk) 09:51, 19 June 2010 (UTC)


 * In reply to Smatprt's attempt to support his fellow de Verean, Jack from Maffra.
 * On attribution see OED vol.1 p.775 col.3. 'Edward 111, a Play attributed to Shakespeare'. Why 'attributed'? Because in this case, Edward 111 was a play published anonymously, and only later presumed or supposed to have been written by Shakespeare. One cannot say that the Folio plays (1623) let alone the quartos of those plays in the Folio printed with his name as author, are 'ascribed', for there is no presumption by the editors of the Folio that Shakespeare wrote the plays. ('The ascription of a work of art to its supposed author'). This is a simple distinction in English, and should be understood by everyone. 'ascribed/attributed to' is partisan, as well as being historically anachronistic, the retroactive ascription of implicit doubt to a period where there is no evidence that an authorship doubt existed.Nishidani (talk) 16:15, 19 June 2010 (UTC)

There's been an over-reaction here. This has nothing to do with the fact that there's been a debate about the true authorship of Shakespeare's plays for a considerable time. And it has nothing to do with any particular editor being a de Verean or otherwise. It has to do with the norms of the English language.

If some director created a movie that purported to make a case that Queen Victoria was the actual author of Great Expectations, A Tale of Two Cities and A Christmas Carol, we would use words like "Tarquin Smythe's next project is a film supporting the idea that Queen Victoria was the actual author of Great Expectations and other works normally attributed to Charles Dickens". That is what we would say. It doesn't for a moment deny Dickens was the real author; it's simply using a parallel between the until-now-100% accepted attribution to Dickens and the new proposed attribution to Queen Victoria. --  Jack of Oz    ... speak! ...   23:01, 19 June 2010 (UTC)


 * Hey Jack. I saw there was a dust-up over here and looked in. As to your argument above, normally we would say "Tarquin Smythe's next project is a film supporting the idea that Queen Victoria was the actual author of Great Expectations and other works by Charles Dickens" All this "normally attributed" and "usually attributed" is unnecessary; people don't talk about movies that way. Also I made an edit that describes what we know so far about the film. We don't know whether ti "makes the case" or not; if it did it would be a polemical work, a highly unusual type of movie for Emmerlich, and for all we know we might find out at the end that it was all a dream. But we do know it's based on the premise that Oxford was the author, that's the reality, and describing it as such is certainly accurate and more NPOV. Tom Reedy (talk) 05:06, 20 June 2010 (UTC)


 * I can live with that, Tom. Thanks. --   Jack of Oz    ... speak! ...   05:18, 20 June 2010 (UTC)


 * I have no problem with using "premise" either. But to address Nishidani's concerns about using "attributed", saying scholars don't use the term, it's anachronistic, etc., I'm afraid the "real world" does not support such statements. If the worlds most renowned Shakespeare research center (The Folger) uses "attributed", then so can we. "The question of whether it was Shakespeare who wrote the works attributed to him, often called the authorship controversy, existed well before the Folger was founded, although in the early 1900s the leading alternative was still Sir Francis Bacon.". Encyclopedia Brittanica and countless others use the phrase (actually countless is wrong, as a google search reveals 65,600 matches to "attributed to William Shakespeare").
 * It's quite simple. I don't google much. I read books. I have, in fifty years of collecting editions of Shakespeare, never come across any edition of the plays included in the folio, of the type: 'Hamlet' attributed to William Shakespeare. I have never come across a collected edition of Shakespeare which does not read:'The works of Shakespeare', instead of 'The works attributed to Shakespeare'. The word 'attributed to' is used, academically only of those works of multiple authorship or wrongly attributed to Shakespeare, or anonymous works suspected of being by Shakespeare. Google all you like. Nishidani (talk) 20:09, 20 June 2010 (UTC)
 * Just put a link to SAQ behind 'real author' and your problem is solved, and all will be well.Nishidani (talk) 20:13, 20 June 2010 (UTC)

13th Baktun
"The release date for Anonymous coincided with the completion of the 13th Baktun, the date which marks the empirical base for Emmerich's film 2012, as this is celebrated by the surviving indigenous Maya, specifically the Quiché people."

Anonymous was released on October 28, 2011 (12.19.19.15.6 on the Long Count calendar)

The completion of the 13th baktun is December 20, 2012 (12.19.19.17.19) Followed by the start of the 14th baktun on December 21, 2012 (13.0.0.0.0)

I'm no expert on the Long Count, but I'm pretty sure this statement from the article is wrong. — Preceding unsigned comment added by 173.22.112.122 (talk) 11:38, 20 November 2012 (UTC)

Godzilla not a Disaster Film?
The article says "Emmerich has also directed three other very successful box office fims that weren't disaster films, which were Stargate (1994), Godzilla (1998) (...)" - So Godzilla is not a disaster film? Based on the amount of destruction going on in the movie, it could well be considered one. 129.69.215.20 (talk) 10:11, 3 September 2013 (UTC)

External links modified
Hello fellow Wikipedians,

I have just added archive links to 1 one external link on Roland Emmerich. Please take a moment to review my edit. If necessary, add after the link to keep me from modifying it. Alternatively, you can add to keep me off the page altogether. I made the following changes:
 * Added archive https://web.archive.org/20070903164714/http://www.scifi.com:80/scifiwire/index.php?category=0&id=37195 to http://www.scifi.com/scifiwire/index.php?category=0&id=37195

When you have finished reviewing my changes, please set the checked parameter below to true to let others know.

Cheers.—cyberbot II  Talk to my owner :Online 00:47, 10 February 2016 (UTC)

External links modified
Hello fellow Wikipedians,

I have just modified 4 external links on Roland Emmerich. Please take a moment to review my edit. If you have any questions, or need the bot to ignore the links, or the page altogether, please visit this simple FaQ for additional information. I made the following changes:
 * Corrected formatting/usage for http://www.scifi.com/scifiwire/index.php?category=0&id=37195
 * Added archive https://web.archive.org/web/20120218101034/http://www.10000bcmovie.com/ to http://www.10000bcmovie.com/
 * Corrected formatting/usage for http://fundrace.huffingtonpost.com/neighbors.php?type=name&lname=Emmerich&fname=Roland
 * Corrected formatting/usage for http://www.ugo.com/channels/filmTv/features/thedayaftertomorrow/rolandemmerich.asp

When you have finished reviewing my changes, you may follow the instructions on the template below to fix any issues with the URLs.

Cheers.— InternetArchiveBot  (Report bug) 08:17, 30 November 2017 (UTC)

External links modified
Hello fellow Wikipedians,

I have just modified one external link on Roland Emmerich. Please take a moment to review my edit. If you have any questions, or need the bot to ignore the links, or the page altogether, please visit this simple FaQ for additional information. I made the following changes:
 * Added archive https://web.archive.org/web/20080929150401/http://www.variety.com/article/VR1117981245.html?categoryid=13&cs=1&nid=2562 to http://www.variety.com/article/VR1117981245.html?categoryid=13&cs=1&nid=2562

When you have finished reviewing my changes, you may follow the instructions on the template below to fix any issues with the URLs.

Cheers.— InternetArchiveBot  (Report bug) 07:59, 15 December 2017 (UTC)

Complaints of unoriginality + plagiarism?
Both Stargate and Day After Tomorrow faced lawsuits (in the US and Germany, respectively) for plagiarism.

The US lawsuit ended in a settlement; the German lawsuit was thrown out. Seems potentially relevant, but hard to state neutrally. – SJ + 17:11, 7 March 2020 (UTC)

New Stargate Movie
Hello fellow wikipedians,

Last time when I scrolled the internet for news articles around stargate I came across one article(in Dutch) stating that Roland Emmerich is currently trying to create a new stargate movie. Although this is the first time I have heard it I do not know where they have sourced it from so if anyone can confirm this might be interesting to add. The article in question(Dutch, might wanna use google translate)

Backupje (talk) 09:00, 18 May 2020 (UTC)

Development hell
In the section "Hollywood director", this term occurs twice (both times wikilinked).

Can someone please get rid of this jargon, and replace it with an explanation of what the development problems were, e.g. financial, legal, whatever? If the term were self-explanatory, it wouldn't need to be a wikilink.

I would do this myself, but I don't have information about the nature of the development problems. The best I can do is to replace the first use with a brief gloss of "development hell", and de-linkify the second; which I will go ahead and do in a day or two, if someone else doesn't get there first. MrDemeanour (talk) 18:25, 16 October 2023 (UTC)