10 Great Films From Bad Directors

During the late 90s two genres reigned supreme; the disaster movie and the sci-fi action movie. In 1996, Roland Emmerich blew the doors off both genres with Independence day. Set on present-day earth as the world is devastated by a highly advanced and hostile alien race, we follow humanity banding together to destroy the alien threat.

To say Independence Day was epic would be an understatement. Never before had audiences ever seen action setpieces of this scale, with the world monuments destruction scene being both terrifying at the time and utterly iconic.

What’s more, we had an excellent cast of human interest characters to keep the simple plot moving forward, particularly Will Smith’s Captain Hiller, Jeff Goldblum’s quirky scientist and Bill Pullman as the greatest big-screen US president we’ve ever seen. The Independence Day speech scene is simply *chef’s kiss*.

What makes this classic bit of action cinema all the more intriguing is that director Roland Emmerich never got close to repeating his success. Despite his name becoming a byword for big-budget disaster movies, most of his filmography is sadly lacking; his Godzilla remake was universally panned, nobody on earth saw Anonymous and his most recent effort Moonfall has been lampooned across the whole internet as an utterly silly affair.

Even 2004’s The Day After Tomorrow, which is widely accepted as an ‘okay’ movie, failed to create that perfect marriage of character, story and spectacle he reached with Independence Day. The less said about its sequel Resurgence, the better.