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No Islamic Landmarks Were Harmed in the Making of '2012'

by Peter Hall Nov 2nd 2009 // 5:32PM

Filed under: Action, Sci-Fi & Fantasy, Sony, Politics


Given the topic at hand, I'd like to make it clear up front that neither I nor Cinematical are taking sides in this story about Roland Emmerich's forthcoming All Landmarks Must Die opus, 2012; I just find it a curious insight into the mind of the man who knows how to make a building fall over but good.

The trailer for 2012 plays like a highlight reel of civilization falling apart all over the world, but it's religion that gets the brunt of Emmerich's digital pounding: A Buddhist temple gets hit by a tidal wave. The Sistine Chapel crumbles to pieces as a split tears right down the middle of Michelangeo's painting of God touching Adam's finger. St. Peter's Basilica rolls over onto a crowd of devoted worshipers. Rio de Janeiro's iconic Christ the Reedemer statue falls to earth as its wracked by shockwaves. The White House is even crushed by, of all things, an aircraft carrier. But eagle eyed fans of watching organized religion get its disaster porn comeuppance will have noticed that there are no Islamic landmarks on the CGI chopping block.

That wasn't always the plan, however. Emmerich explained to SCI FI Wire that he had originally hoped the Kaaba, one of the holiest sites in the Islamic religion, would join the visual wrath of 2012, but that his co-screenwriter Harald Kloser talked him out of it:

"Well, I wanted to do that, I have to admit ... but my co-writer Harald said I will not have a fatwa on my head because of a movie. And he was right. ... We have to all ... in the Western world ... think about this. You can actually ... let ... Christian symbols fall apart, but if you would do this with [an] Arab symbol, you would have ... a fatwa, and that sounds a little bit like what the state of this world is. So it's just something which I kind of didn't [think] was [an] important element anyway in the film, so I kind of left it out."

And that raises a curious observation about what is and isn't acceptable as far as desecrating religions symbols on film goes. Emmerich does have a point, it's been historically okay to let Christian symbols fall apart, it's okay to let business sky scrappers topple over, it's okay to smash down symbolic government residences, but it's, apparently, not okay to smite an Islamic landmark. Okay, so the Kaaba, located at the heart of Mecca, Saudi Arabia, is the most sacred site in all of Islam, but that shouldn't grant it inherent immunity from civilization-ending events.

So what do you think? Is it hypocritical of Emmerich to stomp all over other religions but give Islam a pass? Or is its exclusion acceptable so long as it didn't fit with the story?

Oh, and before the discussion gets too heavy, I'd just like to point out the director's explanation to Sci-Fi Wire as to why he thinks the cruise shipping rolling over in Poseidon is the greatest disaster image ever put to film, "Because it's a really big object that rolls over."

Ah, Really Big Object That Rolls Over; that better be the name of Roland Emmerich's next cinematic fatwa against gravity, logic, and sound structural foundations. [Honestly, how exciting would a 43 foot tall cube falling over be, anyway? It can't even roll!]

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Tags: 2012, disaster porn, DisasterPorn, Kaaba, religion in film, ReligionInFilm, Roland Emmerich, RolandEmmerich

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