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Director of 'Independence Day' has a plan for when aliens really arrive: Hide

Roland Emmerich worries little green men may hold a personal vendetta, especially since 20 years of special-effects progress freed him to depict them behaving very badly this time around.

Joan E. Solsman Former Senior Reporter
Joan E. Solsman was CNET's senior media reporter, covering the intersection of entertainment and technology. She's reported from locations spanning from Disneyland to Serbian refugee camps, and she previously wrote for Dow Jones Newswires and The Wall Street Journal. She bikes to get almost everywhere and has been doored only once.
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  • Three Folio Eddie award wins: 2018 science & technology writing (Cartoon bunnies are hacking your brain), 2021 analysis (Deepfakes' election threat isn't what you'd think) and 2022 culture article (Apple's CODA Takes You Into an Inner World of Sign)
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Joan E. Solsman
Photo Credit: Claudette Barius, Claudette Barius
Watch this: 'Independence Day' director isn't afraid of aliens -- unless they've seen his movies

"Independence Day" director Roland Emmerich hopes our civilization won't take any cues from his films when extraterrestrial life makes contact.

"Talk, and don't shoot," he advised in an interview. "And I hope [aliens] will not mind that I portray them badly. Otherwise I have to hide."

Emmerich, whose "Independence Day: Resurgence" hits theaters Thursday, has enjoyed plenty of time to mull over the possibility of a close encounter of the third kind. Twenty years have passed since his 1996 blockbuster "Independence Day" wowed popcorn-gobbling movie-goers by pushing special effects to their limits, as the flick annihilated landmarks like the White House and the Empire State Building in a 4-minute spectacle of destruction.

In the present day, when computer-generated scenes make it easy to lay waste to entire city blocks, it's a challenge to remember that the cinematic disasters of the original film were stunning. The original "Independence Day" won an Oscar for best visual effects.

"In the first film already when I was writing it, I had scissors in my head because I knew what you can do and you cannot do" with the special-effects technology of the day, he said in an interview. "This time around, you don't even have the scissors...because everything is possible."

See more of my interview with Emmerich in the video above.