What Roland Emmerich Couldn’t Obliterate
2012 (2009) Movie, Sci-Fi Movie News — By endymi0n on November 3, 2009
I am confident in reporting that in “2012″, an imminent digital masterpiece by director Roland Emmerich, your favorite phallic monument or architectural wonder is going to be completely squashed. However, in deciding which statue, building, city or structure was going to be tidal waved, rolled, or dropped core-ward toward the spicy molten center of mother Earth, Roland had to be careful, because political correctness is taken a bit more seriously in some places.
Roland was thinking of cracking the Kaaba, the cube shaped thingy in the center of Mecca, where Muslim pilgrims come during the Hajj. Roland’s thoughts on this follow.
“Well, I wanted to do that, I have to admit,” Emmerich says. “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.”
Probably wise, probably wise. Thanks Scifiwire.
4 Comments
Ridiculous and yet, oddly understandable.
im egyptian and i dont think they know what fatwa means cuz it doesnt mean whatever hes implying furthermore im really glad they didnt do that(blow up the kaaba) cuz its a very important symbol in our religion and it would be a tad offensive to portrait it like that with all thats going on in the world and i like to thank emmrich for deciding not to do it.
I love the double standards of the world, dont you guys. :(
Ahmad, I think the point is that people are taking issue with the fact that Emmerich, out of sheer cowardice of a fatwa being placed on his head (a la Salman Rushdie), “spared” Mecca, while he chose to destroy the major icons of the world’s OTHER religions, none of whom issue fatwas to those who commit heresy. To anyone with a conscience, his hypocrisy and lack of integrity causes disgust. That’s not to say that anyone in the audience would have cheered the destruction of the Kaaba.