JACKSON HOLE, WYOMING—In the past 13 years, Roland Emmerich has spent a great deal of other people’s money. The six films he has made during that time—Independence Day, The Patriot, Godzilla, The Day After Tomorrow, 10,000 BC, and 2012—have cost more than $800 million, according to some estimates. Fortunately for Emmerich, the first five films grossed more than $2.2 billion. The sixth movie, the B.C.–shot 2012, is estimated, by IMDb, to have cost $260 million.

The film stars John Cusack as a writer who stumbles across a manic radio host named Charlie Frost (Woody Harrelson) while on vacation with his two children in Yellowstone Park (played by Kamloops.) Broadcasting from his portable studio, Frost tells them and his listeners that there is a secret government conspiracy to save officials and people with money from an approaching apocalypse. Meanwhile, the academic (Chiwetel Ejiofor) whose theories initiated this government response comes to the conclusion that the planet has even less time than he had originally believed. (The movie opens Friday [November 13] in Vancouver.)

In a hotel room in Jackson Hole, director Emmerich, whose Godzilla used the tag line “Size Does Matter”, says that he has felt that bigger is better since attending film school in his native Germany. “When I was in film school, everyone wanted to do little films that were about half an hour long, and I thought, ‘I am not going to do a short little movie. I am going to do a big science-fiction movie,’ ” Emmerich says. “So I sat down at the table and wrote a script for a science-fiction movie called The Noah’s Ark Principle, and I decided I would do this film at film school. I don’t know why I thought that, but the script was good enough that I got money from everywhere and I was able to make a feature-length film.

“I think that people pay a lot for a movie ticket, and I have always believed that you shouldn’t just give them things they can see on television or on video or DVD,” he continues. “I like all kinds of films. Some of my favourite movies are really low budget, but I always feel that I have to make a big movie.”

Emmerich’s movies are not just big; they tend to be filled with scenes of disaster and destruction. Independence Day featured an alien invasion, and the characters in both The Day After Tomorrow and 2012 are forced to battle apocalyptic forces. Emmerich is aware of his reputation and says he almost walked away from doing a third disaster film. He says one of the reasons he decided to cowrite and direct it was because he had a lot of similar experience to draw on.

“I didn’t want to do this film. I said, ‘I don’t want to be pigeonholed as the disaster guy.’ When I did The Day After Tomorrow, I thought, ‘This is my last disaster movie,’ and I said so. Then when 2012 came around, I had doubts, but the more I thought about it and the more I discussed it with my cowriter [Harald Kloser], the more I wanted to do it,” he says. “Then I kind of threw everything to the wind. I thought, ‘So what if they call me the disaster-movie guy?’ I was also sure that this would be my best movie because I could pack all the things I learned over the years into it. I knew what to avoid, and I knew that visual effects are a tool where you can do pretty much do everything.”

But do visual effects get in the way of telling a story? Emmerich says that you have to have a good story in place before you even consider the effects. The problem occurs when a studio says the movie might be too long. (2012 is two hours and 38 minutes.) He says they will sacrifice story and character before effects.

“It is very dangerous because visual effects can overpower the characters,” he says. “I always said to myself, ‘This movie has to be long enough that I can do everything I want.’ There are always voices that will say, ‘It’s too long,’ but then you have to remember that even with movies we all loved, like The Lord of the Rings series or The Dark Knight, you heard all these people saying they loved it but that they felt it was about 15 minutes too long. The studios want these movies shorter because they want to have a lot of showings. So you are constantly battling with people who are very polite but say, ‘Don’t you think we could lose that scene?’ Sometimes you even cut it out and then the next day you put it back in because the most important thing is that you stay strong with your vision.”