Director: Roland Emmerich

Roland Emmerich has spent a career destroying famous buildings, and Independence Day, Godzilla, The Day After Tomorrow and 2012 all follow the same architecture: a scientist nobody believes, a fracturing family, and a set piece flattening a monument the audience recognizes.

Independence Day is the one that works, largely because the ensemble is well cast and the film commits to its own absurdity without winking. The later entries escalate the destruction and lose the tone.

He has also made films outside the register, notably Anonymous and Stonewall, both of which were poorly received. The disaster pictures are the career and he has never pretended otherwise.