This is film is ANTI-Environment!

Rating: 1/10 (2 June 2004)

Emmerich made a lot out of this film being 'for the environment' and the speeches dragged from the green party manifesto on the surface support that, but everything else doesn't.
This film glorifies the destruction of the environment and instead of building pathos with more relevant targets falls on more obvious and deeply crass victims such as sick children.
Emmerich, as he did with the superior [and more fantastical] Independence Day, deals with the petty lives of a few individuals whilst millions of people are dying en masse. Surely no one can empathise with a group of rich kids trying to get medicine whilst being chased by obviously CGI wolves when the world is coming to an end?!
This pettiness however means nothing to me, you expect as much from Emmerich but his treatment of an American president in this film is what sickened my in to loathing this film.
If he was real environmentalist rather than just a hack cashing in on yet another FX joyride he'd have used this as a chance to take a shot at George Bush. More than any other president in history Bush has done his best to destroy the environment and promote his friends and his own cash flows, that isn't even a negotiable fact, that's numbers.
If Emmerich wanted to help the environment he'd at least make a crack at the pretzel gobbler. Instead you get a vice-president who doesn't care and a president who barely appears then dies. Most sickening of all the vice president who works against the environment gets a promotion in the end. What does this mean to the viewer?
If he had the guts to make a social comment and the genuine regard for the environment, how about a vice-president who is an environmentalist and a president who works singularly for the profit of himself and his business friends. Then the film would actually have a bad guy and rather than dissipating at the end there would be a success for the environmentalist as the goody goody VP who gets a promotion and the baddie president gets an ice-cube coffin for a comeuppance. And don't tell me that'd be too crass. Emmerich could teach crass in the School Of Crass in Crassland.
[End of Spoilers]
Now I'm not particularly political, I like my fantasy, that's why I love films. I don't normally like political soap boxing in a film but here, if Emmerich was honest in his beliefs, it was due.