Moonfall Director Roland Emmerich Doesn’t Love Shooting Action Scenes

Moonfall director Roland Emmerich is known for action movies like Independence Day, Godzilla, and The Day After Tomorrow. But that doesn’t mean he loves shooting action scenes.

“When you look at all my movies, there’s not much action in them. There are big action sequences, but there’s not much action,” Emmerich told MovieMaker‘s Micah Khan in a video interview just in time for the release of his latest film, Moonfall, starring Halle Berry and Patrick Wilson as astronauts trying to save the world from its biggest threat: the moon. Moonfall hits theaters Friday.

“I actually don’t like much to shoot action,” Emmerich says. He prefers to “get the action out of the way really fast” so he can move on to shooting was he really enjoys — character-driven scenes.

“I love working with actors, because they have, most of the time, very simple problems,” he said. “Ask yourselves, what is the character’s problem? Then you say, oh, who could play them?… Most of the time it’s only two or three actors that could play [a character].”

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“It’s sometimes really tough because you try to cast exactly the perfect people, which happens to be a real boon in Moonfall, he said. “In Moonfall, I have to say, we got exactly the right cast, even down to the smallest person.”

In Moonfall, Earth is in grave danger of being destroyed after the moon is mysteriously knocked out of its orbit and sent on a crash course towards the blue planet. When it seems like no one else will listen, it’s up to NASA executive Jocinda “Jo” Fowler (Berry), Brian Harper (Wilson), and conspiracy theorist KC Houseman (John Bradley) to suit up and go on a mission to save the world. Other cast members include Donald Sutherland, Charlie Plummer, Michael Peña, Carolina Bartczak, Eme Ikwuakor, Chris Sandiford, Jonathan Maxwell Silver, Stephen Bogaert, Maxim Roy, Kathleen Fee, and Frank Schorpion.

Moonfall hits U.S. theaters on Friday, Feb. 4.

You can watch the full interview above.

Main Image: Halle Berry in Moonfall — photo credit: Lionsgate.