What even Roland Emmerich won't destroy: an Islamic landmark

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The White House


The Sistine Chapel in the Vatican


St. Peter's Basilica in the Vatican


Christ the Redeemer statue in Rio de Janeiro


The one that got away


For "2012," Emmerich set his sites on destroying the some biggest landmarks around the world, from Rome to Rio. But there's one place that Emmerich wanted to demolish but didn't: the Kaaba, the cube-shaped structure located in the center of Mecca. It's the focus of prayers and the site of the Hajj, the biggest, most important pilgrimage in Islam.

"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."