Think Trump’s new ballroom is controversial? Hollywood’s been blowing up 1600 Pennsylvania Avenue for nearly five decades. Here are the 10 most spectacular onscreen demolitions.
Independence Day, 1996.
20th Century Fox Film Corp./Courtesy Everett Collection
If the news footage of the White House’s East Wing being demolished looks oddly familiar, there’s a good reason. It’s because over the last 45 years, Hollywood has been blowing up 1600 Pennsylvania Avenue in every way imaginable, from terrorist rocket attacks to alien plasma rays to once even crushing it with a tsunami-hurled aircraft carrier. In fact, the only disaster that’s been too outrageous for even Roland Emmerich to imagine is the one currently unfolding in real time — Donald Trump’s ballroom.
Here are the 10 most spectacular onscreen demolitions of the White House.
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Superman II (1980)
Image Credit: Warner Bros. Pictures/Photofest Before Roland Emmerich made a career of flattening it, Richard Lester’s sequel gave the White House its first proper thrashing. General Zod and his Kryptonian sidekicks storm Washington, demolish the interiors, and demand the president kneel before them
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Independence Day (1996)
Image Credit: 20thCentFox/Courtesy Everett A glowing alien saucer hovers over D.C., unleashes a plasma beam, and vaporizes the White House in a single, jaw-dropping shot. The image became one of the decade’s defining marketing visuals and turned Emmerich into Hollywood’s chief demolition expert.
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Mars Attacks! (1996)
Image Credit: Warner Bros./Courtesy Everett Collection Released the same year as Independence Day, Tim Burton’s sci-fi satire turned the same setup into a punchline. Martians descend, destroy the building with a cartoonish death ray, and impale the president (played with manic glee by Jack Nicholson) through the back with a detached mechanical Martian hand during peace negotiations.
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Left Behind: World at War (2005)
Image Credit: Courtesy In this straight-to-video Christian thriller, the Oval Office is firebombed by the Antichrist’s paramilitary goons. Louis Gossett Jr., as President Gerald Fitzhugh, survives the siege and delivers an impassioned final address from the smoldering ruins of the White House.
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2012 (2009)
Image Credit: Sony Pictures/Courtesy Everett Collection Emmerich imagines the literal end of the world, complete with a mega-tsunami that flings an aircraft carrier straight into the White House. By now, destroying the place had become his calling card.
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Olympus Has Fallen (2013)
Image Credit: FilmDistrict/Courtesy Everett Collection Antoine Fuqua stages a Die Hard–style siege with Gerard Butler as the lone hero. North Korean commandos attack D.C., crash a cargo plane onto the South Lawn, and reduce the White House to rubble before taking the president hostage.
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White House Down (2013)
Image Credit: Reiner Bajo/Columbia Pictures/Courtesy Everett Collection That same summer of 2013 brought Emmerich’s competing version of the White House-under-siege story. Channing Tatum plays D.C. cop who ends up protecting President Jamie Foxx amid explosions, helicopter crashes, and tank fire as a band of militia insurgents tries to overthrow the government.
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G.I. Joe: Retaliation (2013)
Image Credit: Industrial Light & Magic/Paramount Pictures/Courtesy Everett Collection In this Hasbro-fueled fever dream, the villainous Cobra infiltrates the Oval Office, replaces the president with an imposter and redecorates the White House with snake flags. The Joe team eventually storms the capital, where the front façade of the White House is obliterated in the climactic battle.
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X-Men: Days of Future Past (2014)
Image Credit: 20th Century Fox Film Corp./Courtesy Everett Collection In this prequel set in 1973, it’s Magneto vs. Richard Nixon (that’s actor Mark Camocho with prosthetic jowls), the anti-mutant president who greenlights an army of killer robots. To stop him, Magneto rips RFK Stadium from its foundations and drops it over the White House.
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Independence Day: Resurgence (2016)
Image Credit: 20th Century Fox Film Corp./Courtesy Everett Collection Twenty years later, the aliens return — bigger, louder, and somehow less satisfying. A scene in which the White House is crushed by the landing strut of the alien mothership was filmed but ultimately cut from the final release, leaving the building (mostly) intact this time.
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