Maybe I Am Being Nostalgic.

Independence Day

1996

D: Roland Emmerich

**********

Pros: Special Effects, Characters, Plot Structure, Comic Relief Score

Cons: Clumsy Pandering, Fridge Logic

 

 

      I feel bad about missing the exact date of the 25^th anniversary of one of my biggest nostalgic movies, but I had to do something, even if it is a bit late.  1996 was the year my childhood peaked, right before it all went downhill with the onset of pubescent cynicism.  And Indedpendence Day was the movie of that summer.  It was an event, and it was years before I finally found out…some people hate this movie.  I was baffled, but soon came to understand why.  For a while, like many, a was apologetic over it, citing it as a guilty pleasure.  But after time, like many, I became more secure and I currently maintain that, for all its cheesiness, Independence Day is a solid popcorn movie.  The backlash triggered its own backlash.  And without much further ado, I’ll get started on the best space movie starring Bill Pullman or Brent Spiner.

       The movie begins with a massive alien spaceship’s parking over the moon (without causing much effect on earth’s tides despite being a quarter as heavy as our satellite), and everyone’s reaction to the phenomenon.  At first, they don’t know for sure what’s going on as giant fireballs hover close over the land.  As it turns out, those fireballs were exhaust for giant 15-mile-wide ships that stop over major cities.  Panic ensues as people flee L.A., New York City, and D.C.  This first act is very well executed in the way that it builds up tension slowly while introducing characters and their arcs.  It was tolerably dull for me as a kid.  So we have an effective buildup that leads up to an epic spectacle of action involving an alien invasion.  This is one of the myriad reasons I was not impressed by “Transformers.”  Because I already saw this done better 11 years prior.  Amazingly, in defiance of both nostalgia and logic, many reviewers who hated this movie liked “Transformers!”

       Like X2, this movie actually does an impressive job of weaving a seemingly ridiculous number of character arcs together; even genuinely better movies have trouble with that.  There isn’t a clear protagonist, but the closest one would be David Levinson (a Jewish Jeff Goldblum), a cable repairman who figures out the aliens’ attack code and warns President Whitmore (Bill Pullman) and Co. to escape DC in the nick of time.  He’s assisted by his father Julius  (an even more Jewish Judd Hirsch).  The President’s staff includes Stephen’s ex-wife Constance (Margaret Colin).  

       Also important is Captain Stephen Hiller (Will Smith), an F/A-18 pilot who fights in an initial counterattack and later pilots an alien fighter in the finale after convincing the president and his staff that he’s qualified to do so simply because he saw them flying (get used to the criticisms, there’s going to be a lot of them).  His girlfriend Jasmine (Vivica A. Fox) is a stripper working to support her son Dylan (Ross Bagley) and eventually bands together a bunch of LA survivors after ducking in corner of a tunnel while giant fireball had the courtousy to pass by (that corner would still have been a pressure cooker).  Luckily, her dog Boomer (Dakota) also survives.  Stephen and David eventually infiltrate the alien mothership so that the latter can upload a virus of his own devising to do nothing more than disable the aliens’ deflector shields, giving the Earthlings a fighting chance in an air battle.  After having been cornered by Windows 10 into buying a Mac by default, I can find assurance in the knowledge that I can use it to hack alien spaceships even if I can't do VRChat.  Reflecting they’re linked fates, David makes up with his ex-wife and silently un-divorces her during Stephen and Jasmine’s impromptu wedding.   

       Before this plan is hatched, the president reluctantly orders a nuclear strike to destroy a ship, but its shields successfully repel the nuke.  This scene probably features the most unbelievable deceit of this movie: the idea that Houston can actually be evacuated in a timely manner.  Then again, maybe they only claimed to evacuate it.  Then again, why did they wait until the ship was already over another city?  I’m not sure what they mean by “visual confirmation” or how that fakeout even worked.  Despite this clear failure, the Secretary of Defense (James Rebhorn) insists on trying again for some reason, and this is rejected.  David passes undue judgment on the president for using nukes over American soil, but this did seem like a reasonable response considering the situation.

         The other primary arc involves Russell Casse (Randy Quaid), a half-crazed Vietman pilot turned crop-duster who was once abducted by the aliens.  His failures as a functional adult put him at odds with his lock-key oldest son (James Duval), who plays the role of responsible adult in the family, but he’s eventually vindicated by his crazy stories’ being confirmed and his eventual heroic kamikaze into an alien ship.  In contrast to those of most actors, Quaid's roles seem to accurately reflect how nutty he is in real life.  He probably even believes he can hypnotize yodeling.  One apparent sign of White Privilege is how everyone pretended that Will Smith said "Welcome to Erf" when he clearly said "Earth" while ignoring how unintelligible Randy Quaid was when you yelled at the aliens ship.  I always thought he said, "In the words of my dinner runneth." 

            In addition to the more serious arcs, the movie actually has good comic relief characters.  First is David’s father, who has an amusing chemistry with his son, and then there’s Dr. Okun (Brent Spiner), as the United States Assistant Secretary for Health an eccentric Area 51 scientist.  A little divisive is David's boss, Marty (Harvey Fierstein).  He's a such a campy gay role that we're almost supposed to be amused when he meets his end.  This ignores the fact that he's an actually pretty likable person.  He treats his employees his respect, and is a pretty nice guy, well, aside from his apparent apathy toward his lawyer's life.

         As for Area 51, it’s one of the most absurd deceits of the movie.  You see, the movie makes the claim that the existence of Area 51 itself is a rumor.  I mean, there have always been rumors about what goes on in Area 51, but there is little controversy that there is Top Secret Air Force base in the middle of Nevada that you’re not allowed to go to.  Even the president claims “there is no Area 51” until until the SecDef corrects him.  When Russell and his RV caravan are crossing the salt flats, they observe that “it ain’t on a map” when prompted to go there.  You mean the map doesn’t have drawn out zone that says, “Don’t Go Here?”  Still, much like Crispin Glover and this incident, the US Government never officially acknowledged it until 2013.  The mere mention of Area 51 was the military's reason that they revoked their aid for the movie.  I suppose this is why the Air Force's primary air superiority fighter is apparently the McDonnell Douglas F/A-18.  

          One of the flaws of this movie (unless you want to see it as crazy awesome), is the patriotic pandering that is almost insulting.  However, the only time it gets really bad is a montage that heavily implies that everyone else in the world has been literally waiting for America to come up with a plan.  It’s like movie version of all the semi-ironic Murrica memes you see on the internet.

         President Whitmore’s speech does unwittingly(?) subvert this.  It’s a rousing one that many pretend not to be moved by, but some might have a problem with the suggestion that the ideals of freedom on which the country would be founded on would be supplanted by a desperate act for survival.  In recent years I’ve become more upper-right quadrant, so suppose it doesn’t bother me as much now.  Love it or hate it, it’s vanity to think America is some divinely ordained thousand-year nation, anyway.  Bill Pullman is a bit wooden but he comes through in scenes like this.  One of the few improvements of the sequel is that he’s genuinely much better in it.  

          Other cast members include Robert Loggia as General William Grey, Mary McDonnell as the First Lady, Adam Baldwin as Major Mitchell, and a you Mae Whitman as the First Daughter.  She has cute scene with Dylan in which the bond over their fear that actually nicely foreshadows their friendship/professional partnership in the sequel.  Harry Connick, Jr. plays clownish fighter pilot who ends up ignoring proper flight-handling and dies.

          The special effects are wonderful, and this movie shows what you could do with practical models.  It’s every bit as ambitious in scale as a modern CGI blockbuster, but it looks better and has aged beautifully, aside from some tolerably noticeable bluescreen effects.  It has some wonky moments, like when the US Capitol literally explodes from the inside when engulfed by a larger explosion.  Even when I was a kid I was bothered by the crooked perspective of that one helicopter in front of the White House; it was apparently added later for some reason.  One of the main reasons I don’t care for the sequel is its more generic CGI.

          David Arnold’s score is both foreboding and triumphant.  The design of the aliens and their ships (Oliver Scholl and Patrick Tatopoulos) is great, and their technology has a pretty blue glow to boot.  Their tactics, however are questionable.  They hijack our satellites to communicate with each other instead of dispatching their own, which is how David decodes their intentions, and they don’t close the doors on their superweapon (the only weak spot) until all the F-18’s are taken out.  Instead of glassing entire areas from orbit, starting with all of earth’s military centers, they go right down to the atmosphere, the only space their barely-space-age quarry could possibly fight back.  

          The earthlings also make questionable decisions.  Unable to communicate with the aliens at first, they’ve decided to send a helicopter up to flash bright lights in their faces (this is when the aliens show their cards by blowing the chopper up).  When an Area 51 guard attempt to turn away, Stephen convinces him otherwise by simply showing him the body of an unconscious alien, and rhetorically asks if he should just leave it there (which should have backfired on him).  There’s also an assumption that Area 51 is deep enough underground that it would be out of reach for a superweapon that was able to take out NORAD (the first time I heard about the place).  The president insists on flying in the final battle.  And everybody uses up their missiles even though they need them to take out the ship (doesn’t Area 51 have SAM’s?).  This necessitates Russell’s sacrifice.     

          Independence Day is corny and heavily flawed in many ways.  It also has a dubious legacy of inspiring multiple mindless disaster movies, some of the more tiresome ones made by Emmerich himself.  The underwhelming sequel could have taken it to the next level with a full-blown space conflict, but it instead chose to set the reset button and tease that better idea for a threequel that will probably never come.  The first movie certainly won’t stand up to logistical-style reviewing, but it’s fun, well-paced, has good plot structure, likable characters with effective arcs, good comic relief, and arguably the most based line in action movie history. What more do you want from a popcorn movie?                      

"Put the Belt on Her, Then She'll Be Belt Woman"

Terminator 2: Judgment Day

1991

D: James Cameron

**********

Pros: Direction, Action, Score, Characters

Cons: Not as Tight as the First Movie, Some Tone Problems

 

 

       This is the 30^th anniversary of Terminator 2, a movie many people site as their favorite blockbuster and (wrongly) assert to be the quintessential example of an improved sequel.  In fact, this is a movie that many people will forgive for its alleged flaws.  In recent years, I’ve learned of the error of logistical nitpick film criticism, and yet even those reviewers always give this movie a pass.  I suppose that might betray a sort of hypocrisy.

        Now before I discuss this movie’s synopsis, I want to make a little speech concerning spoilers.  It really annoys me when people argue that there’s some kind of statute of limitations for them, that if enough time has passed, they can say whatever they want.  It’s an example of one's annoyingly trying to defend a lack of consideration as if they’re standing up for some principle of etiquette.  It’s like the people who complain about babies on airplanes; there must be a term for this.  I say, if someone is lucky enough to watch a classic movie blind, then don’t ruin it for them; that person is a rare, beautiful flower and I envy them.  That being said, the first act of the movie has a decidedly effective twist with well-executed misdirection.

         Taking place years after the events of the first movie, T2 focuses on protection of a young John Connor (Edward Furlong) when a second T-800 (Arnold Schwarzenegger) is sent back in time.  The twist is that this one has been reprogrammed by the resistance to protect him from the T-1000 (Jason Patrick), a more advanced Terminator made of liquid metal that can imitate any person it touches.  This model is even more impervious to gunfire and can form itself into any shape at its convenience.

        The movie does a great job of hiding this fact from the viewer until a great reveal in which both converge on John.  I wish I could have appreciated this, but the movie’s toy commercials made no effort to cover things up for my childhood self.  Robert Patrick is unassuming enough to work decoy protagonist while consistently coming off as the cold-blooded killer he is (he still shows a slight sardonic demeanor and kills at least twice out of annoyance).  He’s a more sophisticated model in contrast to the 800’s being a tank.  Arnold is enjoyable as always in the role while being allowed to show some personality after he is reprogrammed to adapt to learning experiences by the heroes.  One scene I have a problem with is Arnold’s introduction in the biker bar.  First, I find it odd that he doesn’t murder anyone in there despite having no reason not to.  Later in the movie John has to stop him from killing a random person, and has to tell him not to kill without reason (It makes sense for a Terminator to act within its nature while pursuing a different primary objective, but not so such programming it to obey your childhood self.).  This softer approach not only lessens the tone, but somewhat spoils the otherwise good misdirection.  The absurdly unserious use of George Thorogood’s “Bad to the Bone,” while synced well with the movements onscreen, doesn’t help, either.  Terminator's use of "Burnin' in the Third Degree" made sense while being more tense.

       This scene also solidified a meme that would plague all subsequent Terminator movies: the Terminator must wear leather and sunglasses.  It made sense in the setting, but it has a certain artificiality to it that underscores how the first movie is still the best in the series.  In that movie the T-800 began its mission in a bulky punk jacket.  Being seen and injured in public during the first shootout compelled it to cut its hair, hide its damaged eye with shades, and don a slimming leather jacket, all which was surprisingly effective as a disguise.  The plot is what drove the stylistic choice.  Little things like that make the first movie work better as a self-contained film of its own.  Another example of this is a decidedly cringe forced slang that feels like a unsuccessful attempt to start another meme.  John attempts to train the Terminator to talk more organically by sayings things like ”Hasta la vista, baby,” and the Terminator, of course, mimics it.  The phrase never really caught on outside its association with the movie.  It’s one of those examples in which the work was so popular it even made like a bad part of it.  Not exactly the naturally great line that was “I’ll be back.”    

      Still, Terminator 2 adds a lot with its seemingly gimmicky twist.  The Terminator develops as a character.  It’s a rare movie which gives us the scenario of a heroic version of a cool villain while making it work.   After the T-800 rescues John, he reluctantly assists the boy in rescuing Sarah Connor (Linda Hamilton) from a mental hospital before she is acquired by the T-1000.  Connor has also evolved from the normal young woman in the first movie to a tough, lean fighter.  Her attempts to raise John as a future savior of mankind have branded her a crazy woman, while turning John into a bitter delinquent until he finds out the truth.  Her initial distrust of the T-800 (who eventually learns the value of human life) lends to the movie’s drama, and her nightmares about the coming nuclear apocalypse in 1997 are truly frightening in execution.  Hamilton is great in the role, and I’d love to see grizzled, bad-ass grandma Hamilton in a movie that’s not an atrocious sequel. 

      Despite his delinquent-like demeanor, John turns out to be the conscience of the movie.  It makes him a stronger and more likable protagonist while sacrificing his believability as a child.  Perhaps I could go more in depth on this quandary if I ever get to DuckTales (2017)

      As for some of the apparent fridge logic, I have some defenses and some concessions.  While some would question why the Machines would not send a Terminator back earlier to take Sarah out before the events of The Terminator, the decision makes sense.   Said events were part of a deterministic timeline.  Skynet would obviously not prevent its own existence by going back further, any more than the AI in Roko's Basilisk would counterintuitively act against its own existence and punish people out of irrational spite, but I digress. 

      I think there’s an unwritten rule that makes movies like Terminator and Back to the Future Part II possible.  Instead of the assumed effect of the original timeline’s being erased the instant the first person goes back in time, there’s a period during which both timelines coexist until a significant act is made.  For example, if Person A goes back in time and it takes him five minutes after arriving in the past to kill Person B, then Person B has five minutes to go back in time and stop him before he’s erased from existence.  Of course, there are insignificant changes happening in the time line gradually from the moment person A infects it with his presence.  The past and future are combined while the former is constantly modifying the latter.   I don’t know if anyone else has codified this: The Timeline Permutation Rule.       

      Also, I suspect the T-1000 doesn’t break the in-universe rule of time-traveling because as an energized, fluid material, it’s not “dead” like a metal endoskeleton.  I still question its ability to mimic the complexity of a human body while not being able to form even simple mechanical moving parts.       

      This sequel takes a different direction than the heroes’ simply protecting John so the machine war can be won.  They decide to go directly to Cyberdyne Systems in order to destroy all its research and thus prevent Judgment Day (the nuclear war leading to the Machine War) from happening.

  

       Meanwhile, the T-1000 is seriously considering giving up and starting a family.

       John’s youthful optimism contrasts with Sarah’s cynicism in that he stops her from murdering Cyberdyne researcher Miles Dyson (Joe Morton) before his work unwittingly causes disaster.  After convincing him of the reality of the situation, they recruit him to destroy the company’s headquarters while minimizing casualties.  The epic final action scene summons the T-1000 and leads to a great chase scene followed by the T-800's poignant self-sacrifice.  With hope that Judgment Day has been averted, T2 justifies its existence as a sequel further by changing the stakes and giving us a more optimistic ending.  Unfortunately, T3, while being fun, ruined this with a more fatalistic retcon; at least Alien³ respected our subjectivity enough not to act fun right after tearing our hearts out.  One almost wishes that the vaguely cringe epilogue was included so as to prevent people from getting ideas.  I find the part about kids’ playing with toy guns as a microcosm for what’s wrong with humanity (not to mention a bit hypocritical) a bit pretentious, but other than that the movie checks out.

 

       T2 is also bolstered by phenomenal direction by James Cameron.  The action scenes are brilliant, and the film earns its R-Rating more than Terminator does.  It feels modern with its sleek atmosphere (I still prefer the grungy 80’s feel of the first movie, though), and Adam Greenberg deserves respect for the cinematography.  There are also memorably creative moments that add to the appeal.  One decision that slightly annoys me is Cameron’s baffling choice of replacing the awesome roar of a minigun with a more generic and slower machine gun sound effect.  Like that of the Gargoyle shades (?) in the first movie, the Harley-Davidson Fatboy gets a subtle product placement.  A Winchester 1887 is also used to cool effect.  The movie also foreshadows Cameron’s increasingly antiseptic dependence on digital picture and CGI.  His last hurrah as a writer would be Kathryn Bigelow’s Strange Days while his directorial swan song would be the well-executed bad idea that was Titanic.  The special effects were truly praiseworthy and revolutionary; the T-1000 does a great job showing detailed reflections while remaining within limits of the time.  Like Jurassic Park, however, the revolutionary CGI still pales in comparison to the great practical set pieces. Boomer directors like Spielberg and Cameron understandably thought there were gradually making practical effects obsolete, but they would soon start using it as a crutch.  Thank goodness for Christopher Nolan.

        Brad Fiedel enhances the already great score of the first movie with a more traditional sounding score with its own atmospheric cyberpunk touches.  The introductory scene, which features the dark future with improved special effects, allows the viewer to watch this movie without having to see the first one.  Sarah Connor’s narration adds depth and exposition without being too frequent or intrusive.  

        Other cast members include Earl Boen as Dr. Silberman, S. Epatha Merkerson as Mrs. Dyson, Castulo Guerra as Sarah’s arms dealer friend from her survivalist days, Danny Cooksey as John’s mulleted friend, Michael Edwards as adult John Connor, DeVaughn Nixon as Dyson’s son, and Michael Biehn as Kyle Reese.  John’s foster parents, Todd (Xander Berkeley) and Janelle (Jennette Goldstein), are an interesting case as they seem a bit abrasive while apparently trying their best to raise a clearly troubled youth, but TVTropes doesn’t hesitate to assume they’re abusive people without conclusive evidence.  Linda Hamilton’s identical twin sister Leslie Hamilton Gearrean (RIP) doubled for Hamilton as T-1000’s mimicking her as well as at least one effects trick.  Uziel Gal (inventor of the Uzi) trained Hamilton in weapons handling.

        Terminator 2 is one of the best sequels out there and a must see.  It’s a truly great film while still being qualified as a “popcorn movie.”  

And now something more light-hearted.