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 25th 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?
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