What actually blew up the mother ship? Will Smith and Jeff Goldblum (sorry, I’m hopeless with character names) dropped the nuclear bomb and had to hurry out before the bomb detonated, no? But then Randy Quaid stuck his plane up the main gun of the mother ship, and the crowd acted like that blew the ship up.
I’m sure this is way too many brain cells to waste on such a popcorn flick, but I’m sure you guys know the answer.
PS> Please feel free to include your own which one worked type questions here, also.
I’m pretty sure that Randy Quaid just blew up that one ship. The President’s General guy said something like, “Now we know how to take them down … get the word out.”
Jazzy Jeff and the Fresh Prince did in the mothership with the nuke. There was even 1:00 a countdown on it — that lasted like five minutes.
Yep. The point of blowing up the mothership was that it disabled the shields around all the individual, earth-level ships. Which freed Randy Quaid to blow up the one individual ship. Then they knew how to take down the rest of the ships.
Actually, Melt (can I call you Melt), I don’t think that’s quite the case. The virus that Goldblum uploaded put the shields on the fritz. The nuke was always intended as the final takedown of the mothership.
Which would make the whole virus thing moot, no? Unless the shields operated independent of the mothership. But then, if that were the case, infecting the mothership would be useless. . …
Oh why did I go down this path of logic in this movie of brain-dead fun?
The virus spread through the network to all the ships, piggybacked through the commands the mother ship was sending to the other ships using Earth’s satellites. They dropped the nuke in the mother ship to kill it, and Randy killed the ship over the base by flying into its big laser thing.
David’s (Jeff Goldblum) virus disabled the shields on all the ships - the mothership, the city-cized saucers, and even the fighters. That’s how the Earthlings’ aircraft were able to both engage the saucers and dogfight dramatically with the defending fighters. They just didn’t have enough ordnance to effectively damage the saucers. Apparently, after the mishap over Houston, President Whitmore (Bill Pullman) wasn’t willing to “nuke the bastards” again - at least, not near any remaining population centers.
It’s a race against time at the end. Two races, actually: David and Captain Hiller (Will Smith) are on their way up into space in a captured fighter - the one that crashed at Roswell - masquerading as a malfunctioning unit in need of repair in order to deliver the super-nuke in the hope that it will destroy the alien mothership.
At the same time, the aliens have figured out that there is a military/population target at Area 51, and one of the saucers is headed that way to destroy it. President Whitmore’s air group tries to stall/stop them, but they just can’t hit it hard enough. Russel Casse (Randy Quaid) arrives just as the saucer is ready to blast the base at Area 51, and sacrifices himself to destroy the saucer by crashing his fighter into the saucer’s main gun just as it is about to fire, setting off a chain reaction that can (to paraphrase Robert Loggia’s General Grey) “bring those sons of bitches down”.
As the movie closes, you get to see shots of downed, burning saucers around the world as the US forces share the saucers’ weakness with the militaries of other countries.
I saw it for the first time in the theater when I was living in Houston, and of course, the whole audience cheered when President Whitmore authorized the Air Force to try nuking the saucer that was over Houston.
Interestingly, there was an alternative ending you might have missed if you didn’t have this on disk.
When President Whitmore is assembling pilots for the defense of Area 51, he turns down Russell’s request to join them, as Russell seems little more than an obnoxious, though certainly patriotic, drunkard.
When the dramatic moment arrives - the aliens are about to obliterate the base and the President’s wing has no more ordnance to expend - Casse arrives in his crop-duster with a weapon (bomb? missile? I can’t recall) strapped to it, saving the day with a desperate kamikaze attack - resulting in the same final scenes you see in the theatrical release.
In a movie full of goofy cliches, this probably would’ve been a bit too far-fetched. I’m glad they went with the ending they did.
I was conflating the two events in my head, I guess. Next technical question- how did the craft continue to fly? I thought it only became active when the mother ship came into range. Wouldn’t it have stopped flying when whatever tethered it to the mother ship was severed?
I don’t think control was severed - no, not at all. David is taking advantage of the fact that the mothership sends control telemetry to all the other ships.
Early on in the film, David notices that the disturbing signal that interferes with television transmissions being broadcast around the world (“they’re using our on satellites against us!”) is a countdown. The signal is synchronized so all the saucers can beging their attacks simultaneously.
When he infects the mothership with the virus that disables the shields, he expects the mothership to transmit this virus - the same way it transmitted the countdown signal - to all the saucers, and from there, to all the fighters, causing all of the shields to fall at the same time.
This is what President Whitmore and his strike force are waiting for. Their first volley of missiles impacts on a saucer’s shields, indicating that David’s virus either didn’t work, or they haven’t given him enough time to infect all the alien craft. When they make a second pass and his missile strikes the saucer approaching Area 51, they know it’s open season on all the alien vessels.