Its been about ten years since the last time I saw this movie and bearing in mind all the complaints and scorn that has been heaped upon it I thought perhaps I would feel different now that I’m older, wiser (?) and more cynical but nope, I enjoyed it all over again.
Sure, its a little silly in places (the reluctance to use nukes for example and not using nuclear weapons on the ships when their shields were down instead of air-to-air missiles which would be like expecting to sink an aircraft carrier with a hand-grenade) but its fun and tongue-in-cheek without being annoyingly knowing and referential like too many of todays big-budget films.
I’ve heard people complain that its America-centric and overly ‘ra-ra’ patriotic, well its an American film so of course America is going to be shown taking a leading role but its made pretty clear that the conflict is global and while the Americans ultimately save the day thats more through pulling off a lucky gamble than any sort of exceptionalism.
I don’t understand why the Secretary of Defence was treated so poorly, I think we were supposed to think he was weak and a coward, personally I just thought he was more realistic, if pessimistic, than the others.
I also thought Will Smith and Jeff Goldblum had good chemistry together and they should have worked together in more films.
If you treat it as a tongue-in-cheek action film (think a less-smart Dr. Strangelove) it’s awesome. A wacky genius can write a virus to infect an alien OS and upload it via his Macbook, also taking the time to create a Cancel option? Will Smith punching out an alien? Brent Spiner playing an awkward scientist nearly as pale as Data was? Randy Quaid playing a probed-all-over looney who finally gets to ram one up the aliens’ backdoor? All hilarious. (Bonus: Adam Baldwin as a clean-cut, square-jawed military man - you know, the one who shoots the alien when it gets out of confinement in the lab.)
Plus I love the special effects and sound. I had this on laserdisc back in the day, and the deep rumble from the motherships over the various major cities would make the glassware in a nearby cabinet quiver audibly.
I love it, but it is kind of a stupid movie. It’s fun for the emotional ride, but people mock it for the pseudoscience.
The Secretary of Defense was treated poorly because rather than informing the President about Area 51 and the previous alien captures, he kept silent until after the aliens had destroyed several cities around the world. He was one of those guys more concerned with political fallout than doing the right thing.
The biggest duhr moment for me is the speech. I love the speech, Bill Pullman hits all the right tones, but I still can’t reconcile “We celebrate our Independence Day!” with fighting off alien invaders. Independence Day is to celebrate freedom from an oppressive ruler, but the aliens had no intention of ruling or enslaving the humans. July 4 is also only meaningful to the US, when they made it clear that the aliens area worldwide threat. So the speech conflicts with that scene where they send the message out all over the world. Both are cool scenes, but don’t work well with each other, and it makes the whole Independence Day angle a little silly. It comes off as meaninglessly jingoistic, a cheap ploy to stir up pride in the audience (and presumably the pilots about to die). But hey, it’s a fun emotional ride, so whatever.
I think the moment I started hating it was when Will Smith’s girlfriend is the one person in that whole tunnel plucky enough to escape. It’s just bad plotting.
Also, chitinous body armor should be able to stop a skinny guy’s punch.
Well yeah, keeping Area 51 secret after the aliens show up was a douchebag move but I guess I have a soft spot for him because he was the only character itching to nuke them from the get-go.
When you put it like that you have a point but I thought it was just another way of saying that now humanity has a known external threat it was going to put its internal squabbles aside and work together in future (especially when we begin to back-engineer the alien technology, watch out universe, whoot!)
Thats someone who isn’t half as clever or witty as he thinks he is, most of his criticisms can be answered with a little thought (some requiring more of a stretch than others admittadly!)
Will Smith in that movie was skinny?!? :eek:
And that alien had sustained a very heavy impact and was probably already pretty shook up, having some joker come along and punch him (her? it?) in the face was probably just the last straw…
I love it. It is a very fun movie, and emotional at the right times. Randy Quaid’s death is one of the saddest in action movies, much better than the First Lady’s (did anyone care about her?)
Independence Day is the greatest movie of all FUCKING time. There I said it (but I’m thrilled that other people said it before me, usually I’m the lone nut in ID4 threads)!
Even most of the “plot holes” that people bitch about aren’t real holes if you stop and think about them for a second.
Who hates on Independence Day? Sure, it was a cheesy effects-driven mindless summer blockbuster, but did anyone ever expect otherwise? But it was a good cheesy effects-driven mindless summer blockbuster.
Fanwanking is fun, but it’s not a reliable answer. If the explanation for something isn’t in the movie itself, like why Earth technology could interface wirelessly with alien tech, then it’s a plot hole, no matter how much extra-script explanation a fan devises. Besides, that review’s more for humor anyway.
Don’t get me wrong, I love the movie. I watch it just to see Bill Pullman chew the scenery.
Actually it was “explained” in a scene that was deleted from the theatrical release. Jeff Goldblum’s character had been monitoring the alien transmissions (this was in the movie) and in the deleted scene, he explained that he had “cracked” the alien operating system and developed a program that would translate between his operating system and the alien one.
Although I dislike the President’s speech, and in general abhor Bill Pullman, I enjoy Independence Day. It’s really just a big Fifties B sci-fi movie, with all the faults and virtues of the genre.
But, hey, I also love The Core, so what do I know? :D:D
I’ve been a fan of science fiction since I was a kid, and I kind of like Independence Day, but I dislike it more because of what it fails to be. It could have been good; it could have been special, but instead they settled for nauseatingly patriotic, which does absolutely nothing for me.
