I loved Independence Day. Loved it the first time I saw it in the theater, and loved it all the times I happen upon it on TV and stop to watch.
Of course it’s a dumb movie. That’s part of the fun. And I have no particular problem with patriotic movies, especially big over the top ones. I loved Air Force One, too.
It’s a determinedly silly movie (albeit one that takes itself a fraction more seriously than deserved, unlike its goofier twin Mars Attacks!) but independence Day never struck me as a bad movie. It’s a worthwhile accompaniment to two hours of popcorn-munching.
Every time I see that ridiculous punch I keep thinking to myself…“God that must hurt…good luck flying any more planes with a broken hand”
Oh…Bill Pullman’s speech was pretty fucking bad.
As outlandish as the film-as-a-whole is, that was probably the one scene that really took me out the movie. I mean it’s a huge fucking fireball, and unlike most everyone else in the tunnel, the dog somehow managed to outrun it and jumped to safety literally as the thing was nipping on his heels.
I don’t believe Independence Day is a movie, per se.
I think it is the result of a film-school assignment to construct a feature-film-length collection of shout-outs to other films which nevertheless hangs together as a cohesive story. It’s basically an homage collage.
It was a movie that needed to be made from the standpoint of the special effects spectacle. I was so excited to see a full-scale alien invasion realized. The trailer that ended with the White House exploding *literally *made my friends and me jump out of our seats. It’s not a classic or a great film, but it was pretty cool then.
Ain’t no way Bill Pullman would get elected to anything higher than alderman. He’s a charmer, but he will never have that don’t-mess-with-me gravitas that any high-level politician would have.
Easy…Randy Quaid’s character. I don’t give a crap about plot holes or any of that stuff, we’re dealing with an alien invasion, let’s just go with we can do whatever needed by the plot ok? But Randy Quaid easily ruins this entire movie.
Followed by Mr. Mumbles Jeff Goldblum.
One of my favorites from Independence Day:
Soldier: “I’m sorry, sir, it’s a clean room, static-free environment, if you will just…”
President, firmly: “Open. The door.”
Soldier: “Yes sir.” (fumbles hurriedly with keys)
Translate between operating systems? Yeah, right. Lord protect me from screenwriters who know nothing about computers besides a scriptwriting program and a way to get to porn.
The comsat thing is stupid also. If you are in orbit already, or can get there very easily, why not use your own? A lot simpler than figuring out how to use ours.
Don’t get me wrong, it blew up stuff real good, and it had an upbeat if unbelievable ending, but it is as stupid as hell.
You’re not supposed to question the technical things.
Some people don’t know the proper way to watch Independence Day
This was a large part of it, not just because it seemed ridiculous but because it was one of the earliest examples of such blatant product placement. There was even tie-in macbook commercials about saving the world. What made it even lamer was that blowing up the mothership with a nuke would have been a perfectly good solution by itself without all the fancy computer crap.
Didn’t the ships have some sort of shields that needed to be disabled before nukes would work on them? I thought that’s what the virus was for, to take down the shields.
Right, but they blew up the mothership from the inside. They could just as easily have said “we need to blow up the mothership to disable their shields”.
I took it that way too - “OUR Independence Day” implies that assuming the plan works, July 4 isn’t going to be an American holiday anymore. The Revolutionary War will have been nothing compared to the alien invasion, and it will be a holiday for the whole world. Perhaps he imagines it will still be called “Independence Day” as an homage to the earlier, now-superseded USA-only holiday. Kind of like Mardi Gras - still relevant in the Catholic faith (kinda) but it has a whole new connotation in the drinking party culture.
Granted it was a pretty overwrought speech, but Pullman’s character wasn’t presented as a particularly scholarly man, was he? I seem to remember Goldblum’s character getting in a dig or two at his expense when talking to the speechwriter ex-wife. I thought he was kind of a happy-go-lucky flyboy who sailed into office on charm rather than substance, and that speech fits pretty well with that characterization. Haven’t seen it in a few years though, so I may be wrong.
As for the supposed jingoism, I think that it would have worked just as well with another country had it been made elsewhere - think South Korea perhaps - just an example of another country who’s military complex I’ve seen portrayed on film. Sure the cliches would have been different, but what kind of peptalk is the president supposed to give at a moment like that? “Our country has many grave pre-alien problems, we’ll do our best but considering the clusterfuck we got involved in in Viet Nam we can’t expect to do very well. Here goes!” ?? I would totally watch a sequel focusing on what was happening in other places, but having communications channels broken down was a key plot element which pretty much killed the possibility of international cooperation to kick alien ass.
Well, except that would’ve ruined the climatic finale of the guys escaping the mothership before it blows up.
Huh, how so? the only change necessary was dumping the “we need to hack the computer to drop their shields”.
Movies like this are like Commando.
They are terrible in many ways, but have a place in our heart. I mean, Commando is ridiculously bad in so many ways, but at the same time, it’s just pure awesome.
Independence way isn’t as cool as that, but it is so cheesy that it crosses back over into being a good movie.
Roland Emerich’s only decent movie(that I’ve seen).
Because the progression went:
Hack the computer.
Get stuck in the mothership and hang out for a while.
The air force attacks the ships and win.
The dudes fire off the missile, get released, and fly out the ship.
Mothership blows up.
The mothership blowing up is the big last scene. It’s the Death Star run. Without the hacking, they would’ve had to do that whole thing first before the attack back home.
My dislike for Independence Day is mostly due to expectations. It’s a completely stupid action movie with idiots for characters, mind boggling pretend “science”, hackneyed plotting, and more movie cliches than you can shake a stick at. But I was actually expecting a … well, a good movie. It wasn’t, in any way shape or form, a good movie.
Had I gone in expecting the craptastic action flick it was, I wouldn’t dislike it as much as I do. But the buildup and the hype going into it, combined with my reluctance to read the actual reviews for fear of spoilers, helped make me livid after seeing it.