That big shoot 'em up movie from 1996, seems to have been viciously panned by critics, and viewed as an example of commercial success without taste.
I liked the movie myself.
Why the hate? Was it really bad?
I enjoy the movie. I watch it once about every third time it comes on TV. I’ve seen hit approximately a million times before, so I don’t mind missing it now and then.
It’s a lot more enjoyable than some of the shit that’s shown on TV, that’s for damn sure.
Actually liking the movie is probably one hurdle I need to get over before I can be let into The Real Doper Club. sigh
Yes, it was really bad. The plot was abysmal, the “acting” non-existent, and don’t get me started on the abuse of science in general and physics in specific.
It has many many plot holes and incongruities…if you insist on that kind of thing.
As an emotional ride, I love it to death.
I enjoyed it. All the usual complaints about it can also be applied to many great movies. It comes down to what you are willing to forgive to get the stuff you love…TRM
It has everything that my wife likes in a movie, except gratuitous male nudity. She’s watched it three times in the past month.
At rottentomatoes.com, the movie has a rating of 65%, even from what RT calls the “top critics.”
I think if they had replaced the mac product placement with simply blowing up the mothership with a nuke to drop the shields popular opinion would be much much better. The whole “hacking into an alien ships computer system” is what gets mentioned the most when people complain about the movie. Besides that i think its a perfect action movie.
It’s incredibly dumb and makes no sense, but I watch it whenever it’s on TV.
It also has a 62% fresh rating on Rotten Tomatoes, so it seems most critics actually liked it.
I liked it, but I came to understand the objections.
Yeah, it relies on a silly deus ex machina. Yeah, it’s otherwise cornball. But I think it was well played.
Recognize that Independence Day is an etude in filmmaking: the assignment was to construct a film using absolutely nothing but homages to other films of the same genre.
From that standpoint, it becomes a masterpiece.
It’s terminally mediocre – lots of action but a ridiculous story and characters. Critics have seen it all before, and better. If you want mindless entertainment, it works OK, but there’s not a lot to it.
The Day After Tomorrow, by the way, was even stupider, but it also worked better.
Absolutely. It is the perfect movie. I enjoy it everytime I watch it.
Add me to the chorus of those who understand the complaints, but liked it anyway. The scene with the space fighter chasing Will Smith’s F-16 through the canyon is one of the best action sequences I’ve seen.
Besides, I think the whole complaint about connecting a laptop to an alien mothership to be overstated. Remember, Jeff Goldblum is smarter than you, so of course he could figure out how to do that. Besides, for dramatic purposes I’m sure they intentionally chose not to bore us with the technicalities of getting that done - for example, I’m sure they didn’t plug in to the alien network with a regular Ethernet cable; they certainly would have needed to buy an adapter.
D
Most of the reasons the movie is widely disliked have already been mentioned (bad acting, enormous plotholes, the whole “America-saves-The-World” theme, etc), but one of the reasons I disliked it was that it was an obvious and transparent rip-off/remake of The War Of The Worlds, right down to the “Virus” finally taking out the [del]Martians[/del] Aliens, but without so much as a “Vaguely based on, and/or loosely interpreted from, a story by H.G. Wells” acknowledgement.
I’d take I, Robot or Men In Black over Independence Day anytime. Which isn’t to say I hate it. Not at all. How could you hate a movie with Will Smith and a bunch of big yicky aliens?
If they had needed an adapter, they wouldn’t have been able to get the job done in time. They would have been stuck at Radio Shack reciting their addresses to the dork behind the counter.
In addition, remember that Independence Day is one of the best artifacts of the 90s -- future generations that want to understand the 90s will do well to watch this film.
Well, it might just be the best Roland Emmerich film, which is saying very little.
Of course, my heart still feels Stargate is his best movie, but I often admit that it tells the simplest plot in the most complicated way…ever.
I don’t know if this is historically true, but I’ve always had the impression that Independence Day pioneered the strategy of making so much money on the opening weekend that you’re in the black before people realize the movie is terrible. So, fairly or not, I tend to hold that against it.
That’s funny enough to almost make me forgive that ridiculous part of the movie.
What’s with all the claims of bad acting? Okay, yeah, the scene with Bill Pullman talking to his wife on the phone and inserting a Dramatic Pause before every response was over the top, but other than that I quite liked the acting.