Independence Day (movie)

Independence Day is an American action movie about an attempted alien takeover of the earth. The movie features several scenes of major American landmarks being destroyed by the aliens, such as the U.S. Bank Tower in Los Angeles, California, the Empire State Building and the White House. The film's success was partially credited to an extensive marketing campaign which began with a dramatic commercial during Super Bowl XXX. This movie was scheduled for release on Wednesday, July 3, 1996, but due to high level of anticipation for the film, many theaters began showing it on the evening of July 2, the same day the action in the film begins.

Plot

Many years after an alien spaceship crashed and was recovered by Area 51 scientists (who made first contact with the aliens who shortly later died) in the 1960s, the US and other nations are in shock at massive flying saucer-shaped spaceships above many parts of the country and the world. Some have already theorized that the aliens are up to no good, but the Americans and others don't listen because they are divided, unprepared. The aliens eventually act on their mission, conquer half of Earth by destroying most of the major cities including New York City, Los Angeles, and Washington DC, and plan a ground invasion force to exterminate the rest of humanity. Several groups, including remnants of the US government, survive the attack and find information from an Alien POW that the aliens travel from planet to planet to cleanse natural resources and that humanity is the next target, and the counterattacks begin. It climaxes on July 4 where the aliens are thrown off guard by a sort of computer virus followed by nuclear weaponry and the human race strikes back, destroying their mothership and all of the alien destroyer fleet.

Criticism

Whilst a commercial success, it was ridiculed by some critics for the plot (which involved causing the aliens' high-tech computers to malfunction by infecting them with a simple virus written on an Apple Macintosh — cf War of the Worlds), and poor acting. Many people outside the United States (and some within) also derided the film for what was viewed as calculated pandering to excessive American nationalistic sentiment. Others, however, have noted that given that the film was released in the United States over the Fourth of July weekend, explicitly titled Independence Day, one could hardly expect otherwise.

Subsequently, some critics have pointed out that the film features acts of terrorism by humans against the would-be alien occupiers. That is to say, resistance by hastily-assembled non-military personnel using unorthodox techniques against better-armed outsiders intent on securing access to natural resources. Such acts of terrorism, such critics say, should not be shown in a positive light in the post-11 September 2001 environment.

Advocates of the film point out that alien virus protection could have evolved to such a high level that archaic viruses might have passed under their notice due to a need to allocate processor power to more advanced scanning. It may also be that our modern computers may have been developed based on technology recovered from the Area 51 craft, thus making the two systems accidentally compatible.

Facts and figures

• Released in 1996.
• 153 minutes long in Special Edition version. 145 minutes long in theatrical version
• Directed by: Roland Emmerich
• Written by: Dean Devlin and Roland Emmerich
• Original music by: David Arnold
• Produced by: 20th Century Fox Centropolis Film Productions
• Distributed by: 20th Century Fox.
• Awards: Academy Award for Visual Effects 1996.

Cast

• Jeff Goldblum – David Levinson
• Bill Pullman – President Thomas J. Whitmore
• Will Smith – Captain Steven 'Eagle' Hiller
• Vivica A. Fox – Jasmine Dubrow
• Judd Hirsch – Julius Levinson
• Mary McDonnell – First Lady Marilyn Whitmore
• Randy Quaid – Russell Casse
• Brent Spiner – Dr. Stanley Okun
• Robert Loggia – General William M. Grey

Depicted locations

• Air Force One
• Area 51
• El Toro Marine Corps Air Station
• Los Angeles, California
• New York City, New York
• Houston, Texas
• Washington, D.C.

External links

• Independence Day on sciflicks.com
• Internet Movie Database entry

Trivia

• In an alternate ending scene, Russell Casse (Randy Quaid) was originally denied service in the U.S.-led worldwide aerial counterattack force, so he flew on his unarmed biplane with a missile attached to it, knowing he was going to kill himself by destroying one of the alien space destroyers. The scene was dropped and later revised: in the new version of this scene, Casse joined the U.S.-led worldwide aerial counterattack force and flew an F-16 jet fighter plane instead of his biplane and later makes the decision to destroy the alien space destroyer on a suicide run.