Today’s installment comes from a friend of mine. We’ll call him The Grand Vizier. And really, anyone who goes by The Grand Vizier deserves a post. A bit longer that what I normally post, but a good read. Enjoy!
Independence Day (1996)
Will Smith, Jeff Goldblum, Bill Pullman
Let me just say that for anyone who cheered or said, “That was AWESOME!” when we were leaving the theatre should be submitted to electro-shock therapy (you know who you are). There are two good things in this movie. One is sci-fi heroine Mary McDonnell. The other is the special effects. After that, positive words cannot be used to describe this movie.
I’ll leave the real reasons I hate this movie until the end of this review… let’s just go over the movie first, shall we?
We open with shots of the moon – the US flag and Armstrong’s footprints. Then, there’s a rumbling and the footprints fade. Now, what is transmitting the waves of disturbance? Really, space is a vacuum… there’s no way to translate that motion down to the surface of the moon.
Meanwhile, back on earth, SETI researchers, who like to play golf instead of look for extra-terrestrial life, are listening to REM’s “End of the World as we Know It.” Also, SETI scientists (they sleep in bunk beds) can tell if a signal is extra-terrestrial or not over the telephone. I’m not saying that it’s impossible, I’m just saying that I confuse one of my closest friends, her sister, and their mother when speaking to them over the phone, and I’m a classically trained musician (no viola jokes, peanut gallery!).
Some political/military scenes later, we find out that President Whitmore is not so much a politician-president as just a “Regular Joe”-president, kind of like Jimmy Carter. However, Jimmy Carter was very smart, whereas I have my doubts about the character played by Bill Pullman. I can believe Carter was brilliant and a nice guy. I can’t believe that of Pullman or Whitmore. I do believe his advisors would go with their first instinct, though… yes, that’s right: blow it out of the sky.
Jeff Goldblum is here, playing the same lightly stuttering character he excels at playing; this time a sciency-type geek named David Levinson. He’s a super-environmentalist this time, and rides his bike in his office. I wish I could ride my bike in my office. Nice Fruitopia product placement, too.
Next we meet the racially-mixed family living in a Winnebago, children of a drunken Quaid of some kind. This character is HIGHLY believable, though. I feel any Quaid is simply perfect in these alcoholic typecast roles.
Now that we’ve been introduced to most of the characters, the little spaceships that are larger than most US cities (including suburbs) detach from the big spaceship and start their nice special effects of clouds coming into the atmosphere.
“It’s broken into over a dozen smaller pieces, smaller than the whole, sir.” Well, thank God the laws of physics haven’t totally broken down yet.
But just wait.
Somehow Levinson figures out, in a matter of minutes, that there’s a signal that’s reducing every time it repeats. How he knows that a repetitive signal from a spacecraft is counting down and will be gone in seven hours is beyond me. But it’s awfully convenient, isn’t it?
The ships arrive, everyone stares, and then people wait. But Levinson KNOWS that the signal has to do with something, and almost immediately begins his hero role. He instinctively knows that it must be some attack. And he knows that the rest of the world has overlooked this signal. Sorry… he postulates that the rest of the world has overlooked this signal, because people at NASA, friends with the SETI people, were playing shuffleboard when the aliens showed up. Trillions of dollars worth of equipment on the ground and in space, and Levinson says they haven’t looked for it.
Now we move to Los Angeles.
Somehow Capt Hiller’s (played by Will Smith) household, or rather, the household of his whore, is the only one to remain oblivious to the menace. For something to disrupt the surface of the moon in a vacuum, they have blissfully slept through the loud booms that a large hot craft would make upon entering the atmosphere over LA. Also – and this is REALLY irritating – they don’t see it when it’s RIGHT IN FRONT OF THEIR FACES until the script tells them to. Staring straight ahead, Hiller sees it and stares, after missing it while walking out to pick up the paper. The whore comes running up from behind to offer him some coffee and doesn’t see the GIGANTIC spaceship until she realizes Hiller is unresponsive. No joke, she doesn’t see the leviathan even though her exit from her house up to Hiller and beyond to the spacecraft is one straight line.
Mary McDonnell, the First Lady, bless her, has to tell the president to “stick to the truth, that’s what you’re good at” while she’s on the phone with him. So he is Jimmy Carter, just not smart. It’s Bill Pullman, don’t argue with the truth.
So Levinson and his dad make it to DC in record time (remarkable considering all Levinson does is tell his father how slow he’s driving), where Levinson proceeds to call his former wife, the president’s press secretary. He just triangulates her location in the White House with stuff he happened to bring along for the road trip.
Anyway, he’s the only one that’s found out what’s going on, and he’s going to tell the president. Very convenient that the former MIT student who’s nerdy and unsure of himself got married to, then divorced, a beautiful Washington insider… I hope this is how it works out should aliens ever really attack. You know, provided NASA didn’t notice the aliens beforehand while they scan the skies with the network of satellites they have.
When there’s 28 minutes left, everyone decides to flee from the White House. It’s taken 19 of those minutes to get to the helicopter, which means they have to get to Air Force One (which must be at Reagan National as opposed to an actual Air Force base) and take off in 9 minutes. While it’s a very short flight, I’m not sure 9 minutes is enough time.
The first lady boards her own helicopter to leave, while the stripper and her son are sitting in traffic in a tunnel in LA.
On board Air Force One and the alien death rays start firing. However, there’s still time to fire everything up and get off the ground. Naturally, they just barely make it – though actual flames around the tin can full of jet fuel fail to make it explode. Lucky.
The stripper and her son, dodging the rest of LA in the tunnel as the death ray fires, are the only ones to see a maintenance closet and dive in. The dog makes it just in time, and the exploding gaseous plasma fails to fill up the space of the closet. They didn’t even close the door! Yet, the fur covered dog and the human counterparts are unscathed.
Overnight, the multi-ethnic family sees everyone in the US that owns an RV has shown up in their desert.
The President states himself that he was once a fighter pilot (it was mentioned earlier when we first met him in the White House). This will be very convenient later, and this divergence in character (let alone from logic) is really where this president veers away from the honest Jimmy model. He was a fighter pilot. AND I consider him to be one of the worst movie presidents, and certainly one of the worst movie fathers, of all time. I’m sure it’s just the writing, but Pullman’s acting is pretty terrible.
A squadron, featuring Hiller, heads up in their jets to launch missiles at the spaceship over LA. The missiles fail to penetrate the shields – the impacts cause the shield to glow green. At this point, Hiller says, “They must have some kind of protective shield.” Well, that, or it’s the Care Bear Stare gone horribly wrong.
Hiller is a star pilot (Smith’s the star, so it figures) and is arrogant even while retreating. Two little spaceships follow Hiller and Harry Connick, Jr (btw, Harry, braces buddy. You make enough money to get your teeth fixed) as they take off and are immediately over the desert. It’s mid-day there, though, and was early morning for the attack, so maybe I’m wrong and they managed to elude the spaceships for at least an hour. But I think more, as Hiller seems to be flying through the Grand Canyon at supersonic speeds. He ejects as he runs out of fuel (of course) and the pursuing spacecraft crashes. After landing, he walks right up to the crashed space ship and, being an arrogant ass, opens the cockpit and punches out the alien that is presumably wearing a spacesuit of some kind.
Let’s pause for a moment and think about the previous couple of scenes. Hiller, in his jet aircraft, is able to fly at near supersonic speeds long enough to get from LA to the Grand Canyon, avoiding death at every opportunity at the hands (well, lasers) of the alien pursuing him. He then continues to fly that fast, while diving into the Canyon itself. As his jet fuel is depleting rapidly, he flies directly at a wall, ejecting at the last possible moment. I’m assuming he’s still traveling at a Mach number, and somehow isn’t injured or killed with this little maneuver. The alien spacecraft, which has been following close enough to avoid all the same obstacles, doesn’t apparently see the wall and pulls up too late?
Okay, let’s say the alien’s attention was elsewhere, and it does crash into the edge of the canyon wall before tumbling a bit and coming to a halt. Why didn’t the shield protect it from that impact? There was no green glow and that spaceship was a mangled heap.
Anyway, at that point, provided Hiller survived/wasn’t even injured, he then WALKS RIGHT UP to the alien craft. He finds the door handle (well, he does… I don’t know how) and opens the cockpit to find the alien. With one punch to the face, he manages to knock out the creature that is inside a spacesuit of some kind. No offense, I’m sure Hiller is a strong guy, but come on. He then drags the alien off in his parachute.
Back in LA, the stripper finds a fire truck that a) didn’t explode (well, it is a diesel, which is much safer than petrol) and b) has the keys and cranks right up. With some other survivors she starts driving through the bleak wasteland of LA – the aliens didn’t do much to Los Angeles, did they? The ship that covered the city seems to be gone, but a downed helicopter is on their drive out of the city. Oh look, it’s the First Lady.
Back on Air Force One, Levinson’s dad and ex-wife are having a heart-to-heart while the military men are trying to talk the president into using nuclear weapons. Levinson tries to be reasonable while being his environmental self, people shout, and Levinson’s dad tells everyone off and brings up Area 51 and Roswell, NM. The president had no idea, but it turns out it’s all true and they decide to fly there.
This movie sure jumps around a lot. It’s designed for people with so-called ADD. We’re now back in the desert near the Grand Canyon that’s also near a big salt flat, where Hiller meets the caravan of RVs featuring the ethnic family. See how they tie everything together, rather conveniently?
Brent Spiner of Star Trek fame is present in an irritating crazy scientist role at Area 51. He has long hair and really hams it up. At least he seems to realize this isn’t a serious movie, and just rides it for fun. The president clearly doesn’t like scientists, but even this one is a little wacko, even for a movie scientist. They look at some remains of aliens and the president seems to be the big know-it-all by calling them organic. Good job, W… by which I mean President Whitmore, of course.
The RV convoy shows up at the base… why? They just do. It’s convenient like that. And what’s better is they let them onto the base. All of them… not just Hiller and the alien, but the entire damn convoy are allowed onto the base.
The stripper and her refugees get to Hiller’s original base, which is, of course, wiped out. The First Lady is being nursed by the stripper and during a little heart-to-heart the FL asks what the stripper does. She replies she’s “a dancer.” Now, I can forgive a lot, but there’s no way that the First Lady – any first lady – is going to say “the ballet” in response to that. They’re just not. They most likely wouldn’t say anything at all, and be polite. The writers for this scene were just plain stupid… fortunately, Mary almost pulls it off.
Back at the base, Brent and Co. are taking the alien out of its suit, and it emits a high frequency noise that drives Brent, and no one else, crazy. It goes on a quick killing spree as the president and his crew show up to see what’s going on. Things aren’t looking so good as a dead or nearly dead Brent is thrown up to the window with tentacles around his neck. Then, stupidly, the president decides to talk to the creature, asking if “there can be a peace between us.” A bit late for that, Mr. President, but good try. Telepathically, the alien then attacks the president (and NO ONE ELSE), while also revealing the entire plan. “They’re like locusts,” only with spaceships and the associated technology. The president then orders the use of nuclear weapons.
Upstairs, Levinson and the press secretary are talking. They’re sort of mending things, but not really. We need some more sexual tension. And outside, Hiller decides to just take a helicopter and go try to find his stripper girlfriend.
Why is it that we need to deliver our nuclear weapons via an airplane? Were our VAST supplies of ICBMs unavailable that day? Last count, even dismantling them under START-II, the US alone possesses several thousand. Naturally, the attack doesn’t work, and everybody’s pissy about it.
Shortly after takeoff, Hiller gets to his old base and finds the stripper and her group, and takes them back to the base. When the president goes down to see his dying wife, the doctor says that she’s bleeding internally… the pres interrupts, “Wait, what are you saying?” Uh, he just said it. She’s bleeding internally.
There actually are a few touching moments here, mainly due to the little girl. Other than that, these scenes will just serve to reinforce that Pres Whitmore is a bad father (as we’ll soon see).
A drunk – no, now he’s sober – Levinson comes up with a plan after a pep talk from daddy. He realizes what the rest of them don’t know… you know, the best and the brightest are once again outdone by the random guy from NYC. I’m not saying people in NYC are stupid, mind you. Many of them are quite smart. They meet on Wednesdays at a little out-of-the-way place no one has heard of and plot their escape.
Anyway, Levinson (can he really be sober that fast?) realizes the crap on board the tiny ship the US has had for the past fifty years works, so the shields must work, too. So all they have to do is create a computer virus and upload it onto the spaceship. However, they have to load it onto the main computer in the main ship that’s still out in space. They’ll just climb aboard the little runt ship and take off for the big one, easy-peasy. Oh, and Hiller is qualified to fly it after having been chased by one, one time, and crashing his own plane during that chase. Ladies and gentlemen, our heroes.
And now, the British in the Iraqi desert are getting a Morse Code signal from the US. And the response? “About bloody time” that the US came up with a plan. Come on – no one believes that even the British (our most favourite allies) are going to be waiting around for us to come up with a plan. Honestly. If anything, they’re waiting around for the Israelis to come up with a plan, because they know how not to botch up a massive military operation.
The Air Force officers go outside to recruit more pilots – from the RV people. Quaid is now part of that group, and still drunk. But he volunteers AND they accept him without question. And he’s able to fly the new plane even though he’s not flown anything but cropdusters since Vietnam. And even better? Everyone giggles when he says he was kidnapped by aliens, as though he’s a lunatic. Um, they blew up most of your cities, maybe it’s plausible. Stop chuckling! I hate inconsistencies in movies.
So everyone is all excited about their plans and what they’re going to do. The stripper and Hiller get married, Levinson and the press sec get back together, the virus is all ready to go, and people are going to their planes to go up and fight.
And then Pres Whitmore gives a REALLY LAME SPEECH, somewhat aping a Dylan Thomas poem and being a general putz. Then he gets ready to get on his own plane, abandoning his posts as president AND father. He has a daughter whose mother has just died, and he thinks it’s okay to get into a plane and take off. BAD father. Bad. I don’t care how badly you need pilots, this is just a terrible plot development. PS, there are still LOTS of people on the base, probably qualified to fly or could do a decent job compared to Drunky McShitfaced (Quaid), and they stay on the ground so the President (!) can abandon his post (he is supposed to coordinate everything, after all, for the entire nation) and abandon his daughter.
Hiller and Levinson get in the spaceship that the US has had for fifty years and get ready to go up into space and load the virus into the mother ship. They’re having fun apparently, despite the fact that they’re mission is to save the planet. They have a nuclear weapon on board to take out the mother ship once they load the virus disabling the shields…
Once on board, they start loading the virus after four seconds of “negotiating with host.” And the computer, on the vessel created by aliens capable of interstellar travel, just accepts the virus and it’s done. Simple as that. Imagine if these aliens showed up today with an unsecured wireless network? They’d be doomed, and probably due to some VP of some company who still can’t figure out his Blackberry.
Back in the atmosphere the President, LEADING the attack in his plane, shoots a couple of missiles, the second one hitting its mark. But his daughter is safe with the stripper and her son, in case you were wondering about her welfare. Someone has to worry about her welfare, right?
Everyone’s out of missiles except for Quaid, of course. Presumably he’s not too drunk at this point – let’s hope not, anyway, since he does have MISSILES and is in control of a USAF jet. He really is terrible, overacting all the way. Anyone out there a pilot? Can you tell me if you make all these insipid comments when you’re flying in combat? And if you do, can you please stop, for the Love of God? In my head, pilots are highly trained professionals, not comic relief.
Quaid becomes lucent and there’s a brief touching moment when his missile won’t fly off the plane and into the target (also, why did the President fire from such a bad angle so as to miss? IITS, I guess) and he tells the controllers on the ground to tell his children that he loves them very much (which was why he was such a good father, based on how the children react to his presence in general. Although, he is all they’ve got, I guess). The eldest son, in the control room, doesn’t seem terribly broken up (at all) about the fact that his dad’s on a suicide mission. Quaid takes out the ship’s main weapon as it starts to fire by flying INTO the beam. One quick question: why didn’t this destroy him like it did with cities and towns over which these ships flew before? He flies RIGHT INTO IT. The ship blows up and starts to crash to earth.
Meanwhile, up on the main spaceship, Hiller and Levinson decide to light up their cigars and set off their nuke with them still aboard, since they’re trapped in the docking bay. However, it fires into the control room holding their ship in place, and they’re free to go. And suddenly, Goldblum is not David Levinson, but Dr Ian Malcolm from Jurassic Park telling Hiller that he “must go faster.” Ugh.
Now, without shields, and presumably no power supply in about two seconds, they head back down to the planet’s surface. The shockwave alone should have destroyed them (no shields) before they reached the atmosphere, but should it not, the atmosphere’s friction certainly would have gotten them. But do they die? No, because it’s in the script (and they’re our heroes).
For being such a scientist geek, Levinson sure has a swagger. Hiller and Levinson embrace their wives, greet the president, and everything is back to normal. Aside from lots of clean-up, that is.
“Happy Fourth of July, daddy,” the president’s daughter says. Ugh.
Now, aside from just being poorly written, what really gets me is the fact that they ignored EVERYTHING their science advisor said during production. Physics haven’t totally broken down throughout the movie, but there is NO AIR IN SPACE and therefore a passing ship is NOT going to disturb the footprints on the moon.
Furthermore, the “welcome wagon” uses lights and looks like Close Encounters, only pathetically. I think if a fly or ladybug flew in front of my face with a bunch of lights, I would swat it down, and if it died, too bad. Furthermore, I hope that it’s last words as I raise my hand (or open the weapons bay doors like in the movie) are not “this may be some sort of response.” Famous last words these are not.
Another thing that really bothers me is that the aliens know exactly where to go. I understand that our major population centers are obvious targets, but how, on earth, do the aliens know where to go after that. How did they know to go to NORAD (Colorado Springs is NOT a major population center)? How did they know where to go in the middle of the damn desert to attempt to destroy what was left of the US Armed Forces.
Now, Macs are wonderful. And they do automatically communicate with everything they come into contact with, more or less. However, not even a Mac is going to be able to communicate with the alien computer. Maybe by luck they also use a binary system of 1s and 0s, but most likely, it’s a lot different. And part of writing a virus is understanding the code you’re attacking. I just don’t believe it. Not one bit.
Also, is there a beacon or signal on the little spaceship? Did the aliens not think “hey, this is M1327BFH (or whatever)… didn’t that disappear awhile back? What’s it doing here?”
Lame dialog is another reason I dislike this movie. Aping a Dylan Thomas poem, stating something living is organic, or questioning what the doctor is saying, or assuming someone is a ballerina, or saying, “Hello boys, I’m baaaaaaaaack” as you fly INTO the main beam of the death ray… it’s all just too much. Beyond that we’re stuck with quotes from other movies that were all better. Quaid saying that he “picked a helluva day to quit drinking” isn’t funny. It was in Airplane. Here, it’s just plain dumb.
Finally, the President, Thomas Whitmore… he’s an absolutely terrible character. He’s president, but is apparently honest (right) and forthright. He appears to be an absolute moron (which I can believe), and is a terrible father. Honestly, who in the hell is going to a) be president and think they’re more valuable in the air than on the ground effectively leading the nation and b) leave their child, whose mother has just died, to try to be a hero?
And finally, the fact that people call this movie “ID4.” What were the other ID movies? The movie is called Independence Day, NOT Independence Day 4: The Return of the Jefferson. Calling it ID4 is just insipid. Yes, I get that the Fourth of July is Independence Day for the US, but don’t call the movie ID4, for the Love of God!
I can see why people do like this movie, don’t get me wrong. Lots of explosions, great special effects… but beyond that it’s not very well written and the acting is pretty poor.
A feature I really like of Andrew Borntreger’s Badmovies.org (www.badmovies.org — please check it out, it’s awesome):
Things I learned:
Infrared is, in fact, red.
Interestingly, “Soviet Central News” is still on five years after the Soviet Union collapsed. And they broadcast in English.
AWAC airplane radios can communicate directly to regular phones.
The President makes the call for using the Emergency Broadcast System.
Modern office buildings have bomb shelters.
Aliens instinctively will know to go to NORAD and how to get there.
People in LA don’t care about anything less than a 4.0 earthquake.
Aliens will target the White House, not the Capitol or Washington Monument, despite the greater prominence of both of those buildings in the DC skyline.
Traffic in NYC moves fast enough for multi-car pile-ups.
Chess references are very dramatic.
During panic no one pays any attention to traffic lights or one-way traffic signs.
Exotic dancers (who work during the day) own nice houses up on top of hills outside of LA.
Top stories on local desert news include interviews about a public drunkard.
Harry Connick, Jr., is one of the best actors in the movie. Yep, it’s true.
Promises between strippers mean nothing.
The President’s press secretary has a publicly-listed phone.
Closets in a concrete tunnel blocked by a steel door is sufficient protection from an alien death ray, even when said door is not closed.
No one has to wear seat belts on Air Force One.
Air Force bases welcome RVs.
Air Force bases are only in deserts.
When you’re a pilot, you can fly anything: planes, helicopters, alien spacecraft. Simple as that.
A scientist can sober up instantly.
Alien computers are susceptible to viruses created on a laptop.
