Independence Day/WMG: Difference between revisions
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The situation we leave our heroes in as the movie fades to black is even more doomtastic than the [[No Endor Holocaust|Endor Holocaust]]. A spacecraft "one fourth the size of the Moon" has just blown itself to smithereens; at the altitude we saw it hovering when Goldblum and Smith went to meet it, the debris is pretty much all coming down on us. Even if it was mostly hollow, there will be enough wreckage to bury the surface of Earth several kilometers deep after first incinerating it from the heat of all that junk reentering. Rocks fall, everyone dies.
* Everyone on the surface dies. Those fortunate enough to reside in the vault-like extraterrestrial technology enhanced Area51 will survive. Their descendants emerge centuries later to form a post-apocalyptic technocracy.
* Nope. Almost all the pieces miss the Earth, and those which do hit do only limited damage. Because THAT'S THE WAY [[Haruhi Suzumiya]] IMAGINED IT WOULD HAPPEN. (This is an AU Suzumiya, who is very into SF but doesn't assume aliens are going to be friendly...)
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Simple—they were almost entirely filled with lighter-than-air hydrogen bladders.
* Newton's third law: the ships were supporting themselves with some sort of technobabble graviton beam system that interacted with the earth itself, spreading out the forces through the rock underneath, rather than propelling material downwards. (Which still relies on technobabble and impossible as far as we know technology, but a lot of the physics issues people spot in the movie may work like this.)
* Tiny little anti-aircraft missiles? That one tribe was able to take one down with spears!
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== The ships are huge cause the aliens never invented the transistor ==
The ships are full of giant ''vacuum tubes''.
== The Aliens were taken down by the virus because the tech guy had Vulcan help ==
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== The film takes place during the distant past of the Tengen Toppa Gurren Lagann universe ==
The reason the aliens strategy involves sucking a planet dry and moving on? They're either running away from the Anti-Spirals, or working to keep the level of Spiral energy in the universe to a minimum so they don't have to worry about their own Spiral energy levels. Their technology would later be used to make the Gunmen.
== President Whitman is a Republican. ==
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== The Aliens' ships are actually unmanned suicide weapons ==
* The alien's strategy is this: make a fleet of [[Cool Starship|cool starships]] which are incredibly big and dense. Then, make the ships' engines or cores [[Made of Explodium|explode as soon as it is hit with an anti-aircraft missile]]. Spend decades [[Aliens Steal Cable|stealing cable]] to make the computer interface compatible with their computers and use as little memory as possible. Add a laser and invincibility to make the ship fearsome. Maybe some fighters or some cyborgs to convince the targets that these are real aliens. Then, send the ships to the target planet, let them get blown up and fall to the ground, the targets thinking they had won. 50 years later, the real ships should arrive. The nuclear winter caused by untold billions of tons of burnt ship floating in the atmosphere should have left a completely barren planet, free of trigger happy sapient creatures and [[The War of the Worlds (novel)||pesky biological deterrents]]. The aliens in the real ships clean up the debris, xenoform the planet and colonize it. This explains why a computer completely obsolete even by today's standards 'beat' the aliens, while making the extraterrestrials infinitely more powerful.
** Punch: "Welcome to Earth." Yeah, the fighters totally were uncrewed, and if they had pilots...Also the alien who sees the laughing skull when the virus is uploaded.
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== Humans must always fight ==
* While the movie seems to be making the point that it is possible for humans of all countries to unite, what it is actually saying is far more depressing: Humans always need an enemy, and the only time they will stop fighting each other is when aliens come and they can have someone else to fight with.
** So humans are [[Warhammer
== Post war Earth is under the rule of a single world state, the Aliens living in District Nine Ghettos. ==
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== Postwar Earth, most of humanity is still alive ==
The aliens managed to destroy the first set of cities and most of their population because of the small window of time people had to escape. However, they apparently don't get to the next set of cities (which include Chicago and Houston in the Director's Cut) till the next day, giving citizens in most major cities time to escape.
In the United States in particular, New York, D.C., LA, Houston, and Chicago are confirmed to be destroyed, but as far as we know Phoenix, either San Francisco or San Diego (depending on which California city the aliens chose to target first after LA), Dallas, and Miami are all probably still intact.
Within the USA, Florida might be the best place to live if Miami, Ft. Lauderdale, Orlando, and Tampa are still intact.
It's possible also that Canada is doing relatively well. We don't know if the aliens targeted Toronto, but even if Toronto is gone, most of the rest of Canada could still be intact.
* And it wasn't like [[Genre Savvy]] people weren't making a beeline out of their cities in the HOURS they had to do so. If Jeff Goldblum's character and his Dad were able to get out of New York and drive to Washington, millions must have gotten out of New York alone.
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** The DC ship razed Atlanta but somehow chose to head towards Houston while somehow ignoring Jacksonville and New Orleans.
** The NYC ship hit Philadelphia then Chicago. Why Chicago instead of the much closer Boston and Toronto? No idea.
*** You may want to consider what tactical value those cities have and their population density. This is bordering on [[Did Not Do the Research|not showing work]], but I thought inland Chicago was more densely populated than the coastal Boston at the time of filming, and you may want to consider any major military installments in the area (remember the SAC-NORAD HQ that was shot up by their fighters and the AFB where the Los Angeles F-18 group came from?). Plus, I guess the aliens were going to hit most capital cities and the most densely populated, then work their way down.
* The European ships:
** One ship hit Paris then is mentioned as having hit Brussels next. In the novelization, the Dutch destroy a ship in the final battle, so it might be the same one.
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== The military is okay with the President fighting in the counterattack because it's an election year. ==
First, they need every pilot they can get. Second, if the President dies in the battle but humanity wins, it won't be too much of a problem that there's no President (since the last surviving successor was the Secretary of Defense, who was fired before the battle began, vacating the entire chain of succession), because that condition will only last about six months. They could even have the newly elected Congress pass a law for an emergency transition to have the new President-elect assume office immediately, rather than waiting until January 20. In the meantime, the Chairman of the Joint Chiefs will assume command of the military while the executive powers of the Federal government will devolve on the Governors of the 50 states acting in concert. In fact, due to the crisis, it's likely that special elections to refill the House of Representatives will be scheduled for within a month, at which time they will elect a new Speaker of the House, who would then resign to assume the Presidency. There is a succession plan available, and nobody is going to be starting a war in the aftermath right away, either.
* Actually, given that Congress is unable to meet due to being dead President Whitmore can make [https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Recess_appointment recess appointments], meaning that he can easily designate a new Vice-President simply on his word alone. While this would only last until the next time the Senate could convene a quorum and either confirm or deny his choice, under these circumstances that time would be 'after the next election' or close enough given the length of time it would take to rebuild the government as a whole, so the point would be moot. In addition, General Gray is the obvious appointment for VP and confirmation for him would be a no-brainer anyway.
== General Grey will be Whitmore's immediate successor as the next President; Capt. Hiller will be the President a few terms later ==
General Grey was the only person in the government who managed to keep a cool head besides Whitmore himself. He also provided Whitmore with trustworthy advice, in contrast to the sniveling Secretary Nimzicki. By the end of the movie, Grey and Whitmore were basically like [[Bash Brothers]] and one can easily imagine that once the 2000 election arrived in-universe, Whitmore would absolutely vouch for Grey and endorse him should he choose to run.
Just as importantly, in the aftermath of the crisis, Grey would likely have an Eisenhower-like reputation, and would almost definitely win the 2000 election.
Really the only way Grey ''wouldn't'' be elected is if he chose not to run, but in the likelihood that America would be faced with many years of rebuilding after the events of the movie, Whitmore would probably urge him to do so, knowing that he's a competent leader who'd command enough popularity and respect to hold the country together during the years of reconstruction that lay ahead.
As for the part about [[Will Smith]]'s Capt. Hiller being President a few terms later,
"Independence Day: Resurgence" was eventually made and released in 2016, but they could not get Will Smith to agree to return and so the then President of the United States was played by Sela Ward.
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[[Category:Wild Mass Guessing/Film]]
[[Category:Independence Day]]▼
[[Category:WMG]]
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