Independence Day: Difference between revisions

 

{{quote|''On July 2nd, they arrive.''

'''''Independence Day''''' is a 1996 movie by [[Roland Emmerich]], known in its promotional material as '''''ID4'''''. At its core it is a straightforward [[Alien Invasion]] movie with a lot of elements taken from well known sources like ''[[The War of the Worlds (novel)|The War of the Worlds]]''. The archetypical [[Summer Blockbuster]] with a large cast of familiar character types, [[Stuff Blowing Up]], fighter jets dogfighting alien craft, [[Rousing Speech]]es, [[Area 51]] and is otherwise fairly by-the-book story-wise.

 

 

Humans fight back, with U. S. Marine pilot Steven Hiller ([[Will Smith]]) and computer programmer David Levinson (uh... [[Jeff Goldblum]]) pulling together a [[Plan]] to save the human race.

 

 

 

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* [[Aerial Canyon Chase]]: Steven pulls this against a minor fleet of aliens.

* [[Air Force One]]: The President's F/A-18 fighter is designated "Eagle One", but technically [[Did Not Do the Research|any USAF airplane that is carrying the POTUS is automatically designated "Air Force One"]]. Even if the President himself is piloting it and dogfighting aliens. If, however, it was a Marine jet, then technically it should have been "Marine One". Then again, [[Screw the Rules, I Make Them|Whitmore is the President...]]. Also, [[Air Force One]] becomes the de facto capital of the United States for a portion of the movie, as the President oversees the first counterstrike operation from aboard the plane. After that, Area 51 apparently becomes the de facto capital.

* [[The Alcoholic]]: Russell.

* [[Alien Abduction]]: Russell... or so he claims. The viewer is left to their own devices about whether or not this was entirely a delusion brought on by alcoholism, war trauma, or just being nuts. The novelization has him see the alien downed by [[Will Smith|Captain Hiller]], and think that's it's not the same as the ones who abducted him. Then he starts to wonder whether other aliens are visiting Earth, or if it even really happened. The same novelization strongly implies that it ''did'' happen: inside their bio-suits, the invading aliens look exactly like the ones in Russel's memories.

* [[But I Read a Book About It]]: Capt. Hiller basically says he can fly the ship because he's seen it fly.

** By which he means, he's flown against them in combat and seen how they maneuver. Which, while not exactly firsthand experience, is still more than anyone else they've got has.

* [[California Doubling]]: Actually Utah Doubling; most of the movie after the first act was filmed on the Bonneville Salt Flats, near Wendover, UT.

* [[Calling Your Attacks]]: "Eagle Twenty, Fox Two!" And for good reason. Pilots call "Fox" one through four to indicate firing of different weapons to help avoid friendlies catching one of them. [[wikipedia:Fox (code word)|At least that's what these guys say, anyway.]] Plus it's all dramatic and stuff. In reality, with such a massive fleet of friendlies, this wouldn't be occurring at the outset since the radio feed would get garbled by fifty pilots doing their call while firing a simultaneous opening shot.

* [[The Captain]]: [[Will Smith|Steven Hiller]].

* [[Captured Super Entity]]: At one point, Hiller captures an alien that crashed along with him and drags it to Area 51. The alien's telepathy and bio-mechanical suit make it a formidable force when it's found to still be alive.

** Hiller's dogfight with the alien fighter happens to take him near enough to spot Area 51, and his crash put him close to a convoy of refugees he can point in that direction.

** A surprisingly large number of civilians amongst those refugees turn out to be former jet-qualified combat pilots. Although the recruiter specifically says while he is hoping for people with military training, "anyone who can fly a plane would be useful." The novelization takes it a step further, mentioning that they only have so many missiles to load on the jets, and some of them, with the least-experienced pilots, are going up completely unarmed to act as decoys.

* [[Converging Stream Weapon]]: The motherships' primary weapon.

* [[Curb Stomp Battle]]: The aliens' assault against the humans, until the humans are able to devise a way to deal with the aliens' [[Deflector Shields]].

* [[Flying Saucer]]: Played perfectly straight. And for once, actually scary instead of cheesy.

* [[Four-Star Badass]]: General Grey, as contrast to the mousy, ass-covering Secretary of Defense. Honestly, Gen. Grey's pretty much the only person in the government who manages to keep a cool head throughout the crisis, besides President Whitmore, who himself is a badass from the Gulf War. It's really no surprise that in the movie's second act—by which point the Vice President has been killed off-screen by the alien invaders—General Grey becomes the President's de facto second-in-command and closest adviser. It's likely that in the movie's universe, General Grey emerges from the crisis with a Patton or Eisenhower-like level of respect, and it's likely that he's either going to be Whitmore's new VP or Secretary of Defense... and the most likely candidate to be Whitmore's immediate successor once his term of office is up.

* [[Genre Savvy]]: The characters figure out what the [[Deflector Shield]] does just from being aware of them from science fiction. Hiller declares "they must have some kind of protective shield over the hull." Yes, he picked the term "shield" which matches the sci-fi standard, but there's easily enough context for the non-savvy to understand just fine.

* [[Gilligan Cut]]: The president says to leave the cities in an orderly fashion—cut to anarchy in the streets.

** Averted however with Brent Spiner, who can be sexy but played the very unkempt and awkward Dr. Okun in this movie. That hair!

* [[Nations of the World Montage]]

* [[No Endor Holocaust]]: Dozens of ships that size hitting the ground would throw up enough dust to blot out the sun. And that's not even considering blowing up something as big as the mother ship in Earth's orbit like that.

** The novelization mitigates a bit by putting the Moon between the Earth and the mothership. This makes sense if you consider that something that big would have to have a huge angular velocity to maintain Low Earth Orbit. However, the movie shows an enormous amount of debris racing the delivery fighter back into the atmosphere, and later burning as "fireworks" overhead. If it was actually out beyond the [[Artistic License Astronomy|moon]] when it detonated, the number, implied velocity (a good chunk of the ''speed of light'') and size of those fragments would have been a rather incredible bombardment all on their own.

** [[Darker and Edgier]] in the novelization: this is only briefly mentioned in the movie, but not only is Houston still completely intact at the time of the attack, ''it hasn't been fully evacuated yet.''

* [[Obstructive Bureaucrat]]: Secretary of Defense Albert Nimziki. Before he became the Secretary of Defense job he was the CIA Director. They had evidence of a hostile alien race, they KNEW what they were capable of, and yet they DIDN'T. TELL. THE GOVERNMENT. This results in the initial counterattack against the aliens being utterly annihilated due to the shields and the US losing hundreds of pilots that could have been more useful if they actually had a way to beat them. The guy eventually tries to talk Whitmore out of attacking the aliens before the end battle, claiming it would be a mistake. Whitmore replies:

* [[Oh Crap]]:

** It's hard to read expressions on an alien face but it's easy to imagine that's what it was thinking when it found itself staring at a countdown on a nuclear missile that just ticked to zero...

*** He's from ''Brooklyn''. New York was the first city in America to ban handguns (the Sullivan Act of 1911). Unless he joined the military or the cops, or hung out with criminals, his experience with firearms would be zero point zero.

* [[Too Fast to Stop]]: The alien dogfighters, inexplicably, towards the end of the movie, even though they are stated to be extremely maneuverable.

* [[Tropes Are Not Bad]]: There's a reason this movie spawned the "Big Willy Weekend" tradition.

* [[Universal Driver's License]]:

 

{{reflist}}

[[Category:Epic Movie]]

[[Category:Films of the 1990s]]

[[Category:Hugo Award]]

[[Category:Riff Trax]]