Independence Day (film)
From The Black Vault Encyclopedia Project
Independence Day (or ID4) is an American action movie about an attempted alien takeover of Earth. The movie features several scenes of major landmarks being destroyed by the aliens, such as the U.S. Bank Tower in Los Angeles, California, the Empire State Building in New York City, the White House in Washington, D.C., the Big Ben, the Sydney Opera House and the Eiffel Tower. The film's success was partially credited to an extensive marketing campaign which began with a dramatic commercial during Super Bowl XXX. The movie was scheduled for release on Wednesday, July 3, 1996, but due to the 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.
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Plot
The world is in shock on July 2 as an alien ship about one quarter the mass of the moon and over 550 kilometers in diameter enters the Earth's orbit and deploys several smaller ships, each one over fifteen miles in diameter, that settle over many of the world's major cities. Using advanced technology, the aliens quickly destroy these cities and millions of people. Conventional missiles and nuclear weapons are useless against them, as the alien ships are strongly shielded by impenetrable force fields. The President of the United States, a veteran fighter pilot of the Gulf War, leads the human resistance from Area 51, where the military has kept an alien fighter aircraft that crash-landed in the 1950s, to ultimate victory over the aliens. The movie climaxes on July 4 as the humans use the fighter to infiltrate the mothership, activating a computer virus to disrupt the aliens' shields, and sneaking a nuclear missile aboard. The disruption of the shields opens a window of opportunity for humans to strike back and destroy the smaller alien ships, and the nuclear missile is detonated, destroying the mothership.
Characters
President Thomas J. Whitmore (Bill Pullman): President of the United States throughout the movie, Whitmore is a former Gulf War pilot who leads the resistance against the alien invaders.
Captain Steven 'Steve' Hiller (Will Smith): A U.S. Marine Corps F/A-18 fighter pilot, Hiller is the only person able to bring an extraterrestrial aircraft down in the first wave of the human counterattack. Hiller's ambition is to join NASA, and his dream to fly into space comes true when he flies the alien spaceship from Area 51.
David Levinson (Jeff Goldblum): Employee of a cable company, Levinson is an MIT-educated chess enthusiast who discovers the aliens' plans to attack after stumbling upon their hidden satellite signal, and later suggests the idea of infecting the mothership with a computer virus in order to deactivate shields protecting the alien crafts.
Julius Levinson (Judd Hirsch): Jewish immigrant and father of David Levinson.
Constance Spano (Margaret Colin): White House Communications Director and David's ex-wife.
First Lady Marilyn Whitmore (Mary McDonnell): President Whitmore's wife. Was critically injured while fleeing the destruction of Los Angeles.
Jasmine Dubrow (Vivica A. Fox): Exotic dancer, survivalist, Steve's girlfriend and eventually his wife.
Russell Casse (Randy Quaid): crop duster, claims to have been foremerly abducted by aliens.
General William Grey (Robert Loggia): chairman of the Joint Chiefs.
Albert Nimzicki (James Rebhorn): Secretary of Defense.
Marty Gilbert (Harvey Fierstein): David's flamboyant boss.
Major Mitchell (Adam Baldwin): security chief at Area 51.
Dr. Brackish Okun (Brent Spiner): chief scientist at Area 51.
Miguel Casse (James Duval): Russell Casse's eldest son.
Alicia Casse (Lisa Jakub): Russell's daughter.
Troy Casse (Giuseppe Andrews): Russell's youngest son.
Captain Jimmy Wilder (Harry Connick, Jr.) Steve's friend and fellow Marine pilot.
Criticism
While a massive commercial success (it made over $300,000,000 in the U.S. alone), the film was ridiculed by some critics for its plot, predictable storylines and poor acting. Criticism of the plot included the claim that it would be impossible to cause the aliens' high-tech computers to malfunction by infecting them with a simple computer virus (cf War of the Worlds). Many outside the United States (and some within) also derided the film for what they saw as calculated pandering to excessive American nationalistic sentiment, as the film was released in the United States over the Fourth of July weekend and was explicitly titled Independence Day. Moreover, they deride the fact that Americans are presented as saviours of humanity, ironically contrasted by real-life policies. Fans of the film counter that there is nothing wrong with nationalistic sentiment, while it's true that only the planet's most advanced state would have the potential to stand against an alien invasion, although they acknowledge that it could limit potential audiences.
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. They also suggest that the modern computers of the film may have been developed based on technology recovered from the Area 51 craft, thus making the two systems accidentally compatible. Another set of ideas suggest that the aliens had to modify their own computer systems to interface with the earth's satellite network, thus making them vulnerable to viruses. An idea that could conceivably explain a number of the plot holes is that the aliens are to a certain extent a hive-minded race; such an orderly alien society would have no concept of a malicious computer virus or of one of its fighters going "rogue." However, other than the seemingly psychic abilities of a captured alien, there is no evidence for this theory other than conjecture.
Radio spin-off
In August 1996, BBC Radio 1 broadcast the 1-hour play Independence Day UK, produced by Dirk Maggs, a spin-off depicting the alien invasion from a British perspective.
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 his unarmed biplane with a missile attached to it, knowing he was going to kill himself in the process of taking out one of the alien space destroyers. The scene was dropped and later revised: in the new version of this scene, Casse joins the U.S.-led worldwide aerial counterattack force and flies an F-18 jet fighter plane instead of his biplane, and later makes the decision to destroy the alien space destroyer on a suicide run after his firing mechanism jams. According to the director's commentary, the original scene "lost some of the realism of the film" and the revised sequence "gave the character a choice to sacrifice himself or not." This scene is featured in the junior novelisation of the film.
- When Jeff Goldblum and Will Smith are escaping the mothership, Goldblum uses the line "Must go faster." He also used this line in the film Jurassic Park.
- The studio did not want the film to use the title "Independence Day," so Bill Pullman ad-libbed the final line in his speech to include the title.
- In the TV show South Park, many episodes feature a spoof of the Morse Code scene at the end of the movie.
- When David Levinson opens his laptop computer (an Apple Macintosh PowerBook) it greets him with the message, "Good morning, Dave," a reference to the talking computer HAL in 2001: A Space Odyssey (1968).
- The man in the Los Angeles office building that is destroyed in the first alien attack is played by Volker Engel, the movie's visual effects supervisor.
- In the original script, the President leads a wing of ten F-15E and twenty F-111 fighters, along with newly-recruited pilots in different aircraft ranging from MiGs to experimental aircraft, against the alien destroyer.
- Ironically, when New York City is destroyed, the World Trade Center towers are left relatively intact.
- While not intended to be a version of H. G. Wells' War of the Worlds, the film features a 'virus,' albeit a computer virus, which knocks out the alien spacecraft.
- The level Katina in Star Fox 64 is a reference to this movie. There is a character called 'Bill Grey' which is a variation of William Grey and Bill only appears on Katina, Sector X and Solar. The mothership in the level also resembles the motherships from the film and the enemy ships which come out of the motherships are also taken from the film. In the credits, music from 'Independance day' is also heard for a short amount of time.
Errors and goofs
- The commemorative plaques left on the moon by the Apollo astronauts were attached to the front leg of the Lunar Module's Descent Stage; neither was placed on a pile of moon rocks.
- The map of Russia shown on Sky News (in Russian) shows the city of Saint Petersburg as Petrograd, a name used only from 1914 until 1924 (when it became Leningrad; the original name St. Petersburg was restored in 1991).
- The spacecraft heading for Los Angeles is initially reported to have been detected off the California coast (west of Los Angeles), yet it passes over the Casse family's trailer park in the Imperial Valley, which lies hundreds of miles to the east of Los Angeles.
- At the bottom of the same map it says "cloud phenomenon" in Russian, and "phenomenon" is misspelled - it says "fznamenon" instead of the correct "fenomen."
- When news of the newly-appeared spacecraft from around the world is shown near the beginning of the film, the broadcast from Russia is labeled "Soviet News", despite the USSR's having collapsed five years before the release of this film, and only months after the end of the Persian Gulf War in which the President had supposedly fought.
- When the spaceship arrives at Novosibirsk, the announcer says "It is clearing the mountains." There are no mountains near Novosibirsk.
- A mounted policeman in New York City turns around twice when the alien spaceship arrives.
- When the Americans are sending Morse code, they send it to a location which is subtitled as the "Iraqi Desert," yet there are mountains visible in the background. An earlier scene subtitled "Northern Desert, Iraq" also shows mountains. There are no mountain ranges near deserts in Iraq.
- The message purporting to be Morse code was actually gibberish. Additionally, the Morse code keys used to send the message were so far out of adjustment as to be nearly unusable.
- In the Iraqi desert scene, we see an F-16 with French Air Force markings and an F/A-18 with Israeli Air Force markings. Neither type of plane is in service with these air forces.
- An F-18C could never maneuver through a canyon of the size shown in the movie, even at minimum speed.
- In the film, Marine Corps Air Station El Toro appears to be in the middle of a deserted area, when in fact at the time of the film the base was located in the middle of densely-populated Orange County, California.
- The Empire State Building was inexplicably moved to the center of Fifth Avenue.
- An object the size of the mothership which came that close to Earth would gravitationally attract the Earth's oceans and cause abnormally huge tidal waves. Much of the coastal cities, such as New York, Los Angeles and Washington D.C. would be underwater long before the alien ships arrive over them. Though it could be possible that the aliens have a form of anti-gravity technology that prevents this.
- When a B-2 bomber deploys a nuclear missile the destroyer over Houston, it is shown maneuvering away. However, due to the B-2's large frame and slow speed, it could not have escaped the ensuing blast.
- The destroyer over Washington is shown descending very low over the White House. The Capitol Building, which is taller than the White House, should have had the top part of its rotunda destroyed. In a later shot of the destruction, the destroyer is shown at a higher level and the rotunda is intact until it is shattered by the extreme heat of the explosions.
- During one of the briefings, an air force E-7 is shown in the foreground. The E-7 in the film has six downward stripes; in reality, an E-7 has five downward stripes and one chevron/rocker.
- During the "Welcome Wagon" scene, where 2 UH-1 escort helicopters and 1 retrofitted CH-54 Tarhe fly to the destroyer over Washington to greet them with light patterns, a panel (presumably a hangar bay door) opens and emits 3 plasma bursts at the helicopters. However, one of the UH-1 helicopters escorting the CH-54 explodes before the plasma burst hits it.
- The commanding officer of the Black Night Squadron is shown wearing Lieutenant Colonel Oak Leaf Clusters during the initial brief. Later, during the attack of the base, he is wearing Captain's Bars.
- During the attack on MCAS El Toro, several F-14 and F-16 aircraft are parked on the tarmac, and afterward the tail section of an F-15 is visible in the wreckage. None of these aircraft are operated by the Marine Corps, and it would be highly unlikely to find them at El Toro.
- The F/A-18C wouldn't have enough fuel to fly to the Grand Canyon and the fighter wasn't even carrying a drop tank.
- During the second air combat with the aliens the president's fighter fired more missiles than what it can carry.
- When Los Angeles was being destroyed and the flames got into the tunnels, the fire would have used up all the oxygen and people would suffocate even if they weren't killed by the fire.
- Even though the fire entered the tunnel, it did not enter the small janitorial closet that Jasmine was in.
- When the alien destroyer is coming over Washington, the shadow it creates is shown going from the South National Mall to the Capitol Building. However the White House, which is situated with the West Wing facing South, is shown being covered from its Front Lawn, instead of the West Wing.
References
External links
Copyright
"Original data received from Wikipedia on April 14, 2006. Credit given to original authors can be seen Here."
