Independence Day (1996)

 

100 best Science Fiction Movies, Empire Magazine list

 

#87. Independence Day (1996)

 

I have to open with the statement that I love this film, and I recommend it to everyone. I have to say that first, because after this paragraph I have to behave like an actual grown-up, and when that adult emerges, you might be misled and think this film something other wonderful. Let’s face it, though an undeniable landmark in breath-taking, super-fun, pop-corn, escapism, it’s also dumber than cheese.

 

There may never have been a more derivative, shallowly jingoistic, travesty, combining thunder-headed simplicity, and obvious narrative illogic, in the whole of the history of cinema, or the history of total awesome-ness. This is a movie that had to wait more than a century to be made, because it took that long for FX technology to advance far enough, and the cynicism of the Hollywood studio system to become so perfected, that so much talent and the resources would be expended to successfully resurrect zombie-ideas that were unimpressive when they first hit the print than the so-called novel, “Fighters from Mars” (1898), a forgotten work that has the distinction of being the very first rip-off of H.G. Wells “The War of the Worlds” (1897), except it wasn’t a merely a rip-off, a good chunk of it was explicit plagiarism, but also displayed the ground-breaking market strategy/pandering,  as there were more than one version published by its publisher, a newspaper conglomerate, changing the settings to please a local audience while editing out all the Science, Satire, and less-than-Heroic actions of the Protagonists.

 

Let’s face it, in SF, cinema is almost always years behind the printed word, but in this case, cinema is decades behind even itself. They’ve wanted to make a movie like this movie since the 1950s, but that decades plethora of alien invasion films couldn’t deliver the BOOM, though they tried more than once (there was the unfaithful and seriously dumbed-down “War of the Worlds” (1953) and dumber-still “Earth vs. the Flying Saucers” (1956), both were as spectacular as the era could deliver, but neither could attempt the spectacle of this film). Strangely, this film doesn’t much play to nostalgia, it is derivative without homage, and stylistically all the BOOMS and BANGS are all up-to-the-minute.

 

Also, structurally, it is not that akin to the most similar preceding SF films, not the two USA films listed above, and not Japan’s “The Mysterians” (1957) and “Battle in Outer Space” (1959), nor Canada’s “Star Ship Invasions” (1977). “ID4” (as the title was often referred to in the massive promotional campaign) is more similar to the non-SF disaster films of Director/Producer Irwin Allen’s heyday back in the 1970s.

 

So, here's the set-up: On July 2^nd (and guess what the film’s release date was?) dozens of alien spaceships, each one the size of a city in-of-itself, magnificently emerge from sinister and unnatural clouds and park above the world's major metropolises. To this film’s credit, it’s obsessively envelope-pushing in its visuals and conveys the immensity of the ships like no other film before it. There is a profound artistic commitment the image that is wholly lacking in the story.

 

Over the next three days (look at the calendar, what is the date of the climax of this film?) the fate of humanity will be decided by a plucky collection of one-dimensional Heroes overcoming impossible odds with a combination of imagination, co-operation, unapologetic Militarism and rather weak plot mechanics.

 

President Thomas J. Whitmore (Bill Pullman) is quickly sketched with all the most appealing characteristics of every American President since 1961, but most important was that he’s a former fighter pilot. He tries to establish peaceful communication Aliens, but they prove to be unmitigatedly evil – they’re a “locust” race, destroying all other intelligent life they encounter without mercy and then sucking the war-devastated planets dry of all mineral and chemical wealth. Compassionate President Thomas has no choice but to commit Xenocide on them before they commit Xenocide on us. But how? He sets off nukes on mainland of the USA (this is not treated with nearly enough gravitas) but that didn’t work.

 

He’s also worried because his wife, Marilyn (Mary McDonnell), was out-of-town as everything spirals out-of-control, and he’s lost contact with her. As chaos worsens, she will be reunited with him through an improbable encounter with another supporting character, and that reunion facilitates another reunion (I’ll get to that) because as a nation of 350 million turned into a wasteland full of internal Refugees, families being reunited proves surprisingly easy, even inevitable.

 

The first person to realize that the Aliens did not come in peace was cable-television tech-guy David Levinson (Jeff Goldblum), a brilliant ne'er-do-well who stumbles across an insight that all the Intelligence Agencies and Scientists in the entire world somehow missed. He travels from New York City to Washington DC to try and convince his ex-wife, Constance Spano (Margaret Colin), who, just by coincidence (there’s a lot of that in this movie), is the President's Communications Director. Before he leaves, he warns his boss, Marty Gilbert (Harvey Fierstein) to get out of town. He also brings his own father Julius (Judd Hirsch) with him to DC.

 

Elsewhere, another former fighter pilot, Russell Casse (Randy Quaid), an alcoholic who claims to be an Alien Abduction victim but who seems little more than a full-time embarrassment to his family, is thrilled that the Invasion is happening because now he can prove all his crazy stories are true.

 

Then there also a current fighter pilot, Capt. Steven Hiller (Will Smith). Before he has to get busy saving the human race, his biggest problem was that NASA keeps rejecting him for the Astronaut program and it is suggested that maybe it’s because he’s engaged to an Exotic Dancer and hard-working Single Mom Jasmine Dubrow (Vivica Fox). Since the crisis separates Steven from Jasmine, when chaos ensues, he worries for her the same way the President worries for Marilyn. It just so happens that it is Jasmine who finds the wounded Marilyn in the smoldering ruins of Los Angeles, and takes the First Lady with her on her search for heroic Steven, who has just survived being shot out of the sky by Alien baddies.

 

After this first round of devastation, all the above-listed cities (and several others) have been destroyed. Almost all the above-listed characters manage to find themselves at the legendary Area 51 in Nevada. Those who were physically close to the President came with him, so that makes sense, but everyone else’s convenient arrival is dubious to the extreme.

 

Jack Nicholls describes the film as, “possibly the most optimistic Disaster movie ever made. Billions of people are killed in scenes reminiscent of the nuclear strikes on Hiroshima and Nagasaki during World War Two, but this is glossed over and tragedy-free.” By this point in the film, only one of the above-mentioned characters are dead, and when the credits’ role, there’s only two more fatalities among the main-cast, three if you include not-yet-mentioned Dr. Brackish Okun (Brent Springer), whose alive-again in the sequel.

 

When the main cast is all gathered in the same, at the same time, we finally meet Brackish, and he fills in the backstory: It seems this Invasion force is following a trail of bread crumbs laid down by an expeditionary mission that crashed in Roswell, New Mexico in 1947 and after all these decades the brilliant scientists have not been able to solve the mysteries of the captured Alien Spacecraft. That’s okay, because David will be able solve those same mysteries in about twenty-four hours, and the day after that, he and Steven will be flying the Alien Spaceship and saving Humanity.

 

Nichol’s again, as “the three leads [Pullman, Goldblum and Smith] represent their respective cultures [namely, White as Wonder Bread, Jewish, and Black], and so ‘Independence Day’ assures us that in times of crisis, humans will put their petty differences and stand together for the common good.”

 

Pulling together, at least here, means the whole World will be following the USA – as the whole World is facing the same crisis everyone else is obligated to obey our orders. In this sense, the unnamed Aliens are almost a parody of some of our perceptions of Real-World adversaries (Communism, Fascism, and Jihadism) but these Villains are stripped of both human-ness and ideology, so the USA becomes pure and above any charge of bigotry or spite, so really the Aliens are just an excuse to say nice things about our national arrogance. Lisa Schwarzbaum, “It’s as happily techno-horny as any chapter of the ‘Star Wars’ trilogy. As satisfyingly hokey and full of Designated Colorful Characters as any of the great 1970s human-face-of-disaster epics … as corny as Kansas, high as the flag on the Fourth of July.”

 

All of these characters are supposed to be lovable, most are annoyingly written, but the casting is absolutely golden, so almost all come off far more appealingly than in a more conventional production with a similarly weak script. McDonnell and Fierstein are standouts, especially given their small parts, and Hirsh deserves a special Oscar for elevating his atrociously cliché ethnic stereotype, but the best of the lot is Smith. We already knew Smith was a fine and charismatic Actor, but I think this is the first time he really demonstrated his ability to carry an entire movie on his slender, but well-muscled, shoulders. In his best scene, Steven flattens an alien with one punch and shouts, “Welcome to Earth!” The audience woops, and we ignore the plot-point that the alien is in an Exo-Skeleton so it shouldn’t have been knocked out, Steven should’ve broken his hand.

 

The film makers, Roland Emmerich and Dean Devlin, co-wrote the haphazard but still very funny script in a mere four weeks, but then lavished an extraordinary 13 months on physical production, and both show. The story is (Nichols again) “one of the most celebratedly absurd scripts in mainstream movie history.” The Character David devises a plan to infect the Aliens' computers with a virus he created on his laptop (it was no more than an evening’s labor) and has no difficulty coding to, connecting to, and integrate with, a literally Alien Network, and then the President broadcasts this plan to all the world so we can fight together because somehow the Galaxy-Spanning Multi-Conquerors aren’t monitoring our radio frequencies.

 

On the other hand, the film is never short of breath-taking, though all Critics agree that the second half doesn’t quite live up to the first. The best moment maybe the first, a shot is the USA flag at the Apollo landing site on the Moon being engulfed in the shadow of the Alien ship. Super-death-ray weapons have never looked better. Exploding cities never more colorful. The destruction of the White House is one of the most iconic images of that decade’s cinema. No scene is lingered on for any length so the film’s unusually-long running-time, two-and-a-half-hours, passes quicker that most commercial interruptions on network TV.

 

Emmerich and Devlin’s background are instructive here:

 

Emmerich, co-Writer and Director of what maybe the ultimate pro-USA propaganda film of all time, is actually a German. He was inspired to become a film maker after seeing “Star Wars” (1977) and that influence is identifiable in “ID4’s” second half. His preference for SF&F is obvious in most of his earliest films, “The Noah's Ark Principle” (1984) “Making Contact” (1985), “Hollywood-Monster” (1987), and “Moon 44” (1990). He was a busy, but his work remained obscure, and though some films earned positive notices (“The Noah…”) while others were viciously derided (“Moon 44”). His career changed radically when he began his collaboration with co-Writer and Producer Delvin.

 

Delvin, an American, started as an Actor but then switched careers to Writing after he met Emmerich on the set of “Moon 44,” where he had a bit part. At the time, Emmerich must have felt he was floundering because of his material, “Moon 44” was an unwieldly mess of disparate plot points that pissed-off critics so badly that few even credited how visually ambitious the low-budget outing was, and as a co-Writer on that one as well, Emmerich had no one but himself to blame.

 

Emmerich and Delvin then collaborated on the Script for “Universal Soldier” (1992), which was stream-lined and to-the-point. The uncomplicated story was pure Pulp but also had a strong humanist thread for such a macho, violent, film, but it rarely gets credit for that among Critics because it was ruined by the weakness of the cast -- not a great film, but Emmerich’s best work up-to-that-point, and was enough of a hit to finance their next outing, which would be their first film with an ambitious budget.

 

In “Stargate” (1994), we see the fulfillment of the evolution of these two creators. Again, the film played to the Pulp, but abandoned the humanistic ambitions of “Universal Soldier” just as it was also devoid of the muddled plotting of “Moon 44.” It was even more derivative than their prior films, was really patronizing towards non-Americans, had an aggressively fast pace with lots of action, the one-dimensional characters were propped up by an A-list cast, and a production-design that was undeniably the best of any SF film released that year. In other words, it was exactly the formula of “ID4.”

 

I no longer think of Emmerich and Devlin as Writers as much as Canvas-Stretchers. Their poor scripts do, at least, give good actors who require no direction enough light-hearted quips and clear motivations to allow for good work.  Their dumbed-down narratives are exploding with visual, if not intellectual, ideas. It is vitally important to recognize this was really the work of a quickly multiplying team of collaborators: FX Supervisor, Volker Engel, was doing that work for Emmerich since “Moon 44”; Oliver Scholl joined him as Production Designer on “Universal Soldier”;  and another FX artist, Patrick Tatopoulos joined them on “Stargate.” These three men gave us all the best parts of “ID4.”

 

After this incredibly successful film, Emmerich and Devlin basically were granted a blank check, but this string of three movies (“Universal Soldier,” “Stargate” and “ID4”) seem to encapsulate their contribution to cinema. The continued to enjoy success, and for their big-budget outings (almost all the following films had huge budgets) as they continued to push the envelope of what could be visualized, but after this point they were not only derivative of others, but themselves. “The Day After Tomorrow” (2004) concerned a Natural Disaster and contained no Villains yet managed to have pretty much the exact same plot progression as “ID4”, even similar scenes that appeared in the same order; also, as it also touted itself as having a far more serious message, so its stupidity was that much less charming. Another SF disaster film, “2012” (2009) was another example of the snake eating its own tale.

 

All of Emmerich and Devlin’s three key films generated franchises, though only “Stargate’s” several spin-off TV series (the first aired 1997) earned a following in anyway comparable to the original product. “ID4’s” sequel was a longtime in coming, “Independence Day: Resurgence” (2016), and was derided by the critics and dismissed by the audiences almost as thoroughly as “Moon 44” was.

 

Worth noting here is another film that seemed unrelated, but on consideration deeply intertwined: “Invasion: Earth” (TV miniseries 1998). It’s complex, highly intelligent, and very dark – tonally so different from “ID4” that few recognized the extraordinary number of plot-points the two films share. Its relationship with “ID4” seems akin to “Rio Bravo’s” (1959) relationship with “High Noon” (1952), when John Wayne and John Ford saw the enormously popular Fred Zinnemann western and were so pissed-off they made a movie with a similar plot just to prove that they could do it better. Basically, “Invasion: Earth” tried to be “ID4” for grownups.

 

It begins in WWII with Lt. Charles Tyrell (Anton Lesser), encountering Aliens who crash-land during the London Blitz. As the story unfolds, it is revealed that these aliens, the Echoes, are the Good-Guys, immersed in an Interdimensional War against the implacably Evil NDs, who, similarly to “ID4’s” aliens, do early recognizance on life-supporting planets with via Alien Abduction, and then come back later to harvest the dominant species as slaves and food stuffs.

 

Jump to 1998 and the harvest time has come to unsuspecting England. NATO troops led by a committed but also arrogant Maj. Gen. David Reece (Fred Ward) from the USA, usurps all English authority over its own destiny and the English accept this without complaint, but with deep resentment. Scientist, Dr. Amanda Tucker (Maggie O'Neill), who is tragically also an Alien Abduction victim and therefore marked as a first-course meal, struggles to understand the threat so that maybe the human race can get ahead of it.

 

The odds are seriously against Humanity because even the more advanced Echoes are losing. Faced with a future of enslavement and being reduced to food-stuffs, the Echoes commit collective suicide. Humans though, especially the ones from the USA, refuse to go quietly and rage against the night. Given the grim inevitably, that courage has terrible moral consequences; among other things, NATO nukes an idyllic English village full of infected civilians because, as an unnamed Major allegedly said during the Vietnam conflict, “We had to destroy Ben Tre in order to save it.”

 

The series treated the use of nukes with appropriate gravitas, and the US Military become harder to tolerate as the story unfolds, except the obvious fact that the they are without any other viable alternatives except mass-suicide like the Echoes. Less war-like humans are treated as persons of equal courage and self-sacrifice as the Military, but in their best efforts repeatedly fail just as much as the Military’s. The series ends ambiguously, all the self-sacrifice and brutalism by all parties might have been futile, or maybe not. In leaving it open-ended, writer Jed Mercurio (a former RAF cadet and physician, so he imbues the story with compelling verisimilitude) shifts the simplistic themes to an argument in which most of our decisions in crisis are hard-wired in our nature, and refusing to definitively say who among the NDs intended victims, the Echoes, Militarists, or Doves, were wrong in their efforts/actions.

 

ID4 trailer:

Independence Day | #TBT Trailer | 20th Century FOX - YouTube