Since today is July 4th and it's Independence Day here in the good ol' US of A, today's Cinema Sunday post is taking a look at that classic disaster film from 1996, Independence Day.
While nominally listed as a science fiction action film, Independence Day shares more DNA with such disaster films like The Poseidon Adventure or The Towering Inferno.
Step one is to assemble an all star cast playing a wide range of stock characters. Jeff Goldblum, Will Smith, Bill Pullman, Mary McDonnell, Judd Hirsch, Margaret Colin, Randy Quaid, Robert Loggia and Harvey Fierstein are among the big names of the 1990's to fill out the cast.
The alien attack is the Maguffin designed to put this cast in a variety of perils and challenges. These aliens are literal plot devices. What are their motivations for their attack on Earth? No one gives a fuck.
Their job is to blow shit up. And shit does get blowed up real good.
The job of the human cast is to avoid getting killed (mostly) and mount a scrappy offense against all odds.
The boxes of a disaster film are checked off here. Seen from the perspective of a disaster film, Independence Day is a pretty good movie. As science fiction, eh, not so much.
I remember seeing this in the theater with Andrea when the movie first came out and it was kind of a big deal at the time.
Tension builds as shadows fall across cities around the world, large space ships hanging in the sky above.
The sudden and violent assault by those vessels as buildings are reduced to rubble in seconds.
Humankind is clearly outmatched.
The best action sequence in the film is Will Smith's dog fight with an alien fighter craft. It is (dare I say it?) fast and furious. Then Smith dragging the body of his defeated alien foe across the desert while bitching about it is funny and a bit hopeful. These aliens can be beat.
Every gathers in the desert at Area 51 where Brent Spiner (hey, everybody! It's Data!) is a lead scientist poking around alien biology and technology.
Bill Pullman as the President of the United States is a bit surprised that there was proof of alien life before this horrendous attack. Well, that info is on a "need to know" basis and apparently the President of the United States does not have a need to know.
Bill Pullman made a pretty good President. I sometimes wished he could be President for real.
While humankind is clearly outmatched by the aliens, they can be beat... by a Macbook?
Jeff Goldblum and Will Smith fly into space to defeat the aliens with an Apple laptop. Yes, it's a very big ass pull of a resolution but I like the overall message of brains over brawn.
Still, it's kind of stupid that these aliens can be brought down by a 1990s era laptop.
Mary McDonnell gets a poignant death scene as the First Lady. Which later prompts Darrell Hammond's President Bill Clinton to call Independence Day "the feel good movie of the summer".
Independence Day was the highest-grossing film of 1996. It was a pop culture phenomenon at the time. It has not aged well, the curse of a movie that relied spectacle to paper over thin plotting and little to no character development.
And even that spectacle was subject to criticism with some reviewers citing the effects work was no better than the original Star Wars from 22 years prior and lacking in comparison to contemporary films directed by James Cameron and Steven Spielberg
The film was derided outside the United States for it's "gung-ho American jingoism". A film about aliens attacking the whole damn Earth being named after an American patriotic holiday is more than a bit tone deaf to the perspectives of every body else on the planet.
I think all these critiques went over my head in 1996. I enjoyed the movie, more or less, at the time. My expectations were not that high and Independence Day met them. I saw this movie for the disaster movie pastiche it was with an all star cast against an alien attack instead of a burning skyscraper or a capsized ocean liner.
My biggest thrill was seeing Brent Spiner as not Data. That was so cool.
OK, that is that for today's Cinema Sunday. Enjoy the 4th of July wherever you are. Stay safe.
Until next time, remember to be good to one another and don't hog all the popcorn, will ya?
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