Blockbuster Overload: Our ongoing series looking at movies that took the blockbuster genre to the extreme and perhaps to excess. Note that these reviews may contain spoilers.
What Is It?
This film gives us the story of aliens arriving around Earth in fifteen-mile-wide ships that park themselves over several of the planet’s major cities. They make no attempt to contact us, but computer whiz David Levinson discovers a hidden transmission that he believes is being used to coordinate a worldwide attack. He contacts his ex-wife, who is the White House Communications Director, so that she can help him warn the President about the imminent attack. They escape from Washington, D.C., just as the aliens launch their assault and destroy that city, New York, Los Angeles, and several other major cities across the globe. The President orders a nuclear counterattack against the alien ships, but it proves ineffective because of the shields protecting their craft. However, one of the small alien fighter craft is captured after Captain Steven Hiller decoys it into the Grand Canyon during a dogfight and causes it to crash. Levinson then comes up with the idea of using this ship to board the mothership in orbit around the planet and plant a computer virus that will disable the shields on the ships still attacking Earth. Hiller agrees to pilot the ship, and Levinson goes along as they prepare for a last-ditch effort to save the human race.
Cast: Will Smith, Bill Pullman, Jeff Goldblum, Mary McDonnell, Judd Hirsch, Margaret Colin, Randy Quaid
Crew: Roland Emmerich (Writer/Director), Dean Devlin (Writer), David Arnold (Music)
Original Release: July 3, 1996
What Were Its Excesses?
Roland Emmerich’s Independence Day was one of the most anticipated movies of 1996 (after a $1.3 million Super Bowl spot earlier in the year generated significant buzz) and represented yet another huge leap forward for Hollywood in special effects wizardry. Yet it delivered basically a remake of H.G. Wells’ The War of the Worlds (the book and the 1953 film) without giving credit to the source material, and it also represented a move forward into big, dumb, loud sci-fi blockbusters. As a popcorn film, it works pretty well, but it quickly falls apart under any intense scrutiny.
A Closer Look:
The synopsis above should certainly have a very familiar ring to fans of classic science fiction literature and movies: An alien race with vastly superior technology comes to Earth and launches an unprovoked attack that our opposition pales against. We resort to nuclear retaliation, but it has no effect because the alien ships have impenetrable shields. SPOILER ALERT: In the end, and against all odds, these technologically advanced, seemingly unstoppable aliens succumb to something as simple as a virus.
Independence Day delivers little more than a mega-budget remake of H.G. Wells’ The War of the Worlds, throwing in some of the additions from the George Pal film version (pretty much duplicating the nuclear attack scene) along with a little bit of Arthur C. Clarke’s Childhood’s End and multiple other swipes from sci-fi (and action/adventure) books, films, and TV shows. Of course, there’s nothing fundamentally wrong with drawing from those sources. I just find it rather annoying that they give Wells absolutely no credit for the film, even though they followed basically the same story (and substituting a computer virus for a biological virus does not allow them to take a mulligan here).
However, despite the fact that ID4 gives us very little in the way of originality, it’s not necessarily a bad film. In fact, I would say this one is actually Emmerich’s best work (though not that that’s saying too much). He and Dean Devlin do succeed in taking the familiar and giving it enough of a twist to at least not feel completely hackneyed and derivative. The special effects were spectacular for the ’90s and still look virtually flawless today, and the dialogue is peppy and mostly avoids the copy-and-paste trap. And Emmerich also managed to assemble a first-rate cast that gelled and gave the film enough of a boost to keep it from feeling like big-budget hack sci-fi (even though it really is). He also managed to tread that fine line between drama and humor so that both elements mix together perfectly and do not work against each other.
This movie did prove quite a boon for Will Smith, who used it as a launching point from television sitcom star to A-list movie mainstay, and his performance definitely helped carry the film. But ID4 had several additional standout performances, particularly Jeff Goldblum, who developed good chemistry with Smith. Plus, Bill Pullman, Mary McDonnell, Judd Hirsch, Randy Quaid, and Star Trek: TNG veteran Brent Spiner all managed to make the best of their screen time.
I do have to admit to having a personal affinity for this film, and I can watch it over and over because it is high on the guilty-pleasure scale. It’s a great popcorn film at best, but it’s susceptible to the “emperor has no clothes” syndrome and quickly falls apart when put under any level of serious scrutiny. Still, it does provide a fun couple of hours to shut your mind down and enjoy the cinematic pyrotechnics, good character acting, and alien butt-kicking fun.
All that said, though, this one definitely helped kick-start a dubious trend that would develop with the mega-budget films to follow. Hollywood quickly took notice of its box office success, causing studios to lean even further into big, dumb, loud sci-fi blockbusters like Armageddon, 2005’s The War of the Worlds, the Transformers films, and more. After ID4, that template became the rule rather than the exception among the blockbusters cranked out by the major studios. So feel free to enjoy this film for its dazzling special effects and brain-dead fun, but also know that it marked a notable, inauspicious shift in Hollywood after its release in 1996.
The Story Continues:
Independence Day proved to be a big hit at the Box Office, pulling in $817 million dollars globally on a budget of $75 million, and it later became a mainstay on the cable television channels. There were plans for a sequel as early as 2001, but that took a long time to develop. It eventually hit the screen in 2016 as Independence Day: Resurgence with many of the cast members returning, but Will Smith was not among that group because he was busy with other projects and also demanding top dollar at that time. The sequel takes place twenty years after humanity’s victory over the alien invaders, as Earth has used recovered extraterrestrial technology to build a powerful global defense network. But when an even larger and more advanced alien force arrives seeking revenge, old heroes and a new generation of pilots must unite to save the planet from extinction once again. It was not well-received by critics or viewers, currently holding only a 29% Tomatometer Score (based on critics’ reviews) and a 30% Popcornmeter Score (based on audience response) on Rotten Tomatoes. And while it did not count as a Box Office flop, it fell short of turning a profit in its theatrical run, and it has since stalled the franchise.
Should It Be Rebooted?
Even though the original film counts as a big, dumb, sfx-heavy blockbuster, that doesn’t mean that it needs a reboot. That fact is that its visuals are quite impressive (heavy on the practical effects), and they still stand up quite well today. Instead of rebooting ID4, it makes more sense just to do another remake of War of the Worlds (giving the source material the proper credit this time) and run with that. It is possible that they could do another sequel, and Roland Emmerich has ideas on where to go next, involving an intergalactic journey. If they did that, they should try to get Will Smith back (he is not fetching quite as high a salary these days) and pair him with Jeff Goldblum again. Perhaps that would be a good way to resurrect the franchise, but a ground-up reboot is definitely not needed for this one.
Interesting Facts:
Independence Day was one of the last major productions to rely heavily on practical effects, and it holds the record for most miniature model work to appear in one film. Its budget of $75 million was high for the time, but it paid off as it became the top-grossing film of the year.
Using the computer virus to defeat the aliens was not part of the original script, and Goldblum came up with the idea, drawing on his character David Levinson’s background as a satellite communications expert.
Where Can You Watch It?
The movie has been released on DVD, and Blu-ray, and you can rent or purchase it VOD. It is currently available for streaming on Hulu.
