Subject: Retrospective: Independence Day (1996)

From: Dragan Antulov <[email-masked]>
Date: Fri, 14 Feb 2003 20:11:38 -0000

INDEPENDENCE DAY (1996)

A Film Review 
Copyright Dragan Antulov 2003

The best known of all movie casualties of WTC attacks is 
INDEPENDENCE DAY, 1996 science fiction spectacle directed by 
Roland Emmerich and Dean Devlin. On September 11th 2001 many 
horrified spectators and commentators, lost for words to describe 
their feelings and images that they had witnessed or saw, used the 
phrase "It is just like INDEPENDENCE DAY". But they were wrong, 
because five years earlier, when they saw images of American cities 
and landmarks being obliterated, they cheered in the cinema, being 
entertained by that fictional destruction. Five years later the 
destruction wasn't fictional and the perception of INDEPENDENCE 
DAY was forever changed.

The plot of INDEPENDENCE DAY is rather simple. On July 2nd, two 
days before America's greatest holiday, SETI scientists discover giant 
meteor approaching Earth. The meteor is soon revealed to be huge 
alien space ship, from which 25 smaller ships come out and take 
positions over major Earth cities. While US President Thomas J. 
Whitmore (played by Bill Pullman) desperately want to prevent 
panic and speculate about aliens' attention, former scientist and cable 
operator David Levinson (played by Jeff Goldblum) deciphers aliens 
signals and becomes convinced that the attack is imminent. Next day, 
Washington, New York, Los Angeles and many other cities are 
destroyed. Survivors, led by President, take shelter in secret Area 51 
military base, rumoured to have captured alien ship on its premises. 
From there, President and his team must quickly find ways to defeat 
seemingly invulnerable aliens before 4th July - the day when the 
aliens would finish off destroy all human life on Earth.

Without WTC tragedy, INDEPENDENCE DAY would have been 
remembered as nothing more than terribly over-hyped, yet very 
successful Hollywood summer blockbuster. Like in many similar 
films, the most of the creative effort was invested in clever ways to 
promote the film, than into special effects - all at the expense of 
things like plot and characters. The result is the series of truly 
impressive images, but they are connected with rather weak story 
with plenty of serious scientific implausibilities and the characters are 
nothing more than the series of cliches - many of them introduced 
simply to fill up "PC" quotas. Yet, even with such creative flaws, 
there is something like a genuine artistic vision hiding under cover of 
Hollywood commercialism. Dean Devlin and Roland Emmerich 
obviously took this film as an excellent opportunity to make some of 
their childhood dreams true and spend tens of millions dollars in 
order to create good old-fashioned SF film about Earth having to 
fight brutal alien invasion. Many fans of SF cinema would be satisfied 
with many nods to genre classics like George Pal's WAR OF THE 
WORLDS, George Lucas' STAR WARS or Ridley Scott's ALIEN. 
Emmerich and Devlin even manage to transcend the American 
chauvinism implied in the title and suggest that the only way for 
Earth to fight aliens and solve problems of similar attitude lies in 
better international co-operation and understanding. The positive 
attitude of the film could be seen even in the cast, which makes quite 
a valiant effort in order to elevate their characters over cliches. Bill 
Pullman is quite effective as President who transforms from 
indecisive weakling into resolute hero, while Will Smith with his 
wise-cracking helps the audience accept some of the less credible 
aspects of the film.

All in all, INDEPENDENCE DAY probably didn't deserve all of its 
box-office numbers, but it didn't deserve snobbish critics' bashing 
either. One day, when the technology makes special effects obsolete 
and memories of 2001 fade away, new generations might see this 
film as one of prime guilty pleasures from our time.

RATING: 5/10 (++)

Review written on February 14th 2003

Dragan Antulov a.k.a. Drax
http://film.purger.com - Filmske recenzije na hrvatskom/Movie Reviews in
Croatian
http://www.purger.com/users/drax/reviews.htm - Movie Reviews in English
http://www.ofcs.org - Online Film Critics Society

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X-RT-RatingText: 5/10