INDEPENDENCE DAY
A film review by Mark R. Leeper
Copyright 1996 Mark R. Leeper
Capsule: This is a huge production that starts
with the plot of the film THE WAR OF THE WORLDS and
hangs on it bits and even scenes from a lot of
other films. We have a no-holds-barred alien
invasion film that is willing to kill off whole
cities for the camera. This big spectacular
special effects film may be the most visually
impressive so far in the 1990s. Much of the
audience will get pulled into the action and will
not care that the writing borrows so much from many
other films. Rating: high +2 (-4 to +4). A
discussion of some of the ideas of the film follows
the main review in a spoiler section.
In retrospect there was something positively refreshing about George Pal's 1953 film THE WAR OF THE WORLDS. Over the years we have seen many alien invasion films in which the aliens come as seed-pods to replace us, or they have an advance guard take over our minds, or they seed our planet with alien vampires. Sometimes they really are friendly; sometimes they only pretend to be friendly; sometimes they are nasty and hide out in swamps; sometimes they steal our scientists. There are only a very small handful of films in which the aliens try straight-ahead overwhelming us with sheer military power. In most of them the aliens equivocate by negotiating at some point as they do in THE MYSTERIANS or EARTH VERSUS THE FLYING SAUCERS. Unique among these films, until now, has been THE WAR OF THE WORLDS in which the implacable aliens arrive with incredible power and start to pound humanity flat--no negotiation, no communication, no quarter given. That is perhaps a very believable scenario for an alien invasion, but since THE WAR OF THE WORLDS nobody has really wanted to tackle it in a movie. One reason it has not been done more often is that it would be really expensive in terms of special effects to do it right, showing scenes of mass destruction rather than telling the view about them. And it would require a script that would have the courage to depict whole population centers destroyed, showing thousands of people being killed. George Pal made a reasonable stab at that with his film, but nobody has really tried it since. Roland Emmerich and Dean Devlin apparently observed that film industry's visual technology has caught up with that concept. They also realized that the way was paved for film like this by the success of the television program, "The X-Files." Whatever convinced them that the time was right they now have a super- hit of a film.
A huge artificial object appears near the moon and start moving toward Earth. Without warning the skies over major cities go dark as they are covered by mysterious cloud-banks. From the cloud-banks emerge city-sized flying disks, fifteen miles in diameter. For six hours they float in ominous silence. Perhaps the best moments of the script are the tension before the initial attack. The script takes its time, slowly revealing more and more about the alien ships. The script, which was co-authored by Dean Devlin who produced and Roland Emmerich who directed, consciously mimics disaster film writing introducing a large number of characters, most played by solid but second string actors. Bill Pullman plays a rather youthful President of the United States is worried about his strong-willed but nice First Lady Marilyn (Mary McDonnell). He is aided by Constance (Margaret Colin) whose ex-husband David (Jeff Goldblum) is a whiz with computers but he is still working out his relationship with his cute but kvetchy Jewish father Julius (Judd Hirsch). Davis will soon find his fate entwined with hotshot Air Force pilot Captain Hiller (Will Smith). Most of the characters are developed only on the most superficial level with the most touching relationship being that between David and his father.
Emmerich and Devlin freely admit that there is much in INDEPENDENCE DAY that was inspired by other films. They cite 1940s war films and 1970s disaster films, but whole scenes seem to be lifted from films like ALIEN and THE RIGHT STUFF. In spite of the safe route of borrowing from established films, the script does take some chances. It is not many, but some characters the audience cares about get killed. While the script is heavy on coincidence and melodrama it never fails to be fun.
If this is not an intelligent film, it is not a really dumb one either. It is a big spectacular, almost two and a half hours, with its share of script problems. Much the same can be said of films like THE TEN COMMANDMENTS or THE TOWERING INFERNO. It is not intelligent, but it is fun. There is enough good to compensate for the negative points. I rate it a high +2 on the -4 to +4 scale.
Spoiler...Spoiler...Spoiler...Spoiler...Spoiler...Spoiler...Spoiler
There are a few of the ideas of the film that needed to be better explained. The aliens were here to steal out precious natural resources, supposedly. Our resources are valuable to us, but Earth is no richer in resources than any other planet in the solar system. It is not at all clear to me why they wasted so much energy and resource subduing a hostile native population. It might have been better adding a few words saying that they needed an atmosphere of oxygen to mine the resources or that they as a policy first subdue any populations that might be a threat before mining a solar system. On the other hand, perhaps it is better to leave them a little mysterious.
Part of the problem is that the aliens are a bit too much like us. They share our eyes, nose, mouth configuration, our five-fingered hands. This in spite of the fact that a daisy is a closer relative to us than they are. Not only are they too similar, their technology is way, way too similar. Humans can figure out how to fly craft instrumented for their anatomy and designed by their psychology. We are able to write and run programs on their computers. Isaac Newton was much closer to us than they are in terms of mental processes and I doubt that if he stumbled somehow on a modern PC it would be able to do much with it without instructions.
Mark R. Leeper
mleeper@lucent.com
Copyright 1996 Mark R. Leeper
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