ID4 = (SCI-FI) - SCI
INDEPENDENCE DAY
[SPOILER]
A film review by Steve Schear
Copyright 1996 Steve Schear
In short: An entertaining, if juvevile, summer Sci-Fi flic. INDEPENDENCE DAY (ID4) is full of great special effects, poor science, a few memorable one-liners and a thin plot lifted from WAR OF THE WORLDS and a two-part STAR TREK: THE NEXT GENERATION episode. ID4 will no doubt make gobs of money, but I predict will be no more memorable than the team's previous, also flawed, effort "STARGATE".
Cast in the footsteps of Irwin Allen's destruction epics, ID4 has a large cast of stereotypical characters with little for an over 25 audience to identify with. The plot is simple: Evil aliens come to conquor Earth in a mother ship 1/4th the size of the moon and dispatch a dozen or so "smaller" ships, only a 15-miles across, to lay waste to Earth's cities.
Not since George Pal's 1953 film THE WAR OF THE WORLDS has someone had the guts to offer up a decent global destruction, alien invasion, film. The special effects for showing the massive carnage were considered too expensive. Producer and director Roland Emmerich and Dean Devlin (who co-wrote the screenplay) were convinced the technology was ready and cost effective, and the results are spectacular.
However, from the start the screenwriters basic leave science behind (they obviously never took Astronomy 101). If an object the size (and assumed mass) of the Mother Ship came into Earth's proximity our world would be quickly torn apart by tidal forces. This is how the astroids were formed. No need to invade. The aliens could just harvest the debris.
As humanity's extermination begins, the characters lives are drawn together. Although it seems we don't have a chance, somehow we have to find a way to beat their superior technology. The Alien ships are huge and protected by an impenetratable shield. This is going to be really tough, in fact, its really impossible given the available time and Earth's technolgy. And therein lie the problem! ID4 would have been much better and more believable had the Aliens won the first round, destroying the Earth.
Bill Pullman plays the American President as a completly unbelievable character, an honest politition. A naive young ex-fighter pilot of the gulf war, with strong honor and ethics, he'd must have run as a self-funded independent to get elected. He's weak and nice, not at all the type to be a leader.
Given the script, the performances are very good. Will Smith plays a charming and cocky fighter pilot; Jeff Goldblum is a nebish computer nerd, with Judd Hirsch as his streotypical Jewish father; and Brent Spinner is great as a recluse xenobiologist in charge of the top-secret Area 51 base. I felt that Brent's role should have been expanded. A good cameo is given by Harry Connick, Jr. as Will's squadron mate, and beautiful Vivica Fox offers up a good love interest for Will.
The special effects are the focus of the movie. Most impressive are the destruction of New York, Los Angeles and Washington, D.C.
Trekkies should recognize ID4's plot as little more than a thin re-hash of TNG's Borg episode. The Mother ship with its reliance on central coordination is almost straight from the series, as is Goldblum's use of a computer virus to disable the Alien defenses.
The President is taken to Area 51 where Brent shows him the bodies of three Aliens and their fighter craft which crashed almost 50 years ago in the New Mexico desert. Government scientists had been studying them all this time, but couldn't figure out how they work, or even get the ship to power up. That is until the Mother ship and its coordinating signal is received. The speed, only a few hours, with which Jeff's character is able to comprehend the intracicies of an Alien technology and devise a computer virus was for me the script's last straw.
Jeff and Will volunteer to deliver a pair of nukes to the mother ship using the resurected Alien fighter. That they could fool the Mother ship's advanced communication and coordination technology into accepting into its bossom a craft missing for 50 years, made my jaw drop.
The renowned English playright Oscar Wilde must have had works like ID4 in mind when quiped that, "Nobody ever lost money underestimating the intelligence of the audience."
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