Independence Day (1996)

“The question of whether or not we are alone in the universe has been answered.”

Also… “Welcome to Earth! 👊🏿”

Independence Day is a retelling of the classic story of the desperate 1776 attack by Will Smith, Bill Pullman, Jeff Goldblum, and General Washington against British forces in New Jersey, it….

Errrr….sorry…mixed up my notes…

We’ll cut to the the chase.

If you haven’t seen this yet, you need to. Independence Day (ID4) is the best aliens invade the Earth film ever made (at least on this planet).

So what’s this movie about and why is it so good?

ID4 begins with a dark shadow passing over the U.S. flag on the moon. Within hours, the shadow transforms into a fleet of ships hovering over the world’s major cities. We’d throw in a Stellar Spoiler alert, but if the trailer doesn’t tip you that this is a movie about aliens blowing up a whole bunch of the Earth, you may be in the wrong movie.

”Oh no, you did not shoot that green @#$! at me!” — Capt. Steven Hiller, USMC

If you haven’t caught it yet, there is a whole lot of action in this movie and a ton of special effects. Both are solid and the effects, which were cutting edge when they came out in 1996, hold up incredibly well.

There are also non-stop callbacks, Easter Eggs, and just cool plug-ins, from R.E.M.’s It’s the End of the World as We Know It playing when the aliens are first detected, to The Day the Earth Stood Still playing on tv in the background during one scene, to all the X-Files and Area 51 tropes you can eat. There is even a line from Airplane!

But for all that, the talent and some of the best one-liners in movie history (especially by Will Smith) really carry the day. The cast reads like a Who’s Who: Smith as a Marine pilot, Pullman as the President (and a former fighter pilot), Randy Quaid as a crop duster (and another former fighter pilot), Jeff Goldblum as a smart science guy, Judd Hirsch as his pop, and smaller but cool bits by Brent Spinner (Star Trek), Adam Baldwin (Firefly), Vivica Fox, Harry Connick Jr., Mary McDonnell (Battlestar Galactica), and Robert Loggia.

This is a good movie.

But…and this isn’t a criticism…it is also a movie of its time: a world when the U.S. was the unquestioned leader of a pre-9/11, pre-Iraq/Afghanistan/Syria, pre-tech/housing bubble collapse, pre-all-things politics and pandemic world when everything seemed possible. It was, even in the midst of an alien invasion, a more hopeful world than the present one seems some days. On those days this is a good one to pull out and rewind.

You can watch (or rewatch) Independence Day HERE.

Five out of Five Motherships.

🛸🛸🛸🛸🛸

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