Independence Day (movie)
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Template:Infobox Movie Independence Day is an American action movie about an attempted alien takeover of the Earth. The movie features several scenes of major American landmarks being destroyed by the aliens, such as the U.S. Bank Tower in Los Angeles, California, the Empire State Building and the White House. The film's success was partially credited to an extensive marketing campaign which began with a dramatic commercial during Super Bowl XXX. This movie was scheduled for release on Wednesday, July 3, 1996, but due to high level of anticipation for the film, many theaters began showing it on the evening of July 2, the same day the action in the film begins.
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Plot
In more modern times, after the rumored crash of an alien spacecraft recovered by "Area 51" in the '40s, the world is in shock as an alien ship of mindboggling proportions enters the Earth's orbit and begins an invasion. With technology thousands of years more advanced than humanity's, they quickly destroy several of the world's major cities, killing millions. Not all die, however, and the survivors form a resistance. Conventional missiles and nuclear weapons are to no avail, as the alien ships are strongly shielded by impenetrable forcefields. The movie climaxes on July 4 as the Earthlings use a computer virus to disrupt the shield, opening a window of opportunity to strike back.
Criticism
Whilst a commercial success, it was ridiculed by some critics for the plot (which involved causing the aliens' high-tech computers to malfunction by infecting them with a simple virus written on an Apple Macintosh (cf War of the Worlds,) and poor acting. Many people outside the United States (and some within) also derided the film for what was viewed as calculated pandering to excessive American nationalistic sentiment, as the film was released in the United States over the Fourth of July weekend and was explicitly titled Independence Day.
Advocates of the film point out that alien virus protection could have evolved to such a high level that archaic viruses might have passed under their notice due to a need to allocate processor power to more advanced scanning. It may also be that our modern computers may have been developed based on technology recovered from the Area 51 craft, thus making the two systems accidentally compatible.
Facts and figures
- Released in 1996.
- 153 minutes long in Special Edition version. 145 minutes long in theatrical version
- Directed by: Roland Emmerich
- Written by: Dean Devlin and Roland Emmerich
- Original music by: David Arnold
- Produced by: 20th Century Fox Centropolis Film Productions
- Distributed by: 20th Century Fox.
- Awards: Academy Award for Visual Effects 1996.
Cast
- Jeff Goldblum - David Levinson
- Bill Pullman - President Thomas J. Whitmore
- Will Smith - Captain Steven 'Eagle' Hiller
- Vivica A. Fox - Jasmine Dubrow
- Judd Hirsch - Julius Levinson
- Mary McDonnell - First Lady Marilyn Whitmore
- Randy Quaid - Russell Casse
- Brent Spiner - Dr. Stanley Okun
- Robert Loggia - General William M. Grey
Depicted locations
- Air Force One
- Area 51
- El Toro Marine Corps Air Station
- Los Angeles, California
- New York City, New York
- Houston, Texas
- Washington, D.C.
External links
- Independence Day on sciflicks.com (http://www.sciflicks.com/independence_day/)
- Internet Movie Database entry (http://www.imdb.com/title/tt0116629/)
Trivia
- In an alternate ending scene, Russell Casse (Randy Quaid) was originally denied service in the U.S.-led worldwide aerial counterattack force, so he flew on his unarmed biplane with a missile attached to it, knowing he was going to kill himself by destroying one of the alien space destroyers. The scene was dropped and later revised: in the new version of this scene, Casse joined the U.S.-led worldwide aerial counterattack force and flew an F-18 jet fighter plane instead of his biplane and later makes the decision to destroy the alien space destroyer on a suicide run after his firing mechanism jammed.ja:インデペンデンス・デイ
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