Fifteen years ago today the film “Independence Day” opened. While certainly not the most cerebral of all motion pictures, it was damned fine entertainment. Like the “Transformers” franchise, there was just a whole hell of a lot of it that was blatantly stupid. Aliens crossing lightyears to strip a planet of resources? Starfaring aliens needing human satelites for communications (what, they don’t have their own?)? City-sized spaceships that need a live-broadcast countdown… rather than a simple clock? And of course, an alien operating system that a mid-90’s laptop can easily interface with?
Sure, it was really cheesy and silly. But the first half or so of the movie, through the destruction of the cities and up to “Welcome to Erf,” was surprisingly creepy and effective. It led the way to later cinematic aliens trashing Earth on an epic scale, such as “War of the Worlds,” each of the “Transformers” movies and TV series such as “Falling Skies.”
The thing that has stuck with me most, though, may have been entirely unintentional. Months before the movie was released, the preview was shown in theaters. The climax of the trailer showed the White House getting zapped by the alien Death Beam and blowing up with a massive fireball. I suspect the intent was Drama. But the actual result weas… laughter. I recall the whole theater erupting into laughter and even cheers when the White House Got Blowed Up Real Good. I understand that that was a common reaction to the trailer all across the US.
While that almost certainly wasn’t the intent of the filmmakers, in retrospect it was probably inevitable. When Americans are at our best, we are busy showing no respect whatsoever to “our leaders,” A.K.A. politicians. We seem to accept that there must be some reason for ’em, but that’s no reason to not flip ’em the bird, moon ’em, throw pies at ’em or just point and laugh. And at the time – early 1996, IIRC – President Bill Clinton was busy turning the White House into even more of a joke. So laughing at alien invaders nuking the White House was pretty much a given.
Hell, just six months after ID4, “Mars Attacks!” came out and featured a “Martian Ambassador” who takes out Congress. This time, the response in the movie itself to this event was to have a little old lady shout “They blew up Congress!” then laugh herself silly.
I suspect if a movie had aliens or terrorists blow up the UN General Assembly, THAT would be damned funny too, no matter what the movie-makers intentions are.
9 Responses to “15 Years Since Independence Day”
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Cheering was the general reaction when I first saw the trailer as well.
Last election day, the Onion ran an article which said, “Voters go to the polls despite fears of electing next Congress” 🙂
I never saw the movie. Did the UN get blown up?
> I never saw the movie.
*BOGGLE* How in the hell is that even possible? It’s like saying “I’ve never seen ‘Star Wars’.”
> Did the UN get blown up?
All of New York City got flattened, as did LA, Moscow, D.C. and a whole bunch of other cities. NYC, LA and DC were the only ones shown, though.
What *wasn’t* shown was the apocalypse that followed on shortly after the credits started rolling. Just as the Forest Moon of Endor got trashed by city-block sized chunks of the Death Star, Earth got pummeled by hundreds of chunks bigger than the K-T Dinosaur Killer.
What I want to figure out is what if Lucas said about the Death Star’s size originally (200 miles in diameter) and the whole thing had as many people running around inside of it on average as shown in Stars Wars, how many people did Luke Skywalker kill, anyway?
I mean, they were bad people, but we’re also talking Stalin-scale numbers of of fatalities.
“A million here, a million there, and pretty soon your talking real casualties.”
Okay, it’s not like blowing up Alderaan, but Luke blows the whole works off like he’d swatted a fly . 😀
They cheered at the White House scene when I saw it, too.
In one of the Pink Panther movies Herbert Lom turned his disintegrator ray on the UN building. Nobody seemed to miss it much.
What makes the UN fun is that America bitches about it all the time, but was responsible for it coming into being.
“United Nations” was originally the name for the group of Allied Nations that fought Germany, Italy, and the Japanese in WWII.
That’s why they form the Security Council, that can tell the General Assembly to go fuck themselves if they come up with something the Big Boys don’t like.
“All nations are equal in the UN, but some are more equal than others”, as Orwell would say. 😀
I can’t believe it has been 15 years. The ships reminded me of the old posters they had in the backs or Starlog magazine. With Skyline and Battle LA we see more of what might be called city ships, with that Terran Trade Authority look.
You might enjoy “The Pink Panther Strikes Again”, the UN building gets disintegrated in there.