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.

Plot

Many years after an alien spaceship crashed and was recovered by Area 51 scientists (who made first contact with the aliens) in the 1950s, the US and other nations are in shock at flying saucers above many parts of the country and the world. Some (including an airplane pilot who claims to have been abducted by aliens who want to find Humanity's strengths and weaknesses) have already theorized that the aliens are up to no good, but the Americans and others don't listen. The aliens eventually act on their mission, conquered half of Earth by destroying most of the major cities, and plan a troop invasion to exterminate the rest of humanity. Several groups survive the attack, found that the aliens travel from planet to planet to cleanse natural resources and that they are the next target from an alien POW, and the counterattacks begin. It climaxes on July 4 where the aliens are thrown off guard by a sort of computer virus followed by nuclear weaponry and the human race strikes back, destroying their mothership and all of the alien destroyer fleet.

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. Others, however, have noted that given that the film was released in the United States over the Fourth of July weekend, explicitly titled Independence Day, one could hardly expect otherwise.

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.
• 145 minutes long
• 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
• Internet Movie Database entry