Independence Day

Independence Day is a text-book example of populist film-making, providing a tried-and-true mix of flag-waving heroics and flagrant sentimentality, the sort of thing that John Wayne would have been proud of, blown up (metaphorically and literally) and extended to humungus proportions for multiplex big screens.  Unsurprisingly it was a huge box office hit and not just in America.

Holding back nothing in the way of action special effects and larding the whole shebang with a trio of syrupy romantic sub-plots director Roland Emmerich and producer and co-writer Dean Devlin invoke the much-visited alien invasion idea positing a wholesale invasion of Earth by malevolent extra-terrestrials in huge spaceships.  Heading up the response that we know will result in the inevitable is hot-shot pilot Steven Hiller (Will Smith), U.S. President Thomas J. Whitmore (Bill Pullman), science whizz-kid, David Levinson (Jeff Goldblum) each of whom has a female counterpart. There’s also a couple of cute kids and Randy Quaid as an alcoholic crop duster who claims to have been captured years earlier by the aliens.

It’s a silly story that unlike the 1951 genre classic The Day The Earth Stood Still, which it actually quotes from (it is seen on the television set in Quaid’s trailer home) shows no sign of reflectiveness but rather goes for tub-thumping America-saves-the-world (or to paraphrase Will Smith’s words "kicks E.T.'s butt") rhetoric and awesome destructiveness with a few jocose throwaway lines along the way to keep the popcorn brigade amused.

The film was criticized in its day for its lack of originality and implausible story but at least technically it’s well done. As one who doesn’t watch much sci-fi its appropriation of apparently better predecessors didn’t bother me although the travestying of Slim Pickens' act of self-sacrifice at the end Dr Strangelove: Or, How I Learned to Stop Worrying and Love the Bomb by the Randy Quaid character exemplifies the film’s real problem  - its brainless militarism.

 

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