Welcome to Earth

I want to be clear from the outset: Independence Day is not a good movie. This is a cheesy, silly, and frankly stupid film that likely would be panned by critics and audiences alike if it were released now. Hell, it had a sequel that came out only a few years ago, and that film was, quite literally, hated by everyone despite the fact that it was just as cheesy, silly, and stupid as the previous film. People had moved on, and the kinds of mind-blowing special effects that Independence Day offered back in 1996 didn’t seem nearly as mind-blowing in 2016.

Although, if we’re being honest, one of the big reasons Independence Day: Resurgence failed was because Will Smith (who was still living in pre-slap times at that point) didn’t sign on, and Will Smith was the big draw for the first Independence Day film. The 1996 original had a winning mix that audiences hadn’t grown tired of yet: disaster filmmaking, massive special effects sequences, and Will Smith delivering his brand of charisma left, right, and center. Of course Independence Day, which was made on a budget of $75 Mil, was going to be a hit. No one expected it to make $817.4 Mil at a time when those kinds of Box Office returns were unheard of. Independence Day was a juggernaut at the Box Office.

But that doesn’t stop it from being bad. It really is a terrible film when you go back and watch it again. The trick is, though, that it really doesn’t matter. That mix of filmmaking, special effects, and Will Smith really does paper over so many of the flaws of the film. The story is stupid but that doesn’t matter when the film moves so quickly. The characters are dumb, but they’re all just vessels for one-liners. And the consequences don’t really seem to matter, but it’s hard to care when everything blows up in such pretty fashion. Independence Day is a stupid film made well, and back in 1996 that was enough to make it a massive hit.

The film has a number of people it follows as it bounces back and forth between a huge cast of characters (as is the style in disaster filmmaking). There’s Captain Steven Hiller (Will Smith), a Marine pilot who really wants to get into the space program. His dream is to fly in outer space, but it seems unlikely he’ll get his chance unless something major happens. By sheer happenstance, we do get a major event: a massive alien invasion featuring gigantic, city-sized hovering discs that appear over every major metropolitan area. Unlike most people, Hiller suspects there’s something off about the space ships, and he’s not the only one.

As we learn from television signal specialist David Levinson (Jeff Goldblum), there’s a pulse signal that the aliens are broadcasting to each other, and it seems like the pulse is steadily changing in frequency. Almost like a countdown. He goes to his ex-wife, Constance Spano (Margaret Colin), Communications Director for President Thomas J. Whitmore (Bill Pullman), but no one will listen to him. He does finally get people to wake up, right when it’s almost too late, and they manage to escape the White House just in time. But plenty of others aren’t so lucky, and when the aliens start blasting each and every major city, all at once, it’s pretty clear that the aliens have only one goal: to conquer the world. And that leads all of the characters in the film, major and minor, to head towards Area 51, where there might just be a solution to this invasion.

The trailers for Independence Day sold the film based on all the destruction and carnage that the aliens cause within the first act of the film. And, make no mistake, that carnage is pretty awesome looking, even all these decades later. The special effects, done with a combination of practical effect, modeling, and CGI, hold up just as well today as they did back in 1996, creating pure disaster movie eye candy. If you went into the theater in 1996 to see the cities get blown up real good, you did not leave disappointed. Independence Day delivered.

The problem for the film is that once those early sequences, the key moments that drew audiences in, are over, the film still has to actually tell a story and conclude the whole doomsday scenario is set up for our heroes. And while writer / director Roland Emmerich knows how to do special effects (even his worst films, like Moonfall, are still filled with great special effects), actual story craft has never been his strong suit. All the flaws in his storytelling are writ large here in Independence Day, leading to one of the dumbest films of 1996, by far.

The film relies on one convenience after another just to get the plot going. If David didn’t happen to be smart enough to figure out the alien pulse, he wouldn’t be able to warn anyone. If he hadn’t been married to Constance, who happened to now work for the President, he wouldn’t have been able to get the President out of D.C. in time. And if the President isn’t saved, then there’s no reason for everyone to go to Area 51 where the entire back half of the film proceeds. And, at the same time, Will Smith’s Capt. Hiller ends up there because he was fighting aliens over Vegas and crash landed near Area 51. A bunch of people living in camper vans all get to Area 51 because of Hiller. His girlfriend, Jasmine Dubrow (Vivica A. Fox), ends up there because she just so happens to find the wreckage of the First Lady’s plan and saves First Lady Marilyn Whitmore (Mary McDonnell), and then the FIrst Lady says to go to Area 51. It’s just one contrivance after another to get all the major characters at the same place.

And that says nothing about the much derided conclusion, where David and Hiller sneak into an alien mothership and hack it via a Mac laptop. The amount of twisting the plot has to do to make that work is insane. The software alone would be incompatible, and that’s to say nothing about the security on the alien ship. The sequence is amusing, sure, but any kind of thought spent on it shows just how much the whole idea doesn’t work.

But Independence Day slides by because it manages to keep you from thinking. All of its diverse plotlines bounce back and forth, keeping the story moving so you never linger in any one scene for too long. The action comes regularly, and it really is very good, full of all the fireworks and explosions you want in a big, dumb, alien invasion film. And the actors are all very charismatic, mugging and delivering one-liners for the camera as if their lives depended on it. The film knows what it’s doing, at a purely technical level, and it works as hard as it can to keep you in your seats, watching dumbfounded and more pretty action happens while the characters smile and act like it’s just another day at the office.

Independence Day works despite itself. It’s a film that never should have been this successful. Hell, Emmerich only managed to get one other film anywhere near the Box Office performance of Independence Day, and that was 2012, released in 2009 just in time to play to everyone’s paranoia about the (supposed) end of the world coming in 2012. It was another time where the writer / director was able to capture the zeitgeist just right, and I guess you have to give him credit for that. Not all of his films are good (just look at Godzilla), but the man has a knack for capturing a moment.

There’s nothing offensive about Independence Day. The film is stupid, sure, but even going back now I still had fun with it. It’s a breezy, silly, enjoyable film even though it clocks in at just shy of two-and-a-half hours, and you never mind hanging out with it. While it’s unlikely a film like this could ever be successful again in theaters, there was a brief moment in 1996 when everyone had Independence Day fever, and you can kind of understand why. This is a slick, bombastic film that keeps the audience engaged the whole way through. Who cares if it’s stupid as hell? It had massive city explosions and a whole lot of fun characters doing cool things. Sometimes that’s really all you need.