Independence Day

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Independence Day

Directed by Roland Emmerich, Independence Day was an epic film about an apocalyptic invasion of the Earth by extraterrestrials. The film opened in July of 1996 to enormous box-office profits. It benefitted from a canny advertising campaign featuring as its centerpiece a shot of the destruction of the White House and set a record by collecting $100 million in six days. Independence Day went on to earn $306 million, putting it among the top ten highest grossing films ever. Most critics were less kind to the film, pointing to its stereotypical ethnic characters, an implausible deus ex machina ending, and a rather nationalistic subtext disingenuously cloaked behind its multicultural pretensions. Others pointed to the extremely derivative nature of the film, including not-so-subtle science fiction borrowings from The War of the Worlds, The Day the Earth Stood Still, Alien, Star Wars, Close Encounters of the Third Kind, V, and The X Files. Nevertheless, audiences flocked to Independence Day, making it the cinematic success story of 1996.

Set in the month of July during a year in the early twenty-first century, the film opens ominously, with a shot of a gigantic shadow, accompanied by rumbles and tremors, passing over the site of mankind's first lunar landing. Scientific and military organizations alike quickly detect that an immense object one-fourth the size of the moon, apparently under intelligent control, is taking up a position in near-Earth orbit. The object, which turns out to be a mother ship, releases 15 smaller, but still miles across, disc-shaped craft that enter the Earth's atmosphere in clouds of fire to hover silently over major world cities. The film then introduces its major characters, all of whom will transcend personal failure to become heroes in the upcoming battle: the politically embattled U.S. President and veteran Gulf War pilot, Thomas Whitmore; Steven Hiller, an F-16 pilot and failed NASA applicant; Jasmine Dubrow, Hiller's exotic-dancer girlfriend; David Levinson, a New York cable-television scientist who has failed at his marriage and his career; Constance Spano, Levinson's ex-wife and aide to President Whitmore; and Russell Casse, an alcoholic cropduster and Vietnam War veteran pilot. As a panicked civilization becomes increasingly destabilized, Levinson discovers that the discs are using Earth's satellites to synchronize a countdown to a simultaneous worldwide attack. Accompanied by his father, Levinson convinces Constance to tell the president about the imminent attack. Though the news comes too late for any effective evacuation, the president, some of his staff, and the Levinsons are able to escape Washington just as the discs, acting in concert, fire their primary weapons to create firestorms that engulf and utterly destroy the world's major cities, including New York and Los Angeles.

The second part of the film focuses on mankind's counterattack against the alien invaders. The president, who has lost his wife in the invasion, personally commands the national, and eventually worldwide, effort. Hiller not only survives a massive but futile F-16 attack on one of the discs and its hordes of fighters, but also manages to shoot down and capture alive one of the aliens. During the counteroffensive, Whitmore learns to his anger that a covert branch of the government, kept secret even from the president, has been studying an alien fighter, captured in the late 1950s, at the infamous Area 51 in the Nevada desert. Through close inspection of the captured ship, Levinson finds that he will be able to introduce a disabling computer virus into the alien computer network, provided someone can dock the smaller fighter with the mother ship. Hiller volunteers to fly the alien fighter. Meanwhile, the president and Russell Casse, among other volunteers, suit up to fly a coordinated F-16 attack against all of the discs the second the virus paralyzes the alien craft and lowers their shields. Whitmore delivers an inspirational speech to the amassed volunteers shortly before the attack. Even with the virus successfully introduced and the shields down, however, the discs prove too hardy for missiles until Casse's suicide plunge into a disc's primary weapon shows the other pilots how to bring the discs down. Hiller and Levinson, barely escaping the destruction of the mother ship, fly back to Earth to find that the smaller discs have all been destroyed as well. The victory, which takes place on July 4, ensures that Independence Day will no longer be only an American holiday.

German-born Roland Emmerich and American Dean Devlin, the creative duo behind Independence Day, first teamed up in the United States for 1992's Universal Soldier, which starred Jean Claude Van Damme. Emmerich and Devlin achieved name-recognition status and modest commercial success with 1994's Stargate, a film about aliens, time travel, the modern military, and ancient Egypt. For Stargate, Emmerich directed, co-wrote, and co-produced and Devlin co-wrote and co-produced, as would be the case with their next project. According to its creators, Independence Day was conceived to be an homage to war and adventure movies, specifically the 1970s epic-scale and multi-character disaster movies. The chairman of Twentieth Century-Fox, Peter Chernin, agreed to back Emmerich and Devlin's project. Solid, recognizable actors such as Will Smith (Steve Hiller), Bill Pullman (President Whitmore), Jeff Goldblum (David Levinson), Randy Quaid (Russell Casse), Mary McDonnell (the First Lady), Judd Hirsch (doting Jewish father Julius Levinson), Harvey Fierstein (David's boss Marty Gilbert), and Brent Spiner (in a brief but unforgettable cameo as the outlandish Dr. Brakkish Okun, scientific leader at the Area 51 research facility) were cast. Location shooting began in 1995. Manhattan provided an urban background for crowd reaction shots to the awe-inspiring arrival of the interstellar visitors. The Bonneville Salt Flats in Utah served as a panoramic backdrop for the scene where Hiller leads an enormous caravan of refugees to the Area 51 facility. The hangars of the old Hughes aircraft facility in Los Angeles housed the special effects facilities involving the film's extensive pyrotechnic and miniatures (aircraft, cities, alien ships) work. In postproduction, dozens of computer-generated images were combined with existing special effects shots to create an intricately layered, visually spectacular depiction of the alien invasion. (The special effects won the 1996 Academy Award in that category.) The film ultimately cost $71 million, which was not an extravagant amount by 1990s cinematic budgetary standards. The resultant financial success of Independence Day placed enormous pressure on Emmerich and Devlin to produce a film of similar spectacle and profitability as a follow-up. However, their 1998 film Godzilla, while profitable, was considered to be one of 1998's big-budget flops. Also released in 1998, the laser disc edition of Independence Day is eight minutes longer than the already lengthy theatrical release, primarily because of additional dialogue between the principal characters and one scene involving Dr. Okun's inspection of the interior of the alien fighter.