Independence day

Year of release : 1996

Run time : 2h25m

Genre : Sci Fi / Action

Cast : Will Smith, Bill Pullman, Jeff Goldblum, Vivica A. Fox

Director : Roland Emmerich

The movie was written by Roland Emmerich and Dean Devlin, who came up with the idea for it while promoting their movie, Stargate in 1994.

It's the 2nd of July 1996, and an alien mothership is entering the earth's orbit, near the moon, deploying large flying saucers which hoover over all the major cities of the US and the world.

NASA intercepts a radio signal, and technician David Levinson, working in New York, decodes it as being embedded into the global satellite transmissions as a countdown for a coordinated attack!

He calls his estranged wife and asks her to get him a meeting with the president of the USA, with whom he has a history ( he punched him in the face thinking he had an affair with his wife, which led to their divorce 3 years prior.But he still wears the wedding ring.)

US Marine captain Steven Hiller, who was on the Independence Day leave, is called back to El Toro.

People are panicking, seeing the large ships darkening the horizon, and at the government's message to leave the cities, they pack their things,trying to get out as fast as possible.

David gets his father to drive him to Washington (a 4 hour drive, by the way), to warn the president.

 

Steven's girlfriend,Jasmine, sees the news while at work (she's a stripper), and packs her bags, trying to leave the city with her son and their dog.

The US military is trying to make contact with the aliens, signaling to them they welcome them. While the helicopters hoover around the flying saucers which seem to cover half of the cities, the aliens open their ships' gates b0mbing the helicopters, then opening their weapons system, deploying a sort of directed energy weapon, destroying every city they hoover on top of.

Jasmine and her family manage to escape by hiding in the tunnel their car is in's, inspection room.

 

David manages to tell the president about his theory right before the alien attack, and they manage to escape in the nick of time, as the city is being destroyed.

After the attack, the president hears about Area 51, which he thought was a myth, and the fact the military always had a space ship and a few aliens, and did nothing with that information.

Jasmine gets a truck and helps other survivors, finding the first lady.

After a while of not knowing what to do, David realizes they can infect the mother ship which controls the flying saucers scattered across the earth with a virus,thus leaving them vulnerable to attacks.

The US military contacts the rest of the world's military telling them about the plan, as they need to launch a synchronized attack.

I personally enjoyed the movie (not as much as in the past though-this used to be one of my favorite movies, I have it on original video), my favorite parts were the cities destruction's which Emmerich is very good at (see the movie "2012", "The day after tomorrow", "Moonfall", "White House down") and the scene in which David and Steven get into the alien mother ship.

It does feel like there's not much character build, and by the end of the movie it does feel kinda cliched (David gets his estranged wife back, just like in the movie "2012").

The acting was good.

I didn't like the soundtrack, which actually won the Grammy award!

When it comes to the visual effects, at times they were good, other times it looked CGI, although, ironically, it won the Oscar for Best Visual Effects.

The movie received mixed reviews,the critics complaining about the characters and the dialogue,but liking the rest.

Cinema Score audiences graded the movie an A.

The movie grossed 817.4 million dollars at the box office, against a budget of 75 million, being the highest grossing movie of the year 1996, and breaking many other records, like the biggest pre-opening of a movie!

 

The movie was nominated for many awards (including the Raspberry Awards-the awards for the worst of the movies- for Worst Written Film Grossing Over 100 Million; and Stinkers Bad Movie Awards for the same award and Worst Picture!), winning probably half of them.

The movie has a sequel, Independence day : Resurgence, released in 2016.

The movie has about 3 novels written by Stephen Molstad released at the same time with the movie, and after, one of them being a prequel. 2 of the novels also have a Marvel comic book!

The movie also has a radio play, broadcast by BBC Radio 1, and 2 video games based on it, while Trendmasters released a toy line based on the characters!

Rating : Worth a watch !