Independence Day
Latest Reflections from the Guild (NOTE: We've pretty much mined this movie right down to the dirt. Unless something else really good comes in, I won't be updating this file any longer. However, if you would like to submit a nit, I will certainly file it away for future reference.)
Without warning, a large mothership--one quarter the mass of the moon, 150 kilometers in diameter--approaches Earth and dispatches fifteen 15-mile in diameters ships that take up positions over major cities like Los Angeles, New York and Washington DC. Uncertain of the aliens' intentions and wanting to keep the citizens of the United States calm, President Thomas Whitmore decides to stay in the White House even though one of the massive spaceships hovers directly overhead. In New York, David Levinson studies the interference patterns coming from communication satellites and discovers that the aliens are using them to transmit a signal to their ships positioned around the globe. Wanting to protect his ex-wife--who happens to work as the press secretary for the White House--David has his father drive him to Washington where he informs the President that the interference is actually a countdown. The White House staff quickly evacuates to Air Force One just as the aliens launch an attack that completely destroys all three cities. The counter attack by Earth forces proves ineffective because of the aliens' defensive shields and Earth suffers heavy casualties. As the President considers a nuclear strike, the Secretary of Defense lets slip that this is not the first time an alien craft has visited Earth. The President is stunned that no one has told him of the existence of such a craft at Area 51 in Nevada and quickly orders Air Force One to that location. At the same time, Captain Steven Hiller meets up with a caravan of RVs fleeing the devastation. Hiller has just survived a dogfight with one of the aliens ships. He destroyed his fighter to do it but the alien fighter crash-landed as well. Inside, Hiller discovered an alien pilot that he is attempting to drag back to the military for study. The RVers take him to Area 51. Unfortunately, the alien succeeds in killing the scientists who attempt to study it and almost destroys the president as well before the military can execute it. Finally, convinced that there can be no possibility of peace, the president orders a nuclear strike. It fails. Levinson then programs a computer virus that can disable the aliens' shields. Hiller pilots the alien fighter studied at Area 51 to the alien mothership where the Levinson uploads the virus. It is transmitted to all of the aliens' ships just as Earth stages another assault. As Earth forces destroy the alien ships, Hiller and Levinson use a nuclear tipped missile to obliterate the mother ship.
Brash Reflections
Good movie! I recommend it! Exciting. Some funny lines. Nice plot leading. (A bit predictable, but hey, aren't they all?) Gorgeous, gorgeous, gorgeous graphics. The destruction of the cities is spectacular! The battle scenes are really complex and well executed. (As an aside, I was a bit surprised that there wasn't more of a big emotional bang at the end. It may have just been the crowd I saw it with, but at the end--even with the victory of Earth--there was some applause and then everybody just left. It was almost like the audience said, "Okay, good, next movie." I'm wondering if intuitively, the crowd knew it shouldn't have been that easy to defeat these aliens. Sort of like Picard pulling a tube out of a Borg on "Descent, Part II") Of course, there are always nits . . .
The movie opens with a really nice visual analogy on the moon. We see the site of the July 1969 moon landing. ("We came in peace for all mankind.") The ground starts to shake. The footprints in the moondust begin to disappear. Something passes overhead and an immense shadow forms on the ground. Surprisingly enough, it is some time before the humans figure out a space ship is coming. Now I haven't had a chance to talk with Mitzi about this yet so I'm not sure. But if I recall correctly, the moon rotates with the same periodicity as it orbits the Earth. That means we only see one side of the moon. The far side of the moon is always facing away from us. I will grant you that I may be wrong here but . . . if the space ship is passing over the light side of the moon, wouldn't somebody be able to see it from Earth? (I realize that I might have had factored in the current phase of the moon and all that stuff but the Sea of Tranquillity *is* illuminated and you can see a full Earth in the distance, I don't know . . . maybe it isn't a nit. I'll get back with you on it.)
A bit later, we see a satellite crash into the side of the mothership as it approaches Earth. The satellite goes into oblivion in a fireball. Pray tell, just what is burning here? The satellite doesn't carry fuel and besides, it's out in space. No oxygen. No fire without oxygen! Do the defensive shields make that kind of explosion when they are hit in space?
The aliens must have a flare for the dramatic. When the city-destroying ships enter the atmosphere, there are there immense fire storms--supposedly cause by exhaust (according to the television teaser). Yet the city-destroyers then hover over New York, L.A., and D.C. without producing any further exhaust. Obviously the aliens have some sort of antigravity drive. Does it only work in close proximity to a large mass?
Just before the President speaks with the nation, Levinson stands in a control room in New York. Apparently, he works for a cable company and the wall of monitors behind him shows the available cable shows. Oddly enough, when the President begins to speak the wall of monitors somehow knows that it should change configuration to combine the monitors so that three larger versions of the President appear, flanked by monitors in their normal configurations. Even more stunning, the wall of monitors apparently can tell when the President has reached his most dramatic statements because the monitors somehow automagically combine into a large movie style screen that just happens to select just the right section of the television feed that features the President's face! (Since it's a television feed, the aspect ration of the screen will be close to a square. On a theater screen, you've got an elongated rectangle.)
I was really surprised that the President hadn't evacuated his daughter from the White House long before he did.
My favorite great line from the movie came after Hiller punches the alien, "Welcome to Earth!" However, it appears that Hiller knocked the alien unconscious. Punched right through the biomechanical suit, eh? (Maybe the pilot was injured and just happened to black out the same time Hiller punched him.)
At Area 51, the President orders a military tour guide to let him into a static free clean room. Everyone inside wears masks and gowns. At first, the military guy balks but the President insists. Halfway through the room, the lead scientist scrambles up to welcome the President. He wears no mask. If it's supposed to be a clean room, shouldn't the head scientist be outfitted as well? (Or did he rip off his mask because he didn't want to look geeky when he met the President.)
Hiller approaches Area 51 with the alien in the back of a pickup truck. Taken aback the guard not only lets Hiller through but the ENTIRE CARAVAN of RVers. This is supposedly one of the most super-secret bases that the military has and the guard at the front gate gets rattled enough to let dozens of RV just drive on in?
I went to see the movie with some friends, Darrin Hull and Mike and Julie McClure. Julie thought that the B-2 stealth bomber was a bit too close when it set off the nuclear cruise missile. From the graphic, it sure looked like she was right!
These Hollywood guys need to get out more and actually do some of the stuff that they portray. To demonstrate how he can drop the aliens' shield, Levinson has a military man shoot twice at a Coke can positioned on the alien fighter in room at Area 51. I didn't get a good look at the pistol but it is either a 9 millimeter Baretta or a Colt .45 caliber. No one in the room covers their ears when the gun goes off. No one even flinches! I have a 9 millimeter and when that thing fires, it's sounds like a cannon! I have a hard time believing that Mr. "Save the Earth" Levinson--civilian that he is--wouldn't jump just a little.
A computer virus saves the day. An Earth guy using what looks like C or Pascal (it went by too fast) writes a computer virus for an ALIEN computer system and logs onto the mothership's system (faster than you can get on AOL according to Darrin) and uploads this virus and it does just what it's supposed to do the FIRST time! Does this seem plausible? This would be like writing a program on an old Apple II computer and then interfacing with a mainframe and infecting the mainframe with a virus. Without a magical little program called a "cross-compiler," THIS WILL NOT WORK! The Apple II and the mainframe use completely different chip sets. The machine code that the CPU works from is radically different. Doesn't it seem likely that an ALIEN computer is going to have RADICALLY different chips as well. What . . . is there some galactic interchange format for executables that Levinson picked up off the satellite scans?!
Mike wondered if the alien fighter at Area 51 would really be space worthy given that it was repaired by humans!
Julie wondered where Hiller got his wedding ring since Jasmine didn't know that they were going to get married. (Picked it up at the Area 51 Gift Shop no doubt. The gift shop probably carries a selection of wedding rings right beside the plastic models of the alien space ship that the military sells to finance their continuing studies of the fighter.)
Since I've never seen one of these nuclear tipped cruise missiles close up, I can't say for sure but here's something I've always wondered about. Invariably when we see one of these things, it has a timer on the outside so the villain can see that they are about to die. Do these cruise missiles really have a timer that's visible from the outside?
Near the end of the movie, a city-destroyer alien positions itself DIRECTLY over Area 51. Now remember, this sucker is 15 miles in diameter. Amazingly enough, when it falls to the ground it MISSES Area 51! (Darrin commented during the battle scene that the people at Area 51 would never be able to dig out after that thing dropped on them but luckily it somehow managed to shift seven and a half miles to the right or left before it hit the ground.)
There's more but I'll leave it to you, fellow members of the Guild.
Phil
Reflections from the Guild
Michael D. Breen: "Last April I was lucky enough to be at a Star Trek convention where the Hollywood Publicity Machine had set up a "special presentation" for Independence Day. Included with this presentation was a talk with stars Jeff Goldblum (who looked a bit shell-shocked at the sight of 10,000+ Trekkies cheering, BTW ;) and Brent Spiner (who spent an hour talking more about Trek than the movie).
"*Anyway* to get to the *point*, they also presented eight minutes of actual footage from the movie. It looked pretty good, except that they didn't have the score finished. The only *hard* nit I can give right now is there is going to be a classic DIETS moment involving a dog and (I think) the Holland Tunnel. It's a real thrill, but completely impossible. (Note from Phil: The scene in question has a shock wave of flames approaching this tunnel. Jasmine--Hiller's girlfriend--her son and their dog are inside the tunnel looking for refuge. Jasmine gets a mechanical room door open and ducks inside. The dog jumps in at the last moment. The door stays open. Now friends, if I've got my physics right, the reason that the shock wave is expands is because the pressure on the back side of the wave is higher that the pressure outside the blast area. The pressure wave doesn't know it's in a tunnel and is supposed to go in a straight line. All it knows is there is an area of lower pressure beyond it and it is rushing to fill that area of lower pressure. So why don't the flames jump inside the mechanical room!?)
Craig Mason: "I just wanted to write and put some input in on ID4 before it comes out. Yes, I did the dirty deed of reading the book before seeing the movie. However, I do not feel it will stop me from enjoying the movie. I'm still looking forward to it. Just the same I've discovered some nit worthy items from reading the book. So, I'm not sure how they well, or if they well, show up in the film.
"Jeff Goldblum's character is a computer whiz, working for a cable company, and he discovers early in the story that the interference on all the world's TVs is caused by some sort of masked signal piggybacking on our satellites. And of course when he hears about the UFOs he realizes that the signal is a countdown of some sort, probably for world wide attack. He tells everyone the purpose of using our satellites is so that they can transmit their signal to all 15 of their City-Destroyers, which are positioned around the globe, from their mother ship which is in moon orbit. He explains that they use the satellites to relay the signal because the signal will not travel directly through the earth to the ships on the side opposite to the mother ship.
"Later, at Area 51, Brent Spiner's character tells Goldblum's that when the UFOs appeared that the captured UFO they had came to life. Some how the ship's propulsion system is operated by remote control. When Goldblum realizes how to turn the ship's shields on and off, he realizes this is a signal controlled activity as well. (Note from Phil: Some of this is a bit sketchy in the movie.)
"Eventually a Trojan horse plan is developed with Will Smith and Jeff Goldblum flying the UFO into the mother ship to infect it with a computer virus, thereby telling all the ship's to lower their shields, so that our planes can attack. This is where the problems arise.
"Early in the attack the aliens took out our satellites, so that we couldn't communicate with us. So, if the virus tells the mother ship to lower shields, how does this info get to all the ship's around the earth if the had to rely on our satellites to carry their signals around the earth? (Note from Phil: I believe the movie establishes that the alien took out all the satellite but I'm not sure.)
"The second problem is, if the UFO that Smith and Goldblum are using gets it's power signal from the mother ship, then where do they get the power to fly home after destroying the mother ship? (They nuked mama after starting the virus). Once the mother ship was destroyed they shouldn't be receiving a signal."
Brian Phan: "Last night, I saw Independence Day. I must say, it was the best movie I've seen in a long time. True, you couldn't believe some of the things you can see. But it was interesting all the way. Brent Spiner did a great job as Dr. Okun. It's a shame he . . . oops, forgot you haven't seen it yet. Anyway, before the movie, there were the trailers. And in my movie, I saw a trailer to Star Trek: First Contact. You could notice though that they weren't finished filming yet. They used some scenes from Generations in the trailer. Though it went by so quickly, you wouldn't notice."
Matt Cotnoir of Coventry, RI: "1) If you were an alien that was trying to take over the world, and decided to attack Ney york City, where would you strike? The Empire State Building? Of course not. I would think that the UN would be higher up on the priority list. After all, it's the closest thing we have to world government.
"2) Those flashing lights on the Welcome Wagon were supposed to mean something? It just looked like lights flashing in different patterns. That was supposed to mean that we're intelligent? It's just as crazy as Picard tapping the control panel in his prison cell to show he's intelligent. (Note from Phil: Well . . . Picard tapping the first six primes was acutally a pretty good idea if the sound effects people had gotten it right!!)
"3) In The Rock, the characters say that Morse code is obsolete. However, we send out Morse code messages worldwide, and everyone understands them! Along the same line, everyone else appeared to be waiting for the Americans to get off their butts and do something. Why don't they plan something themselves?
"4) In one of the trailers for the movie, the president gives his little Independence day speech (which he made up all by his little self. I'm so proud). In the background on the trailer, there is an Israeli (I hope) Star of David flag flying in the background. In the movie, there is no flag.
"5) I just love it when movies present short-time countdowns! It presents a wonderful time to nitpick! The countdown on the missle is for 30 seconds. I counted down from the time the bomb started to count down, and it wasn't 30 seconds. It was at least a minute.
"6) Why was the drunk pilot waiting for a lock and tone? He already had both!
"7) I think the alien plan was flawed from the start. They were taking out every major city in the world. Well, that's all fine and dandy, but where does that leave the rest of the people that don't live in big cities? How were they going to be exterminated? (Note from Phil: Giant can of Raid, maybe?)
"8) The world is going to have a heck of a time rebuilding from this one! Almost every major city has been destroyed, and now there are 15 15 mile wide flying saucers lying around. Ouch!
"9) I'm not sure about this one, but I think the President's daughter liked playing musical chairs. When he comes out to tell her about the First lady dying, it appeared to me that the following were against the wall: X amount of empty chairs, the President's daughter, another empty chair, and then the table. However, when the president sits down, the set up is now the following: X amount of empty chairs, the President, his daughter, and then the table. there is no longer another empty chair."
Michael D. Breen: "Okay, first off: I was incorrect about the location of the tunnel in my previous nit. It wasn't the Holland Tunnel, since that's in New York, and Jasmine, Dylan, and the dog were in LA (or thereabouts). But the nit still applies."
"Observations: WOW! WHAT A MOVIE! WOO! YEAH! THAT WAS REALLY REALLY COOL! Emmerich and Devlin might not win any Oscars for this one, but they sure know how to throw a party.
"Corrections: Jasmine's wedding ring is the same ring we saw earlier in the movie that fell out of Steve's pocket in the locker room. (Of course, one *could* question the logic of carrying the ring into combat and across the desert, etc., but I think I'll let other nitpickers tear that one apart. :-) (Note from Phil: Okay, I didn't explain this one very well. Julie said that Hiller was wearing a wedding ring in the alien fight. So, the question becomes where did he get the wedding ring to wear since Jasmine didn't know that he was going to propose? Or, was she also carrying aroung a wedding ring? Great minds think alike and all that, dontcha know. Personally, I would have thought it a nice touch for the President to loan Hiller his wedding ring for luck.)
"Also, I took the bit with the firestorms to be the entry phase of the Destroyers (i.e. as they were coming into the atmosphere, making appropriate-sized fire trails). Except then the question is "why is the firecloud still hanging on to the thing until it just reaches target?" (BTW, Phil, I thought you knew that Previews Always Lie! ;^)
"Okay, onto the Nits:
"1) I'm not sure this is correct, but wasn't the Apollo 11 dedication plaque attached to the lander instead of the lunar surface?
"2) On the subject of the First Kid staying at the White House, isn't it kind of odd that she was allowed to roam *everywhere* at Area 51?
"3) On the other subject of the computer virus infecting the alien's systems, how exactly did the alien computer know how to create the Jolly Roger and Ominous Laugh on thier screens? Yeah, it was a really cool moment (Stupid Hacker Tricks save the World!) but even more logically impossible than the virus in the first place (my personal opinion is that Levinson played some Stupid Hacker Tricks with binary strings from the attacker's computer so it'd be more compatible with their systems).
Heather B. Smith of Niagara-on-the-Lake, ON: "About the shields...how are all the research people at area 51 able to fool around and tinker with the alien ship if it has these shields? And how could Jeff Goldblum just walk up and place a pop can on the thing and then suddenly a bullet can't get through. Do these shields somehow know when the ship is being threatened and when it's not?? AMAZING!" (Note from Phil: This begins a whole series of "How did they know that?" nits concerning the crashed fighter. I going to take my wife and daughter to see the movie later this week and I'll double check then but as best as I can remember, the guys at area 51 had been studying the craft for decades. However, Brent Spiner's character says that the displays only lit up when the mother ship approached. From this, I assumed that most of the research before the mother ship arrived was materials and physical power plant research but they were unable to activate any of the fighter's systems. Does this seem like a reasonable assumption? If the scientists were able to activate any of the power systems then some display somewhere would have probably come on. I guessing that this would be like studying a car--taking the engine apart, dismantling the doors maybe even tearing into the dashboard. But then, the mother ship arrives and the car actually starts!)
Mark Bowman: "How come the ships' computers don't have anti virus protection, and howcome simply uploading a file can infect their computers? First the virus has to be executed in some fashion, second even us backward earthlings know to scan each file for viruses before using them. If they are so advanced how come their computers were infected by a primitave earth virus?" (Note from Phil: No doubt, the aliens didn't expect us to be able to come up with something so clever!)
"Concerning the tunnel you mentioned in the recent posting. How weak are the doors in the tunnel anyway? The woman was able to kick it open with only a few kicks. Those doors are normaly a heavy metal material and kicking would not work on them. Also did you notice when the woman was comming out of the tunnel the tunnel was also narrower?"
"Also why were the lights flickering on Airforce One anyway? Sure the ride was rough ,but the plane was not being knocked around enough to cause the electrical to become loose."
"When the airforce was using nuclear explosives to shoot down the ships, howcome no one on the ground suffered radiation burns?"
Joe Pintar of New Hartford, NY: "Early in the film, the destroyers use a beam coming from the side to destroy a helicopter. Yet this beam is never used in either fighter attack. Why not? (Answer: then all the pilots would be dead, the aliens would win, and the audience walks out in a huff at a movie with an unhappy ending). Does the alien look somewhat like a cross between those found in the Alien and Predator films? It does to me. It has tentacles just like Aien and body armor like Predator.
"While I'm on the subject of other movies, the assault on the destroyer reminded me of the assault on the Death Star in both Star Wars and Return of the Jedi. The scene where Will Smith is being chased by the alien fighter through what look like the Grand Canyon reminded of both the trench in Star Wars and the asteroid scene in Empire Strikes Back. The destruction of the destroyer reminded me of the destruction of the huge Star Destroyer in Return of the Jedi. The destruction of the mother ship reminded me of the destruction of the Death Star in Return of the Jedi. I love Independence Day a lot but these scenes feel a little too similar to me. Granted the Star Wars movies, Alien movies, and predator movies are all made by 20th Century Fox, distributor of Independence Day, and they can rip themselves off all they want but it's just too much for me. One more thing, a group of hostile aliens who meet their end because of a simple virus, sounds like War Of The Worlds to me. (Note from Phil: My nitpicking buddy Darrin Hull noticed the similarities as well. He thought they were homages though.)
"Does anybody think it odd that the President could still get satellite pictures after the aliens had supposedly taken over the satellites? After the destroyer is destroyed, the general tells the communication people to tell the other forces worldwide how to beat them. Question: how did the other nations lure the other destroyers into opening their bottom? Area 51 was a pretty set target but the other nations looks like they had their forces out in the boondocks somewhere. If they had all fighters in the air, the destroyers would have nothing to shoot at on the ground."
"The aliens wipe out big cities before going after military installations, is that a good strategy? Wipe out military installation first, no counterattack, short movie."
Paul Steele of Springfield, VA: (In answer to my question about count down timers above, Paul wrote:) "No, cruise missiles do not have external countdown LED displays. However, what exploded in the mothership was not a cruise missile. (Perhaps the weapon in question had to be modified for the nuclear warhead.) The only cruise missile seen in the movie was the one launched by the B-2. And yes, I believe the B-2 was far too close when it launched the missile. The whole idea behind cruise missiles is to give the delivery platform (bomber, ship, sub, etc) increased standoff range. However, cruise missiles were not designed to destroy airborne targets. An air launched cruise missile typically uses a digital terrain map to find its target. Because these missiles were used in an unconventional manner, maybe this necessitated getting up-close and personal with the target. In which case, this would have been a suicide mission for the crew and only one bomber at a time should closed within such lethal range of the target. Remembering that the alien just crash landed, and that his comrades 40 years later were also injured and/or killed in their crash landing, I think its safe to assume that the alien pilot was shaken. Furthermore, his bio-med suit may have been damaged. Therefore, the USMC pilot may have further damaged it with his blow.
"My problem with the opening seen is: what is making the moon's surface shake and the dust vibrate. The moon has no atmosphere to carry sound waves! Does the ship have some kind of vibrating magnetic field?"
"As far as the flames and clouds in front of the ships as they travel through the atmosphere, I just assumed that this was a reaction of the energy shield passing through our atmosphere dense with "dust" and other particles. Once the ships stopped moving, they weren't pushing their way through the atmosphere."
"Don't any of these pilots suffer the effects of high G loads. These guys are pulling very tight high speed turns without so much as a grunt. I fly AH-64 Apache attack helicopters in the Army. Although I can only normally pull 2 G's, I know its uncomfortable. Furthermore, I have conducted joint missions with Air Force fighters. I can tell you that you might as well not even try to talk to these guys when they're pulling G's. They can barely grunt out words! Early on, Harry Conick's character pulls a high G turn and has troubles, but they were poorly depicted. His head should have slammed against the seat back, he should have started his anti-G grunting (a physical exercise where the pilot bears down and grunts in order to force breathing past the G-load and prevent the pooling of blood. When this fails, he would fall unconscious."
"If the pistol was supposed to be the current issue hand weapon, than it was a 9mm Baretta. And yes, especially inside, they are very load! Furthermore, although the 9mm is much more accurate than its 45cal predecessor, I doubt that the Major could have hit the can that easily from that distance."
"One final comment [in reference to Craig Mason's observation above], there is no indication that the mothership provided the power for the captured alien fighter. 'They' said they didn't understand its power source and that its systems became active when the mothership arrived. I think this is like a screen saver with a password. The signals from the mothership merely brought the captured ship's systems out of standby mode. The destruction of the mothership, therefore, would not necessarily cause the fighters to stop operating."
John Hardison of Washington, DC: Everyone seems to be concerned about the laptop - alien computer interface. At first thought, so was I. In their defense, they have had this ship for 30 years, and would very likely have come up with some sort of interface. Goldblum uses a computer terminal in the lab when doing the coke can demonstration, that terminal sure didn't crash land with the ship. So we can assume they have developed an interface and equiped Goldblum's laptop with it for the voyage to the Mother Ship. (Note from Phil: Granted, this is a possibility but it very, very difficult to create an interface to a non-functioning computer. I refer you back to the head scientist's comment that the displays have only come to life in the presence of the Mother Ship. Area 51 must have had some spectacular hackers working for it to disassemble the machine code in only a few days and create an interface to the alien systems. Of course, if Area 51 has guys of this caliber, why do they need Goldblum's character?)
"The luck of Area 51 is contagious. You noted that the destroyer had to drift seven and a half miles before crashing to avoid the base, but when they showed us destroyers around the world, they had all drifted miraculously away from major cities/landmarks."
"The fireball has many problems. The least of which is the path of the flame and the open door. Even if Jasmine had closed the door, all the oxygen would have been sucked up by the fireball to feed the flame, unless that was a vacuum sealed door she kicked in. But that is the least of the problems. Notoriously absent from the devastation scenes, and most importantly the Air Force 1 shot of the plane narrowly escaping the fireball, is the shockwave. Who cares about the flames, the shockwave moving in front of any force like that is moving at the speed of sound."
"Finally, I strongly object to the posting of Craig Mason's 'book nits' as the guild has long established that information from 'unofficial' sources is neither nitable, nor basis for nit explanations. If the movie makers left something out that was in the book, too bad! its a nit!" (Note from Phil: A controversy, yes! We have a genuine controversy! Here's my take on the "book nits" for ID4. The first rule of nitpicking in the Guild is: All nits picked shall derive from sources the creators consider canonical. Now, in the case of Star Trek, the creators have specifically said that the fiction books are *not* canonical, even the novelizations of the movies. Many nitpickers have problems with the creators bailing on the novelizations of the movies but the creators are the creators and they get to decide what is canon and what isn't. On the other hand, I have heard no such pronouncement from the makers of ID4. No doubt they were involved in the novelization of the movie. No doubt they had creative control. Unless the creators of ID4 state that the book isn't canonical, I have no problem including it, though I would prefer that we stick with what's on the screen!)
Patricia Kirsch, Columbia, MD: "When Hiller and the computer guy go into the mother ship they don't go through one airlock, therefore that whole ship is open to vacuum and all the aliens on the "deck" plus the one in the control room should be dead (the latter after the missle goes through it.) (Not from Phil: I was wondering if the bio-mechanical suit also functioned as a pressure suit but the non-suited control guy would be a problem unless the Mother Ship had some type of shield to hold the atmosphere in.)
"Also it seems to me that hovering over our major cities with no communications is not a friendly action at all."
Donald Carlson: "1) Why were there no attempts at using ground-to-air missles on the 'destructor' ships? Or for that matter, artillery? Flying against them in aircraft is one thing, but once the forces were more or less defeated, you would expect the Air Force to fall back on their missle stockpile."
"2) Boy, the aliens sure have terrific security. They let a fighter missing for 40 years fly right into the mother ship no questions asked. Guess nobody on the homeworld ever heard of transponders, and everybody was too busy preparing for invasion to get on the radio and ask a couple questions, like 'hey, you there in the old series 1000 Saucer, what gives?'"
"3) Assuming you buy that somebody can jump into an alien vessel and actually fly it (even experienced pilots need at least some basic training on a new aircraft before trying to fly it, and these have controls designed for human hands and eyes), how would the Will Smith character know how to find the mother ship? It's a big world, and big Momma is in orbit somewhere. Let's assume the military points him in the right direction, well, hey, without some knowledge of alien language, how is he going to read the navigation equipment? He flew there on visual clues alone?"
"4) Why didn't they recover the downed alien fighter from the Grand Canyon dogfight? Seems like it would have been in better shape than one that crashed over forty years ago and patched up by a lot of guessing engineers. And it would have current seurity codes."
"5) Having lived in Houston, the scene showing the street signs 'South Houston' and 'University of Houston' - these signs do not exist in this manner. This would have to be on the Gulf Freeway, less than a mile from the center of downtown. The ship was fifteen miles across, so the armored personnell carrier would have been almost directly underneath the destructor ship. It would have been vaporized by the nuclear blast, yet it and the crew are able to give a report of the ship surviving (not to mention the view of the ship is from a side angle, placing it location over 7 miles from any possible University of Houston exit on the Gulf Freeway. BTW, there is a 'South Houston,' further down the Gulf Freeway and is an incorporated city next to Pasadena."
Rick Sheridan of San Francisco, CA: "This is a correction of the last nit posted by the guy who read the book of ID4. That's probably exactly what happened. The little ship lost it's power when the mother ship blew up, and so it crash landed on Earth. In the movie there was a bunch of smoke coming out of it, which would explain the crash." (Note from Phil: Well . . . maybe but it's a long way down to the surface without power! I assume the ship crashed because Hiller couldn't land it!)
"How come they didn't show a ship destroying San Francisco? At the risk of sounding to proud of my hometown, isn't it a big enough city for them to destroy? It's possible that they didn't want it to look too much like that scene in "V" when the alien ship goes over the Golden Gate Bridge, and my brother says that the first time he saw ID4 he saw a ship going over the San Francisco skyline (TransAmerica Tower), but the next time he saw it it wasn't there."
"Also, in the end, the flaming hulks of the alien ships crash to Earth. Shouldn't there be alien survivors? Don't you think reinforcements should arrive to get them? There really could have been a lot more falling action in this movie. There was a great buildup, then climax, and then it abruptly ends! What about the countries joining together? What about killing the leftover aliens? I think they could have added a much better ending to this movie, though other than that it was terrific!"
Kevin Loughlin: "First of all, When Randy Quaid's character sacrifices himself by destroying the ship over Area 51, he flies DIRECTLY THROUGH the big, green beam that fires and destroys large cities at a time. Only until he reaches the tip of the firing mechanism does his plane explode and destroy the whole, 15-mile-wide ship. I guess this is just its aiming light so it can know that it's firing directly on, but if this is its weakest point I'm sure it could have taken out an F-18."
"It would be my patriotic duty to point out there was NO mention of your big neighbour, Canada. Toronto's big enough that it would probably be picked for the second wave, at least. Well, at least we got our national holiday done BEFORE they arrived. :-)"
Lee Lorenz of Fenton, MI: Rationalizing the nits: On the 'firey' entrance... perhaps the 'anti-gravity' drives were not quite powerful enough to slow the ships re-entry? Imagine ALL THAT MASS! And as for psychological effect..."
"That satellite crash was no satellite... it was a Soviet Space Station! Probably a supply of liquid Oxygen aboard, but I'd chalk this one up to BILC!"
"On punching the alien and knocking him (her?) out, I suspect the alien was in shock, still shaky from the accident. The blow simply put the alien into unconciousnous."
"Letting RV's in... Think about it: You're guarding Area 51, but the Aliens are no longer just a rumor! Chances are, though, he only let the truck and Randy Quaid's RV in... the rest were probably allowed in by the touchy-feely President." (Note from Phil: Sorry, not buying this one. That guy deserves to be court-martialed)
"As for the Virus program... perhaps the alien's computer system was fed the OUTPUT of the C program! The alien computer system obviously operates on a heirarchical system (MotherShip-CityShip-Fighter), perhaps his signal exploits that. Don't forget, we had 50 years to study the first Alien Craft! Maybe the Area 51 scientists even had a "cross-compiler (probably Whitesmith's ANSI C;) ) I can't honestly even question the inclusion of the Jolly Roger graphic, because that would be a "finishing touch" any hacker might do. My only beef here was why just shut down the shields? Why not the Anti-gravity generators? The guns? Life-support?"
"How would the ship move AWAY from Area 51? How about the 'rocket' action of the explosive exhaust jetting out the weakest point of the ship?" (Note from Phil: Yeah, but . . . seven and a half miles!?!)
"On the subject of the 'power signal from the mother ship' - I think the proximity of the fleet set off a giant 'reset' in the ship's energy system. Imagine how baffled we would be by a cold-fusion system? Without a battery, a car is even useless. Perhaps the original aliens shut it down, and we just couldn't figure out the 'reset'? Spiner's character just said things 'turned on' - not that the power was from the mother ship! Even so... there must be a back up or some kind of temporary store if the mother ship power supply theory is right."
"NOW, my nits: So, the aliens are as frail as us? Why was the captured alien so strong?? It wacked everybody in the room with its suit cut open!"
"Convenient the First Lady survived long enough to make it to El Toro."
"Was 'Hiller' walking on the Bonneville Salt Flats when he was dragging the alien body and met all those RV's? Sure looked like it."
"That President was no Bill Clinton! Our current president was no war hero (mild understatement), and would've been the first person out of DC! The promo hype mad a big deal out of saying he was modelled after Clinton!"
Octavio Salcedo of Tampa, FL: I thought it was strange how the super-powerful alien attacks left scattered human survivors (i.e. Hiller's girlfriend, the first lady) but the last battle had our heroes very content with destroying the alien ships and sending them crash landing. Aren't there going to be alien survivors of the crash? Won't they have their cool biomechanical suits and other assorted sundry alien weapons and technology? I was looking forward to some cool hand to hand combat towards the end of the movie. My sister thinks that this is fodder for I.D. Part II."
Michael Ash: "First of all, great movie! I've seen it twice now and the second time I took a notebook, so I have quite a few nits for you."
"1. In the first scene on the moon, a large shadow is cast by the alien ship. Since there is no atmosphere to bend light, those shadows should have been almost completely dark.
"2. USS Georgia in the Persian Gulf was surfaced. Submarines don't surface unless they have to, and the Georgia did not have to.
"3. During both the first and second counterattacks, the Hornets all carried AMRAAMs and sidewinders, but these are air to air weapons. They were useful against the alien fighters, but large bombs should have been used against the large ships, since the small warhead of the missiles did not do much damage.
"4. When David Levinson looks at the empty ice tray while in Area 51, it appears that the refrigerator he pulls it out of has no freezer unit.
"5. In the scene with the B-2 formation, it appears that the lights are still on in the city below.
"6. At the end when the Area 51 people are watching the crashed alien ship, there are pieces of something falling on it from the sky. I can see two possiblities with this, both have problems. A: They are pieces of the mother ship. B: They are pieces of the smaller ship. If A is true, then why are they all falling directly at the crashed ship? Also, why is so much of it falling to earth, considering that the ship was fairly far away and in orbit, etc. If B is true, then the pieces that got shot to the side should keep moving away, not coming back towards the ship like it did.
"7. The way to destroy the city sized ships is to detonate a nuke in their primary weapon after it opens. Except that the shields are only down for a few minutes and it was just chance that the ship over Area 51 opened its weapon. Why would all the other ships in the world do the same thing at the same time?
"Now some potiential un-nits.
"You mention the flame that comes from the satellite that crashes into the mother ship. Usually movies have unwarranted flame, which I hate to see, but not in this case. Satellites have maneuvering fuel which is supposed to burn without external oxygen. It is possible that the fuel went up when it impacted the mother ship.
"I also think that Levinson's virus would be possible to write, given that he did have the computer on the captured alien fighter to work with. It's probable that the computer on the fighter is compatable with the one on the mother ship. (Note from Phil: I remain unconvinced. I made my living for almost a decade as a developer of commercial music software. It's hard enough to write real code with a known computer system. To hack together something in a few hours on an alien computer system . . . )
Ryan Hunter: "This alien ship (the one from Area 51) is just a LITTLE bit too much like our own to me. Let's see... two seats, check. Gee, the seats are also just the right height for Dave and Steve (are those the right names? I'm awful with names). They have a little head pad that, IMHO, is way too small for the massive craniums those aliens had. And then there's the directional stick thingy (lemme know if I get too technical on ya :) ). Let's see, it has two things to grasp that are just the right size for a human's hands. Then you pull back to go up, and all the other controls are just like an Earth plane. There's a seat for a pilot and a copilot. That's another thing. There was only one alien in the ship that Steve crashed, and presumably it's the same kind of ship. Doesn't too much weight make it go slower or something? Then again, that's the joy of having aliens. They're so... alien that we can't REALLY presume much. Anyway, that alien ship looked an awful lot like a human one. The stick thingy also had two little stick thingies to grasp, and I may be wrong, but I thought they had more appendages than that. Just one last thing. Remember when Dave says something like "This thing comes fully loaded. Something, something else, and power windows." He then immediately flips a switch that brings a big screen thing in front of the big window in front. Wow! Dave really is smart!! He discovered how to read 'window cover' in alien! Ah, but I have another explanation. Dave is really an alien spy!! They left him on earth to secretly prepare for their next attempt! The entire movie was just a ploy to give the puny humans a false sense of security until... INDEPENDENCE DAY 2!!" (Note from Phil: Concerning the seats, I assumed that the scientist at Area 51 installed them specifically for Hiller and Levinson.)
Craig Russell of Springfield OR: "In your brash reflections, you mentioned that it would be difficult for Hiller to knock the alien out through the protective suit. When I saw the movie, I was under the impression that the alien was faking it to get on the inside. Think about it: when the Brent Spiner character was operating on it, the alien was awake the second he cut through to the actual body. Furthermore, the big city destroyer ship then centered in on Area 51, which was never explained. Could it be that the captive alien got into the base and transmitted a homing signal of some sort?"
"[Just for the sake of argument, let's say that Hiller and Levison could fly the fighter to the mother ship,] these aliens communicate by telepathy, remember? They should have seen the attack coming and planned against it!"
Wesley Neal: "Just let me say that I thought this movie was just OK. Special effects were awesome, but the acting and script were hideous. Now on to the nits...
"Didn't a lot of those people spend just a little bit too much time staring at the fireball that was coming at them whilst in their cars? I mean, half the city has already blown up, and most of the people seem like they are waiting for the fireball to get really close(so they can enjoy the effect, presumably) before they all of a sudden leap out of their vehicles and high tail it."
"Didn't the end scene make you want start screaming 'Stay on target!' and 'I can't shake 'im!' ala Star Wars? It sure seemed similar to the 'ol trench scene...."
Kathy Warren: "Regarding the untimely demise of poor Dr. Okun, is it really conceivable that given their location in a sophisticated lab with all sorts of qualified doctors and medical equipment, that no one in the whole place even bothered to try to revive him after the alien let go of him? He had been dead for what, 10 seconds at that point? It would have been more believeable if someone at least tried, even if they failed."
Roger Sorensen: It seems that the BIG NIT with this movie is the virus upload scene - consider this also: the aliens on the mothership either haven't upgraded their OS for 40+ years, or they've taken back-compatibility to an extreme. Imagine being able to interface your desktop system with ENIAC!"
"That scene with the pop can brought to mind a line from 'Dune' - The slow blade penetrates the shield... I was half-expecting the cropduster bi-plane to end up saving the day. I can just picture it launching a missile..."
Paul Steele: "Reference Matt Cotnoir's question about how the aliens were going to exterminate the rest of the human race: While the captured alien fighter is flying through the center of the mothership we see numerous large odd-shaped space ships floating around and we see a close-up of what seems to be a formation of aliens in their bio-mech suits. The human pilot(s) comment that it looks like an invasion fleet. In any combat you eventually have to put troops on the ground if your going to occupy it. My guess would be that those large ships are troop carrying landing crafts."
John Latchem: "This was a great movie. Now on to business. The plaque on the moon. There is a plaque on the LEM leg, but I don't know if there couldn't also be one on ths surface. The creators used a sound bite of Armstrong reading from the plaque, so they should at least know that Armstrong began his reading by saying, and I am paraphrasing, 'I am reading from the plaque which is on the leg of the lander.' Also on the moon, why is there dust floating around? Couldn't the dust only float around in atmosphere? Is the gravity from the alien ship pulling it up? And as for your nit about the alien ship being seen in the light of the moon, well, the shot of Earth reveals that Africa is facing the moon, so everyone in the U.S. is facing away from the moon. So how does SETI pick up signals from the moon if it is facing away from it? Satellite relays?" (Note from Phil: I did talk with Mitzi about this and she said--without running the actual calculations--that it did indeed seem like someone on Earth with a small telescope would be able to see "something" wierd happening on the moon's surface. Maybe everyone ignored them?)
Kevin Weiler: "In the scene where Hiller and Levinson are flying out of the Mother Ship in their alien fighter, and Levinson sees that the doors are closing on them, he begins saying,'Must go faster, must go faster.' This is very reminescent of Goldblum's role as Ian Malcolm in Jurassic Park when Sadler, Malcolm, and Muldoon are being chased by a T-Rex in the Jeep."
Robert J. Woolley: "As usual, medical nits bother me the most. In particular, why didn't those stupid doctors *operate* on the First Lady when they diagnosed her with internal bleeding?!?! She wasn't so bad off she had lost consciousness, and they had what looked like a full medical facility there (hospital bed, IV lines, monitors, waiting rooms, etc.). At first I thought maybe they didn't have a surgical suite and surgical equipment, but NO, they can operate on the damn ALIEN but not on the president's wife! ('I'm sorry, Mr. President, a 30-minute proceudre would save your wife's life, but we're too busy dissecting an alien in our only operating room right now.')"
"On to the non-medical. Is one nuclear weapon really enough to dessimate a ship with the mass 1/4 that of the moon?" (Note from Phil: Maybe it caused a really, really quick chain-reaction?)
"And finally (for now), the most obvious of all. A ship with 1/4 the mass of the moon is just outside our atmosphere. This would cause massive tidal waves. But despite much of the action taking place in the L.A. area, not once do they show surfer dudes out trying to catch the monster waves!"
"Also, I thought of another crucial nit. The movie claims that the Roswell alien ship was one of these evil aliens. But we know from DS9 that it was Quark, Rom, Nog, and Odo! Don't blame the near-destruction of the earth on *these* guys!"
Jeffrey G. Germann: "Phil, I have the answer...I know how Goldblum was able to make a virus and upload it so quickly into the computer of the alien ship. I thought everyone would get this one..It is so obvious..There is One Man already on this planet that has been trying to take over the world through computers..He has to be part of the invasion force..BILL GATES ...the Alien Ship was using Windows '95...That stuff is poping up everywhere!"
Kathy Warren: "My "Entertainment Weekly" came yesterday, and there's a review of Independence Day. A little piece of it goes: 'or thrill to the perfect rightness of Brent Spiner from Star Trek the Next Generation playing a scientist who studies...organic life forms!' I'm so proud of him, I could bust. Too bad his character didn't live to be in the sequal."
Brian Phan: "I'd like to react to the person in San Francisco who asks why don't the aliens in ID4 destroy San Francisco. I've read the book and it says they destroy San Francisco in the first wave over the convention center. The book also says the beam in Washington D.C. is over the Washington Monument, not the White House."
Matt Cotnoir: "I saw ID4 again, and I have a few corrections to make...
1) I would like to retract my nit about the President's daughter playing musical chairs. I paid closer attention this time, and saw that I was wrong.
2) I found another scene in a trailer for this movie that wasn't in the movie: In a trailer, the cable guy (sorry, I'm really bad with names) and his father are driving to D.C., when a group of prople jump the highway median to get out of traffic and start heading for them. The father gets out of the way and the cable guy says Nice Driving, Pops. This wasn't in the movie.
3) In response to someone's comment about why the didn't try to revive Dr. Okun (Brent Spiner), Maybe it was because his neck was broken! You can tell by the odd anglehis neck is at. Well I guess that's that!
Donald Carlson: [Concerning Roger Sorensen comments that he half expected the cropduster bi-plane to end up saving the day,] I read in Entertainment Weekly that orignally the Randy Quaid character DID fly his crop duster against the alien ship! After test screenings showed a negative response to this scene, the makers when back and reshot the scenes with Quaid in an F-18! (Note from Phil: It truly boggles the mind that the creators of this movie actually thought the audience would respond positively to this in the first place!)
"[Concerning Kevin Weiler's comment that Levision saying 'Must go faster' sounded like Jurassic Park,] this is on purpose. ID4's director had Goldblum use the same words his character used in Jurassic Park while filming the scene (they used other combinations, but apparently the makers liked these words best). Again, this is from Entetainment Weekly."
"Not a nit but an observation. At the close of the film is the statement "No animals or aliens were harmed in making this film." (Note from Phil: I saw that! Very cute!)
Anon: I saw ID4 with a recent Voyager convert, and when they were all going 'regular bombs aren�t strong enough to destroy the ship, we need something bigger' he whispered 'why don�t they make a warp core breach?' :-) Personally, I thought those little alien fighters looked a lot like Ferengi ships."
Salvador Grandon of Edmonton, Canada: "In his nit Jeffry G. German writes that Goldblum was able to uplink the virus because the mother ship was running Windows 95. If you look closely at the O/S that Goldblum uses it is a MAC. Therefore the computers are still incompatilble ;)"
Philip Blaiklock: "I read through the nits of ID4 and noted the section of ripping off other movies, such as Star Wars. Here's another movie ripped off...Star Trek, The Motion Picutre (Not that I really liked that flick, but still.....) The inside of the mother ship reminded me of V'Ger!"
"Another thing....how did the Roswell Ship GET there to earth the first place? In 1947 it obviously had no mother ship in orbit, and those alien fighter ships DO seem to be rather short range, unlike the mother ship. It must have been on some scouting/surveying mission I guess...maybe a larger ship was stationed just outside the solar system, I dont know...."
David L. Tayman: "Maybe I'm just naive, but I thought stealth bombers couldn't be detected? Yet we see them on the tracking cpu..." (Note from Phil: Hmmmm. Now there's an interesting question. Just how *does* the Air Force determine the current position of stealth bombers? Anybody know?)
Daniel and Elizabeth Case: W just came back from this and read the page Great movie! Great nits! See it! Then nitpick it!
"We've decided to call it Star Wars on Earth. As many others have noted, this film has homages to Star Wars. Many homages to Star Wars. We were saying things like "Red Five standing by" and "Lock your S-foils into attack mode" during the fighter approaches to the alien ships. Other things stood out ... Randy Quaid's character saves the day a la Han Solo, right down to the rebel yell (and his son is called Lucas. Hmm ...). The music was obviously aping the John Williams theme music you couldn't get away from twenty years ago (especially in the end credits, where one actor is credited as "'Chewy' Vacca."). When the alien fighters came out, I said "We've picked up a new set of signals from the other side of the station. Enemy fighters headed your way" and the "Relics"-esque scene where Will Smith and Jeff Goldblum escaped the mothership had us saying "Close the blast doors! Close the blast doors!" There are too many of these SWSs to count.
"But what we also noticed was homages to a certain very popular episode of TNG. Think about it ... Aliens with massive, dark ships appear in the skies over Earth. They level our cities. We learn through a Vulcan mind meld that they "use all the natural resources and move on." A mass military attack on them results in heavy casualties for us at first, until two people (one of them a computer hacker with poor social skills) plant a virus in the main computer that shuts things down long enough for victory to be snatched from defeat at the last moment. Oh, and these aliens wear protective biomechanical suits. All together now: "We've got the best ... of ... both worlds." I was positive the computer virus said just "Sleep." Add to this the First Contact trailer shown before the film, and you've got some thing going on.
"And for other homages, the scene with Will Smith and Jeff Goldblum walking out of the fiery crash at the end triumphant was straight out of The Right Stuff.
"I also thought that just once we deserved to see William B. Davis in the background puffing away, epsecially at Area 51.
"Anyway, nits other people didn't notice (yet).
"First, that satellite that hits the alien ship at the beginning and explodes looks a lot more to me like a Soviet Soyuz, a manned spacecraft that hasn't been used for some time.
"The use of the global satellite system by the aliens suggests a simpler strategy that might buy us some time. Why not just shoot the satellites down? It's not like we can't replace them later. (I wasn't too bothered by the computer virus because if the aliens had figured out how to use our satellites (and I don't think it was ever explicitly stated that they destroyed the satellite system), they might have made it possible for us to use theirs with our tools).
"This movie several times shows people traveling across the Bonneville Salt Flats on their way to Area 51 and implies the two are adjacent. I've never been out there but the way I read a map, Groom Lake (Area 51) is in southern Nevada near Las Vegas and the Salt Flats are in central Utah. That's a pretty long hike even when you're not dragging a dead alien along on your parachute.
"When Jada Pinkett and her son are heading for the tunnel, the editing makes it difficult to tell whether they're actually in the tunnel or not when the fireball hits. They look over their shoulders and we see either the tunnel or the skyline being destroyed, with the ship clearly visible overhead.
"An un-nit: Randy Quaid could do what he did at the end maybe because, earlier, we saw the beam first hit something on the ground, then a second energy pulse detonated it. When he flew into the weapon, the second pulse was just about to occur.
"Also, when Air Force One narrowly avoids the fireball that detonates Washington, where is it taking off from? The quickness of the helicopter trip suggests it's National Airport, in which case the trajectory of the detonating fireball would be incorrect because National's runways would be facing it broadside on. If it were Dulles or BWI, they should be out of danger, because the radius of the LA fireball seems limited to the central city area, and both those airports are well beyond that distance from the White House.
"At Area 51, we learn that the rooms with all the cool alien stuff are twenty-four levels underground, whereas the captured UFO seems to be right at the surface. This is understandable, but we never get a hint of this until the UFO takes off.
"And these aliens must be the same ones who built "The Doomsday Machine." They have some rule of war that says that you must build your superpowerful death-dealing megaship so that someone can fly a suicide mission right down the barrel of your gun and you are helpless to do anything about it.
"Also, as for Will's ease in flying the alien ship, two things: First, the people at Area 51 had put signs on the control panel so he knew what was where. Second, it was easy to reach the mothership because a) its location was established early in the movie and b) the computer flew the ship in on autopilot.
"Also, I wonder about the alien strategy. First, their technology is far superior to ours. Why even bother sending out their fighters to deal with ours if their battleships have impenetrable shields? (Obviously, judging from the final dogfight, their pilots need the practice!). Second, why would they have the countdown? Why not just come and blast away right away (unless they had to wait for all their ships to get into position, which the film suggests they had already done). Are they waiting for us to surrender? They must, as you said, like the drama.
"Oh, this one really bugs me big time. We learn that the US is down to 15% of military forces, and see the aliens taking out military bases left and right. How come, then, when the President leads the final assault on the alien ships there's tons of planes left? Those defense contractors must be amazing ...
"Also, we learn that the Vice President and other dignitaries are dead when NORAD was wiped out. But why should they go there? The writers should bone up on more fringe conspiracy theories ... or at least reread Seven Days in May. Not very far from Washington is Mount Weather in Virginia, where the President is supposed to go in situations of crisis such as these.
"And even if the President wants to go to Area 51, I understand, but with alien ships in the sky isn't it very risky to be doing it in Air Force One? (I know, I know, in case of a nuclear emergency that's exactly where he's supposed to go -- the airborne command post).
"When they get to Area 51, the guy there welcomes them with "Welcome to Area 51." OK, for script purposes it's understandable, but don't you think that in reality the facility would call itself by some other, more official-sounding name?
"Just lastly, when they were doing the alien autopsy, were you looking for the guy from Fox TV filming it? Or even Jonathan Frakes in the background?"
Francis Lalumiere, Montreal, Quebec: "I thought I'd drop you a note to let you know what I thought of ID4. This was one bad movie! Honestly, I think it was the most stupid movie I've seen in the last decade. Now before I get flamed (I know I will), let me explain why I think what I think. (Note from Phil: Of course, nobody gets flamed around here and everyone has a right to express their own opinion. We now rejoin our regularly schedule broadcast.)
"Sure, the FX were great; actually, that's the only thing that was good. I've witnessed bad acting, I've seen bad scripts make it to the silver screen, but this, this is the stuff freak shows are made of.
"How many characters were believable? Not many. And the President least of all. Bill Pullman really didn't look like the part (he looked too young, for one thing).
"How many movies have been ripped-off in the process? Well, let's see: Star Wars, Aliens, Predator, The Abyss (for those who've seen the tidal wave sequence), and I'm sure I missed a couple of them. Now where's does the 'hommage' ends and the real steal begins? That's up to each of you, but for me that was too much.
"What about the storyline? From the opening sequence (dust FLYING around on the Moon's surface, and the ground shaking), to the very end of the movie (the destroyers happening to crash "just where they won't hurt anyone"), it stinks. The scene with the dog in the tunnel was ridiculous, the scene of "first contact" between the crashed alien and Hiller was ludicrous, and the plan to destroy the alien ships was laughable at best - just to mention those.
"But there are a lot more (when the movie ended, my friend Maggie said 'No main characters were harmed in the making of this movie.' We had a lot of fun with this one - I know, the President's wife dies; but she should have died in the helicopter crash).
"Now a few nits:
"Exactly why did they build area 51 as a spaceship launch facility? The ship wasn't working, didn't have any power, was a wreckage. So suddenly, when it starts working again and they need to fly it, the whole research lab opens up and lets the ship take off. (Note from Phil: They must have had a lot of faith in their ability to study the thing. Of course, they did have to lower it into the lab somehow!)
"The whole virus scheme is totally impossible to pull off (not with the speed they did it!). But this one has already been torn apart.
"When Hiller and Levinson try to get out of the mothership, how come Hiller (who's had 10 minutes of experience flying this thing) can evade three ALIEN pilots who's been trained to pilot these ships?
"Was this a predictable movie? You bet! A lot of them are, but this one was a gem of predictability. Let's have a show of hands. Who didn't think that Levinson and his ex-wife would come back together? Who didn't believe that the President's wife had died in the helicopter crash? Who didn't feel like Randy Quaid would save the day? The list goes on and on...
"Why didn't the aliens get done with their attack the moment they began? After blasting the major cities, they could have sent shock troops down and taken control of the whole planet. But no, they decided to wait until some crazy hacker would get a totally impossible idea about uploading a virus into their mainframe. They figured that even though the plan wasn't viable at all, since they were hovering over Hollywood it would work anyway. And it would make for a more exciting ending if they lost. :)
What's wrong with a movie not having a happy ending? (I can hear the answer: 'Money'). I know this applies to a lot of movies (almost all of them, actually), but how come we never get to see an American movie that has a disastrous ending? Has anyone seen "Miracle Mile"? This was a very good movie, and it ends in a very bad way. It wouldn't have been half as powerful if it had had a happy ending.
"I'll stop here, but my point (if you haven't noticed yet :) is that this movie was one big cliche. In my opinion, there was nothing new in ID4, and even the old things were not worth seeing."
Michel M. Albert of Moncton, NB: "A lot of nits here already, but I just might have another one: When the fiery clouds descend on Earth, how come the shadow is circular and not cloud-like at all? Further, those clouds were full of glowing embers. Yet, this did not affect the shadow at all. It stayed one even color."
"Of all the deja vu in the movie, there is only one I consider to be a hommage: the HAL 2000 voice on Jeff's laptop. The rest are rips. One not mentioned is the musice from the Pulp Fiction soundtrack in the restaurant where Randy gets drunk. (Oh, I guess the footage from The Day the Earth Stood Still is a hommage too.)"
"Does anyone work at a cable company that looks like THAT? And why oh why are there no armed guards present at the autopsy?"
Ed Howard: "Satellites do carry fuel, they need it to make minor ajustments in their orbit. The type type of fuel is hypergolic wich means this stuf burns all by itself . Although I agree that a fireball would not happen. "
Mark David Bowman of Roslyn, PA: "Response to David L.Tayman's nit about traking stelth bombers: If anyone watched 'The Philadelphia Experiment' sequil, you would probably think that they may have used techniques to track the sound of the engine. Also they may have also used some transponder detection scheme which would probaly be encoded and masked somehow to prevent anyone else from tracking them."
Maria Gilmore of Bloomington IL: "Something that very much did not make sense to me in the film was the way the medical team was totally isolated when they cracked open the alien...NOT the "biocontainment chamber", that would make sense, not to risk contamination of the atmosphere by who-knows-what, but the fact that these folks were all by themselves, UNOBSERVED. You telling me that there wouldn't be some real-time outside monitoring of everything happening in that room? That the procedure is being taped is mentioned, but that doesn't make it. Obviously nobody was watching the team, because the way they call Dr Okun's name upon approaching the chamber indicates nobody has a clue that the alien's taken everybody out with it's "insidious mind control", to borrow a phrase from DS9's "Little Green Men"(and yes, I thought the issue of Roswell had been settled there). And I don't think the alien was faking unconsciousness...all it wants after awakening is to be released, as it requests in it's own, er, inimitable style. Poor Dr Okun...of course if you're going to nitpick, it is it really credible that a guy like that would be in charge of such a project? At one point before the fun began, he used the obscure medico-technical term, "doo-hickey"...or was it "thingamabob"?...and then announced the "icky" phase of the operation was at hand. Uh, real professional demeanor. Of course, trying to find somebody willing to live in a hole in the ground out in the middle of the desert with a bunch of pickled aliens for 15 years might was probably a challenge. I guess the government had to be willing to be flexible in its other qualifications for the post. I'm just glad Brent got the part. He was a treat!"
"All in all, ID4 is great entertainment, lousy science fiction, and abysmal science. I've seen it more than once, and the first time I took it too seriously...I was critical of some of the performances, until I realized that, gosh darn it, I was just thinking too much."
Jeff Burns: 1) Everyone refers to the alien ship as having crash-landed in the '50s. But as any UFO buff can tell you, the Roswell incident occured in the late '40s (namely 1947). 2) I'm sure almost everyone has seen footage of an actual nuclear explosion. And what does it look like? Fire! Well then why, when the mother ship exploded in a nuclear explosion, did it do so in a flash of blue light?" (Note from Phil: Perhaps the nuclear explosion set off the power plant in the spaceship?)
Troy Diggs: "In the previews and in commercials for Macintosh, we see the Mac interface (which is good! Apple learned the lesson from the M:I movie!) with a clock counting down the 28 minutes. Maybe I'm wrong, but that clock looks an awwwwwwwwful lot like a clock from a program (I can't remember the name) that does disk drive repair/diagnosis/whatever... I suppose that they could have used a new clock and new program, but still, it just looks way too much like the other to be a coincidence. (Of course, they could have just used the clock in the menu bar to show it, but it probably wouldn't have had the same effect. However, it would mean that they wouldn't have to take up the memory to open up a whole new application just to show the clock...)"
Alfredo Ruanova: "My only thought on the subject is about the portrayal of the American president. Ex-fighter pilot turned politician, and he can't lie ? How did he ever survive long enough to be elected president ? Isn't he just to honest, dircet and just plain human to be in politics ? Of course, maybe that's just what you get from having Lone Star (the hero from Spaceballs The Movbie - The Sci-fi spoof by Mel Brooks) as the US president !!! :) "
Philip Blaiklock: "First off, I don't think interfacing with the mother ship would be that hard. In a short period of time (a day or two), with the likes of Goldblum working on it, they apparently WERE able to interface with it and plant a virus to disable its shields. That's the hard part. However, after that all is over with, when they flew in there and interfaced with the mothership, all they had to do was plant the virus into the system of the fighter, then that is automatically transmitted to the mother ship, and then KABOOM."
"Still, I thought the way they handled this scene was dumb, with the 'negotiating with host' bit. Come on, it's not like they're using Netscape Navigator to hack the alien's system!"
"Ok, just how WERE Will Smith & Goldblum able to survive the shockwave from the exploding mothership?" (Note from Phil: They're just that good.)
TJ Dewitt: "I mainly have a problem with the Aliens motives for trying to take over Earth. According to the movie these aliens travled from planet to planet destroying all civilization in there path and for what? Natural Reasorces??? There must be a better way to get the materials than to seek out a planet with sapient life, completely destroy the civilization with lazers which emit enough power to level cities. It would be much less wastefull of there time and energy to find some non-inhabited solar system and mine some asteroids or something. Or with their high level technology, why couldn't they get energy directly from a star (supposing that is why they need the natural resorces."
"One more problem. As far as I could tell NOWHERE in the movie did anyone question where the aliens came from or whether or not there are more of them some where out there. Also how much did the President learn from the "mind meld". If he knew the aliens motives and history, could he have learned tactical data or was the mind meld only selective to information that would add to the plot of the movie?"
J.Seth Farrow: "Regarding Hiller being let in to Area 51 by the outpost guard: Exactly how do you think this ONE GUY is going to stop him, OR the RV caravan. Granted, Area 51 has more security than one outpost, but they were probably called off to other duties, just as leave was cancelled for everybody else. To quote Tommy Lee Jones in 'The Fugitive', My response to that Area 51 guard would have been: 'Arrest us.' I understand your view point, but the CIRCUMSTANCES STRONGLY MITIGATE the intrusion by Hiller and crew., IMHO." (Note from Phil: Of course, it's not like the guard couldn't see them coming for miles and called for reinforcements. ;-)
Mario Bruzzone of Bekeley, CA: "Let me first say that I enjoyed the movie a lot. Now on to the nits.
"1) What happened to the sea-based navy in this movie?(Many of my nits concern this) We see a submarine rise out of the water in the Perian Gulf and that is the last we see of it.
"2)Instead of using a B2 bomber for the nuclear strike, why not fire a ballistic missile from either a submarine or a ballistic missile silo?
"3)Why did the planes attacking the ship over Los Angeles attack with short range, air-to-air missiles? Why not attack with Phoenix missiles, which have a range of miles, and would save all of the air wings when the attack was deflected (because then Dennis Quaid's character wouldn't need to kill himself to save the human race, that's why)?
"4)It seemed to me that Hiller's plane ran out of fuel a bit too quickly. I'm going to be conservative in my estimates, but if it took two and a half hours for all of the planes to take off, move into that nifty formation, and reach the alien ship AND they were flying at full afterburner(which uses up fue twice as fast) AND they didn't refuel after takeoff AND the dogfight took 15 minutes on full after burner, I would guess that they still would have an hour's worth of fuel left. After all, Some of our fighter have flown from LA to our Air Force Base in Germany with refueling afer takeoff. So either someone high in the military didn't want them to come back alive OR one of the aliens was messing with the planes OR both, which is my guess.
Shane Tourtellotte of Westfield, NJ: "1.) When the Big Mama ship is located approaching Earth, it’s described as being 550 kilometers across, with a mass a quarter that of the Moon. The Moon is roughly 3500 kilometers in diameter, so Big Mama is less than a sixth the length of the Moon. It is also smaller in its other two dimensions than in length. I’ll be charitable and say it has one four-hundredth the Moon’s volume, once you account for all three dimensions. To have a quarter of the Moon’s mass, the ship must now have one hundred times its density. The Moon is about 3.5 times denser than water, so that makes it 350 times for the ship. The densest element, osmium, is about 19 times denser than water, so if this spacecraft were solid osmium all the way through, it would have around an eighteenth the mass it needed. It’s not all osmium, and it’s definitely not solid all the way through. Run the numbers, and it’s apparent we pitiful humans fouled up from the start with these guys. (Note from Phil: Actually, I thought the movie said the saucer was only 150 kilometers across. Of course . . . that would just make the problem worse!!)
"On the other hand, if it were that massive, the very first scene would make more sense. We see the wake of Big Mama’s passage efface Neil Armstrong’s footprints from the surface of the Moon. (With sound effects, but let’s not get into that.) Since the Moon has no atmosphere, there’s nothing through which a shock wave can propagate. If it’s reaction exhaust from Big Mama’s engines, why don’t we see it coming down? If this effect is tidal, it makes more sense, and it can be if the ship is as massive as we’re told, and as close as we see it. However, if that’s so, then it would cause similar tides on Earth when it settles into close orbit. Not only don’t we see Earth tremble through mere proximity, we never see or hear of the oceans suffering increased tides as a result. (At least, I didn’t. Did I miss the surfing scenes?) So, if it fits in one place, it doesn’t in the other. Oh well.
"2.) I would talk about the mixing of Imperial and metric measurements, except that we Americans do that all the time, so the movie’s consistent with real life.
"3.) Anyone intimately connected with SETI (the Search for ExtraTerrestrial Intelligence) would howl at how their project is portrayed. The scientists all immediately declare this rather muddled signal to be ETI, save for the one fuddy-duddy, wet-blanket, ‘We shouldn’t be too hasty’ party pooper. SETI scientists have saved their skins on numerous occasions by not being too hasty. They’ve had several instances where something they received appeared to be genuine, until they took a closer look and found the flaw. (Usually, the broadcast was intelligent -- us.) They’d take a much closer look in real life, but since this movie is pushing two-and-a-half hours already, well . . .
"4.) When the Russian satellite(or space station: it looked like Mir) runs into Big Mama, or vice versa, we see no shield effects. Why wouldn’t Big Mama have the protection its destroyers do? If it had, of course, that would have spoiled the surprise waiting for us during that first air attack.
"5.) That raises another point. How many of our communications satellites did it give the bug-on-the-windshield treatment as it passed through geosynchronous orbit? Or are the aliens too advanced to think that two-dimensionally, and they just skipped over the orbital path? I’d like that… . "6.) Except that if Big Mama is as massive as we were told -- admittedly a dubious proposition -- it would gravitationally wrench those satellites out of orbit if it passed anywhere near them. Or is this adding to the fouled reception we see? Hmmm.
"7.) On the morning of July 2nd, we see a political discussion program: specifically, The McLaughlin Group. Later that day, we see a new episode of the same program. Trouble is, The McLaughlin Group is a weekly show, and here we get two episodes inside 24 hours. You could say this was a special episode, aired in view of the sudden crisis, but it doesn’t wash. McLaughlin is a syndicated program. If it were a network show, like This Week with David Brinkley or Crossfire, I’d be sold. A network could guarantee it air time. An extra syndicated program wouldn’t have a chance in the media frenzy. I will allow one possible loophole. The morning program might have been a rerun of last week’s show. I can imagine a station in D.C. running repeats of political discussion shows.
"8.) The focal plot point of the early movie is the alien message nested inside our satellite broadcasts. This is a smart way for the invaders to stay in touch with each other, and for the writers to make it possible for one insightful human to guess their intentions. (Though it was a pretty shaky guess. What if it was a countdown to a worldwide broadcast of friendship messages? More on this in my Brazen Ripoff section.) The problem is, they don’t exchange significant information between ships. They just keep a mutual countdown toward Zero Hour. Do they need this contact to do so? Don’t they have accurate chronometers on the destroyers? And why is such precise time so vital? Presumably, to insure that they launch their attacks all at once, so as not to give any city a second of advance warning. If that’s true, the L.A. ship blew it by smoking those three welcoming helicopters half an hour early.
"9.) And that was pretty stupid of the aliens, wasn’t it, to destroy those choppers and alert us to their real intentions in advance. Those helicopters were no conceivable threat, not against their shields. Why not let them flash away like idiots until all the numbers hit zero, then charcoal-broil them? Instead, they spook the Commander-in-Chief, and that ended up costing them the ball game.
"10.) Thirty languages fail to draw a response from the aliens, so what do we do? We retrofit helicopters to fly up and flash lights at them. Am I alone, or was there no discernible data content in those light patterns anyway? (With our luck that day, though, we were probably spelling out ‘Shoot me’ in their language.) "11.) Just how did the White House get blown up, anyway? The innumerable clips television showed of this movie gave two versions of its annihilation: one with a helicopter lifting off and being shredded, and one without. Yes, the producers put two versions on film before the editing process, but once you’ve picked one, why are you keeping the other one around to show on TV? 'Because it looks better, and has fewer distractions, than the one in the movie,' you say? In that case, why didn’t they use that version in the first place? Who cares about whatever laggard was on the last chopper? I never figured out who he was, anyway.
"12.) The long shot of the Empire State Building exploding is impossible. The Empire State Building would have to be above a T, where street intersects street, to be visible as it is when it goes kaboom. It isn’t. It’s on a normal city block, taking up about half of it. I’ve been in New York City several times, and have seen the ESB often enough to know. You could travel here and confirm it, or you could find a map of Manhattan. Either way, the producers fudged the layout of Manhattan to suit their film. No wonder they blew the place up, to cover their error.
"13.) The firestorm in the L.A. tunnel is perhaps one huge error from beginning to end. I’ll give it two light taps myself. First, there’s no discernible air motion in the tunnel. One of two things should be happening. A, there should be an irresistible shock wave much farther than a few feet from the wall of fire. B, all the air in the tunnel should be sucked backward to feed the advancing inferno, as occurs in real-life firestorms. Ask anybody who’s fought a raging forest fire. Put them together, and you will not get C, a perfect balance of outward and inward pressure. You will instead get D, a clash of forces going in opposite directions, creating a flaming whirlwind that would make Twister look humdrum.
"14.) Second, even if the firestorm couldn’t turn a corner to incinerate mother, child, and dog, wouldn’t the aforementioned drawing of oxygen from the air to feed this thing asphyxiate them within seconds?
"15.) Third, but in a wider context, the shock wave from the alien weapon seems very slow. Judging it against the barely escaping Air Force One (more on that soon), it must be moving about 200 miles per hour. I don’t think the blast could move that slowly and stay potent.
"16.) President Whitmore and his entourage flee D.C. aboard Air Force One. Whatever happened to ‘Kneecap’? That’s NEACP, the National Emergency Airborne Command Post, created to keep the President in control of American military forces during a nuclear war. I don’t remember hearing that it was mothballed or scrapped. Wouldn’t it be the logical choice in what has clearly become a war? And if it has been scrapped in the last few years, aren’t we sorry we did that? (Actually, I’m assuming that is Air Force One, and not NEACP. ‘Kneecap’ ought to be much more Spartan, dedicated to efficient military operations.)
"17.) In any case, how much taxpayer money are we wasting putting the Presidential Seal on barf bags? This isn’t a nit, though, as it’s too consistent with real life.
"18.) Why did they detonate the nuclear warhead under the destroyer? If they were so concerned about the effects on Houston, deploy the thing so the city is shielded as much as possible. If someone judged the underside to be more vulnerable that early, I missed it. "19.) Didn’t the Secret Service object, even a little bit, when President Whitmore determined to fly into the ultimate battle with that destroyer? Circumstances have undergone a sea change, granted, but wouldn’t that make them more determined to protect him at all cost, not less? Pennsylvania Avenue has concrete blocks in the middle of the street on their account. Don’t tell me they won’t take a little heat to perform their duty as they see fit. I don’t say they’d succeed in pulling him out of the cockpit, figuratively or otherwise. They would put up an argument, but since we don’t see it, it never happened.
"20.) Has anybody noticed that all the airplanes we throw against the alien destroyers are the same model? Specifically, the F-18. This made it easy for the Computer Generated Image workers, only having to put several hundred copies of one type of plane on screen. It also blew believability farther out the window. These are the remnants of our whole Air Force going against the invaders. Wouldn’t they have every variety of fighter plane in the mix, plus some bombers and attack helicopters? I don’t believe the bad guys wiped out all our other kinds of airplanes, and left us that many F-18s.
"Brazen Ripoffs of Other Science Fiction by ‘Independence Day’(BROOSFBID): Actually, I’m ambivalent about this title. Are the creators warming over age-old clich�s to flesh out their film, or is it something deeper? Is it perhaps indicative of a certain force of dramatic attraction, that movies that fall into the same broad category are necessarily drawn to certain devices, not through imitation, but through the requirements of the plot elements they hold in common? You might say, “Hey, that makes sense.” You might say, “Aw, come on.” I think it provides fodder for some fascinating debates, not only about science fiction, but about all sorts of fictional genres. Myself, I’ll return to my original thesis, and list the brazen ripoffs. (Note from Phil: I'm sure some of these have been listed before but this list gets most of them into one place.)
"Immense Alien Saucers Appearing Over All the World’s Greatest Cities -- Ripped directly from the NBC miniseries V. (By the way, they also had a countdown, at the end of which -- dramatic chord -- they broadcast messages of peace and friendship. Told you you lucked out, Mr. Levinson. Then again, V’s Visitors did turn out to be kitten-eating nasties.)
"Immense Saucer Parting the Clouds -- Really, Phil, tell me you didn’t shout “Seen that!” at the screen. Star Trek-- Generations.
"Flashing Light Patterns at the Aliens in an Attempt to Communicate -- That happened in Close Encounters of the Third Kind. We remember those five synthesizer notes most, but they also had a board of polychromatic lights, flashing in concert, so to speak.
"A Dramatic Shot of a Fallen Statue of Liberty -- Is Charlton Heston getting gross points from this film? Last scene of Planet of the Apes. (This was also ripped off for comic effect in Mel Brooks’s Spaceballs, featuring -- ta-dah! -- Bill Pullman!)
"The Intrepid Pilot Flying Through a Canyon With The Bad Guy Hot On His Tail -- Use the Force, Wil! Star Wars -- A New Hope. (The official title.)
"Alien Warships With Shields Impervious to Everything Up To and Including Nuclear Weaponry -- That’s from the 50’s movie version of War of the Worlds. This leads to the obligatory scenes of American military men and machines getting waxed in attacks they don’t yet know are futile. Count that as a double steal.
"The Computer ‘Virus’ -- This was more a tribute to The War of the Worlds than a robbery. I’ll let it pass. Just kidding.
"The Whole Last Half-Hour of the Movie -- Almost everything here reminded me of something from the Star Wars trilogy. Examples include:
"The Intrepid Yet Planet-Bound Hero Who Finally Realizes His Dream of Going Into Space -- Will Smith, meet Mark Hamill. Star Wars.
"The Heroes’ Desperate All-Out Assault Against the Ultimate Enemy Weapon . . . Just Before It Destroys Their Home Base -- Pure Star Wars.
"While Infiltrators Elsewhere Struggle to Bring Down Its Shielding -- Return of the Jedi.
"Our Heroes’ Ship Entering the Humungous, Sinister Base Ship -- Star Wars: the Millennium Falcon getting tractored into the Death Star. (Oh yeah, Star Trek: The Motion Picture)
"The Thousand-Ship Battle Outside the Ultimate Weapon Before It Finally Becomes Vulnerable -- Jedi again.
"The Near Miss That Could’ve Won the Battle -- In ID4, it’s a missile hit to the gunport doors; in Star Wars, it was a torpedo hit on the rim of the exhaust vent, or whatever it was.
"The Last-Second Escape From Doom Deep in the Heart of a Large Space Object -- Two hits here. First, the asteroid-worm in The Empire Strikes Back. Second, the Falcon’s race out of the exploding Death Star II in Return of the Jedi.
"Destruction of the Ultimate Alien Weapon Just Before It Destroys the Good Guys’ Home Base -- Star Wars, as mentioned above.
"And a couple that George Lucas can’t sue about. The Macho, Kinda-Redneck Guy Who Rides His Own Weapon to His Death at the End -- Remember Slim Pickens riding The Bomb in Dr. Strangelove? (Problem is, was that movie science fiction?)
"The Heroic Pilot Walking Across a Desert Away From The Flaming Wreckage of His Craft -- The Right Stuff, where Chuck Yeager wads up his jet after flying it to the edge of outer space, in emulation of the Mercury astronauts he could never join. (Another link there, this one to Will Smith’s/Captain Hiller’s frustrated dream of becoming an astronaut.) Okay, The Right Stuff isn’t science fiction, but it’s space, so it counts.
"On a final note: What Party Is He, Anyway? I’ve seen some building controversy in the NCIEO over what political party, or what specific politician, President Whitmore is supposed to be in Independence Day. I’m surprised it’s that much in doubt. Allow me to elucidate. The McLaughlin Group clips use the actual panelists of that political discussion program. In the first show, two panelists criticize Whitmore’s weakness as President. One is Morton Kondracke, seated on the near left -- for a reason -- and the other is Eleanor Clift, seated on the far left -- for a reason. In the second show, his bravery for staying in D.C. is praised by Fred Barnes, seated on the far right -- for a reason. As supplementary evidence, remember that Jasmine tells the First Lady, “I voted for the other guy.” Women vote Democrat moderately more often than Republican. Blacks vote Democrat greatly more often than Republican. Triangulate the comments of the real-life commentators, add the statistical evidence given by Jasmine, and it becomes plain that President Whitmore was written to be a Republican. (Of course, Bill Pullman’s made it plain in real life that he was playing Whitmore entirely the other way. No wonder his character never quite jelled.)
Robert Cook: "Just a comment about Francis Lalumiere's 'No Main Characters Were Killed' nit. Actually *three* main characters die: the drunken pilot, the First Lady, and Goldblum's boss (Harvey Firestone). Well, we don't see the boss die, but he's sitting in his car, trapped in a traffic jam, there's a giant fireball racing towards him, and we don't see him again after that scene." (Note from Phil: But did we *care* about any of them? Wink, wink.) David D. Porter (Responding to a wonderment above about tracking steath planes): "Stealth is still very hush-hush, so don't expect to get any official responses about how F-117s and B-2s are tracked. It isn't too hard to figure out, though, that the best way to find out one's location is to call the pilot on the radio and ask! ;-)"
Francis Rogers: "I've seen it twice, enjoyed it (more the first than 2nd time, where noticed plot holes large enough the mother ship could go through); it was exciting, great specially effects, funny lines. I do have a couple of nits that I don't think have been pointed out:
1.) David Levinson announces at one point there is only about six hours before the Alien countdown ends. WHen he shows the President the Countdown in his timer at the White House, there's barely a half hour to go. Are you telling me Levinson managed to: bicycle to his father's place, drive all the way from NYC to Washington, in spite of what is probably the mother of all gridlocks surrounding the City, get to the White House, talk to his ex-wife and explain the situation, and have her inform the President in barely five and a half hours? I don't think so.
2.) The Secretary of Defense doesn't tell the Presdient about Area 51, not after the alien craft are sited, not after one of them sets over the White House, not after Washington is totaled by the craft, but only after Levinson's father brings up the matter ('Oh, speaking of Area 51...I almost forgot')?
3.) Wouldn't the enormous amount of debris coming down from the exploded mother ship wreck havoc on Earth? They should be running for cover underground, not "ooohing" and "aaahing" over fireworks!
Jonathan Strawn: "First off, it was a great movie. Lots of thrills, chills and plenty of laughs. But there was quite a bit wrong with it. First, comments on some nits others have submitted:
"1. Regarding the books cannonicality, it should be noted that not only did the producer and director(who were also the writers) have influence on it, if I'm not mistaken they co-wrote it with another author(who probally did most of the work).
"2. Concerining several comments about Hiller and the RVs being in the Bonnville Salt Flats and those being a long way from Area 51, how about the fact that Hiller started out in the Grand Canyon! If he ended up in Bonnville before the end of the day, not only was he very lost, but he should try out for the US Olympic Team, as that is one long way to go in less than one day.
"3. TJ Dewitt questioned why the aliens went from inhabited planet to inhabited planet instead of mining asteroids. Simple! Like we humans would, the aliens got bored mining asteroids long ago and decided, 'we have this great weapons technology, so lets use it on something other than asteroids!'. Viola, they go from one planet to another, essentially the galatic bully, picking a fight with whoever is there. Plus, this way they get to show their kids really great home movies and stories they could tell. Just imagine Grandpa Alien talking to his Grandkids-'Now we're going to see the time I single handedly destroyed fifteen major cities on Pegasi 97 with just my one little fighter!' "Now, finally an original nit: I can't believe no one has mentioned this. The alien mothership has a mass 1/4 the size of the moon. They are going to try and destroy it with a nuclear weapons. General Grey calls this a 'TATICAL nuclear warhead'(emphasis mine). Now, Grey must have great faith in Hiller's abilities as a combat pilot, because unless, as you speculated, the weapon set off the reactor or some kind of chain reaction, there is no way that a tatical nuke could take out a big ship 1/4 the mass of the moon. Why you ask? Simply because tatical nuclear weapons are the type of nuclear weapons that you can safely use in a medium to short range battle. They are of low-yield weapons that are typically used as ballistic missles, artillery shells, etc. The only reasoning that I can find is that there was a shortage of the strategic nukes(the BIG bombs, ranging in the 40-megaton area) so they had to rely on this smaller nuke and hope that they hit something vital."
From someone who only identified themselves as Venotar: "OK, I don't know about what the TV trailer said - but this I do know...When an Average object (say, a meteor) enters the atmosphere, friction causes enough heat for that object to be visible for miles around...Now if an alien craft larger thab the island of Manhattan were to enter the atmosphere - you would get some major heat...The result would be similar to whats shown...Once the craft had slowed down a bit and had time to shed the heat - presto! Clear skies..."
Jason Gaston: "I'd just like to say, Yes, Independece Day is not the best movie ever made, but a lot of stuff got blown up and a good time was had by all.(And it was worth $5 to see Brent Spiner play a hippie.) Ok, here we go,
"The president knows that the aliens are running some kind of countdown and he gets out ASAP, but, in true Washington form, one helicopter is late and doesn't make it. (Now WHAT was so dad gum important in the White House to get blown up for? Those FBI files maybe? Oh, that was a cheap shot and I do apologize.)
"It's nice to see that Voyager's Kazon informant, Micheal Jonas, is alive and well and serving at Area 51. (Note from Phil: Not doubt in the Temporal Witness Protection Program!)
"With the release of Independence Day, or 'ID-4', I hear that other movies are in a rush to shorten their title to increase box office draw such as... Star Trek: Generations - '1701D-BOOM', Kingpin - '10-PIN', Clueless - '4-SURE', Showgirls - 'ID-17 (or older)', and Forrest Gump - 'IQ-0' (This is just a joke of course)"
Jason Finney: "Here is a possable sorta-maybe-nit for Independence Day. The alians did a very poor job of strategic planning. They should have hung out way too far away for discovery or retaliation. They should have raided the asteroid belt and set rocks into orbits that would destroy every major center of government, as well as a few to split earthquake faults wide open. They could have moved in a month later, at which time we would be far too disorganized and weak to mount any defence whatsoever. There is an even better plan they could have used. If their science was advanced enough, they could release a biological weopon designed to kill our species and then die off itself. We would never even have known they existed. They could then move in on an unoccupied planet with infrastructure and technology intact. Forget all this mucking around with satelites and hovering over cities, what sort of niave fools are these aliens!"
Christopher Kintz: Regarding the question that our good guys are able to walk through the shield of the alien fighter in Area 51, but bullets bounce off...
"...maybe the shields are like the shields in 'Dune'. In Dune, fast objects (bullets, shrapnel, shockwaves, etc.) are blocked by the shield, but slow objects (daggers, etc.) can pass through without resistance. So maybe they can walk through the shields, but bullets or other things would bounce off harmlessly.
"Now.. if they RAN into the shields, maybe they would have bounced off. That would be a neat trick for Area 51 parties. (Every time they say 'He's Dead Jim' in a Star Trek episode, you have to drink a shot of [insert beverage of preference here] and run into the Alien Fighter's shield. You're allowed to put on a helmet first...)" (Note from Phil: I know "Dune" has been mentioned before but I thought the final paragraph was good for a giggle.)
Eric Williams: "Just saw ID4, had about the same reaction as you. It was pretty good, but too predictable and too much like Star Wars, War of the Worlds, Return of the Jedi, the list goes on and on . . .
"Also, do you really think it seems reasonable that Earth standing on the brink of defeat manages to pull out as the victor?! Why don't the villians ever win??? What is wrong with an alien victory? It's not like it's ever going to happen in real life guys!!! This is only a movie! (I have a feeling from what I read from your accounts of the audience's reaction that more people would pay to go see a movie that has an "unhappy ending.")
"Now, for my big problem with the movie (besides the virus, of course): Why in the world did the aliens allow the puny humans to mobilize their puny remaining 15% of their forces!?! After the initial attack it seems like the aliens are just hovering there, saying; "Come on in and blow us up!" Don't say they are underestimating us either, because any intelligent lifeform could see what was going on! If they didn't let us mobilize then it would be a rather short film however, with a ending I would have enjoyed much more. Plus, the President's daughter saying "Happy Fourth of July daddy" was pure corn.
"Also, how is it possible for 15% of our forces to take out an entire city-destroyer and her contingent of alien attack fighters?! (How's it possible for the alien destroyers and mothership to be taken out at all given the size of them!?! It would be like a Ferengi shuttle taking out the Enterprise.......)"
Jeff Kuczynski-Brown: "1) Correct me if I'm wrong, but didn't the First Lady take off in a helicopter just before the aliens attacked L.A.? She passed over the tower, on the top of which, the people were throwing their Welcome to Earth party for the aliens. But then, later, we find her lying in the rubble -- disheveled, yes, but in a fairly relaxed and comfortable position. Well, what happened to the helicopter? How did she get out of it. (Don't tell me it landed and they tried to get away on foot !!) What happened to her companions?" (Note from Phil: I think we were supposed to think that the heliocopter did some type of controlled crash-landing. Of course, we did we what happened to the helicopter outside the White House the the pressure wave hit it!)
"2) a) The marine pilot lets go his fighter's parachute to blind the alien craft. Now, I know that *some* craft, when based on aircraft carriers, have parachutes. But do all fighters, even land-based craft, come equipped with parachutes?
"b) How convenient that even under the high dynamics of fighter motion, the parachute opens up nicely and hits the alien craft squarely!
"c) Granted that the alien pilot might "pull up" as soon as he's blinded, it manages to just nick the rim wall and skid to a stop. Where's the parachute? It would have been nice to see it at least get scraped off as the craft nicked the rim wall.
"d) The marine ejects and (conveniently!) lands, oh, about 100 yards from the alien craft; so he very boldy (some might say irrationally!) strides right up to it and climbs on top. Now, did the marine open the hatch, or did the alien? Did the alien not know he was there waiting? The alien is protected by a biomechanical protective suit. But the marine decks it with a single punch? Then the marine hauls it out of the craft? Then the marine wraps it up and drags for (minutes? hours?) across the baking desert? He even gives it a few good kicks, but it doesn't wake up? *THAT WAS SOME PUNCH!*
"3) The scene where Jasmine saves herself, her son and the dog was really lame. First of all, she has to *hurry* to escape the flames (which would be traveling a tad bit faster than the fastest human could ever hope to run) and at the last minute she miraculously smashes her way into a utility room. But the dog, acting contrary to every canine instinct) just sits in the car, and doesn't chase its master. Even so, there is still time for Jasmine (who since she had to hurry, had forgotten all about the family pet) to settle in and then call for the dog to come. It miraculously makes it! The scene would have been much more convincing if poor FIDO got fried. And even the dimmest director should have said, 'I know the script doesn't call for it, but Jasmine,when you get inside, kick the door closed with everything you've got, baby.'"
Theodore Jay Miller of Howard Beach, NY: "A thought I had, explaining why the aliens didn't have defenses against computer viruses: they'd never encountered such viruses before, since neither they, nor any species they'd attacked, had developed the concept of the computer virus. What beings other than humans would engage in the truly pointless activity of writing computer programs whose only function is to mess up some random stranger's computer?
Jeff Burns: "1) I cannot stress enough, you should not be able to see laser beams, or any other form of directed energy. If all the light is going downward, no light should be going outward to meet our eyes. Only the people on top of the building should be able to see it."
"2) The beam that hit the White House is reletivly small compared to the beams that decimate New York and Los Angeles."
"3) Contrary to the other scenes, which depict a targeting beam and THEN the destruction, the White House begins to explode prematurly."
"4) All the destructions seem to take place during the night. Then why does my poster depict it happening during the day?"
"5) How do the aliens confer with each other around the world when they're destroying planets that have not sent up any artificial sattelites?"
"6) At one point when David and his dad are driving to Washington, His dad makes a little gesture at him. in the very next shot, it's somehow back on the steering wheel."
"7) When Captain Hiller is about to take off with his 'Black Knights,' we see a plane take off behind him. Now I'm not sure, but I think it's far enough away the the sound should take some time reaching him, but it doesn't."
8) When President Whitmore & co. are entering Area 51, we see some scientists examining some pieces of of mettalic material, presumably from the spaceship. But for some reason it takes off just fine later in the movie without those pieces."
"9) Why would the aliens send an ATTACKER to Roswell?"
"10)This movie says that there were only three bodies recovered from Roswell. But there were supposedly FOUR alien bodies recovered."
"11.) And also, if you go by all the alien folklore, the wreckage from Roswell was taken to many different secret bases, not just Area 51."
J. Seth Farrow: "To all who have ever contributed to the ID4 discussion page: I completely agree that the movie is FULL of references (homages, brazen rip-offs, or otherwise) to other Sci-fi movies/shoes; HOWEVER, i have another two-cents worth to add, regardless of these flaws: In the ID4 Soundtrack liner notes, the producer says that one of the most important reasons (other than $$$) that the movie was made is to show people of diverse backgrounds come together to fight a common enemy. (I'm paraphrasing, of course.) Yes, I know this is not a new idea, but it still is a GREAT STORY. To be honest, everytime I heard Randy Quaid's character say, "Tell my children...I love them very much.", I became teary-eyed! I know that nitpickers (I am an avid one.) don't find this very fun, but I think this picture deserves a lot of credit, despite its' flaws.'"
"Oh, BTW: A friend named Scott Preston told me that Casse's (Quaid's) line, 'I picked a h*** of a day to quit drinkin' is a direct reference to 'Airplane.'"
Donald Carlson of Birmingham, AL regarding this from Jeff Kuczynski-Brown wonderment over parachutes and aircraft: "Only land-based fighters use parachutes to assist in stopping during landing. Carrier based jets do not. Carrier jets must be able to quickly power up and fly off the deck should they miss the landing cable. Having a parachute dragging behing the aircraft would certainly result in a nasty accident should the pilot not 'trap'."
"The parachute, therefore, may be a major nit just in itself. I am not sure if F-18's are equipped with parachutes, since their primary use is with the Navy and the Marines. Perhaps someone more knowledgeable about F-18's could answer this. (I did an Alta Vista search for F-18 web sites, but could not answer the question based on what I found. However, looking at the photos, you can clearly see the landing tail hook, but no bulge or area in the tail to house a parachute.)"
Jeff Burns of Overland Park, KS: "Come on! Do the creators of this movie really expect us to believe that these attackers have been reported as flying SAUCERS over all the decades? They look nothing like discs. (The creators could've spared themselves of this nit by sticking to the general theory among UFO buffs (a club, that I am proud to say, of which I am a member) that there are many different races of extra-terrestrials visiting earth, hence many different spaceships. But did they? Noooo...)"
"Many people (including you, Phil) have declared how stupid the whole virus plan was. But come on, the laptop's connected to the attacker, the attacker's connected to the mother ship, and the mother ship is connected to the city destroyers (and the foot bone's connected to the ankle bone...). They have been studying this craft for nearly fifty years. Doesn't it seem plausible that the scientists at Area 51, while putting it back together, needed to use some earthly technology in the proccess? If so then, even if took a couple of years, they might have found a way to link up both technologies, hence the earthling laptop interface with the alien attacker. And when the mother ship was recieving the virus program, it was coming from one of their own ships! They probably thoght it was just a routine data transfer. (But hey, you're the computer expert. If you tell me different, I'll take your word for it.)" (Note from Phil: Others have brought up this business of the scientists studying the craft at Area 51 but I think Brent Spiner's character says that they displays on the craft lit up only when the mother ship came into orbit. He makes reference to the fact that the craft uses some type of exotic power supply. I take this to mean that the scientist at Area 51 were only doing materials research not computer research because it's *really* hard to study a computer's programming is you ain't got no power! Disassembling code is hard enough. Slicing apart chips to study the electron transmission characteristics of the material is just about impossible.)
"Is it possible that the atmospheric disturbances at the beginning of the film was a homage to the movie 'FIRE IN THE SKY'?"
"The aliens look nothing like the traditional aliens reported by alleged abductees. Now I understand that the creators wanted to make the aliens look more menacing, more evil, but I wouldn't have minded seeing a little guy with an enlarged head, huge dark eyes, grey skin, and a little slit for a mouth popping his head out the biomechanical armor."
"If there were three aliens in the ship at Roswell, why was there only one in the ship that Hiller battled?"
"Finally, it looks like apple macintosh is in with 20th CENTURY FOX as well as Paramount Pictures (MISSION: IMPOSSIBLE)."
Hubert Seiwert of Dublin, Ireland: "Why is everybody watching Sky News, British Sky Broadcasting's european news channel? Afraid it cannot be received in north America."
"Levinson makes a sketch of the aliens' satellite relays, in which I believe a beam goes from an alien ship to a satellite and from there to another satellite. This would not be possible, as satellites have defined beams which only cover a certain area on earth (which is called a footprint)."
"I was also a bit annoyed by the americentrism displayed by lots of other countries being represented by nomads and the like."
Jeff Burns of Overland Park, KS: "Remember those big tower-like things on the spaceships? Well, when 'Operation: Welcome Wagon' was about to take off, a reporter said it had been decided the towers were the fronts of the ships. Where did this decision come from? It should have been easy to tell that these were not the front of them. 'How?' you might ask. Simple: they were not coming out of the atmospheric disturbances with that in the front. And with good reason, too. Do you really think the tower-like thingies (pretty scientific, huh?) would help the craft, aerodinamically speaking, to burst through an atmosphere of an entire planet? I should say not! In fact, I can't see a good reason to have the tower-like thingamabobs on the ships at all." (Note from Phil: Maybe that's why the aliens didn't take us more seriously!)
"Also, I noticed that lots of people said that the fact that the dog survived at the last minute in INDEPENDENCE DAY was lame. I just gotta say, I think the creators knew what they were doing when they let the dog live. They obviously knew how audiences reacted to animals dying. They gave us a refreshing change from what other movie-makers usually do. I know that when I saw that poor cow fly by in 'Twister' I let out a little 'Awww.' (Why is it that when animals die in movies we feel sorry for them, but when humans get killed, no matter how much the creators try to display it as a tragedy, it just leaves us thinkin' 'Okay, so the people are dead, now when does the action-hero kill the bad guys as revenge for the death of his (insert family-members name here)?)"
Bill Alston: On the subject of ID4 I have a few comments that may or may not be accurate (I saw it on July 3rd and haven`t been able to go back). First, why didn`t the aliens take out Denver in the second round, with NORAD command and the Air Force Academy in the area it would be a stategic target (and don't come across with they didn't know about it they knew anough to take out Washington D.C. in the first round), at the very least they could have taken it out enroute from L.A. to the 'east of the rockies' targets (Chicago, Atlanta and Philidelphia). Second,why were Hiller and Levinson able to walk away from a crash that destroyed the alien attack craft they were in (I know, I know, happy ending time). Third, how did the United States move one hundred(?) fighters to Area 51 without pilots? Finally, when he kamakazis into the city destroyer why didn't Russel eject from the hornet?, Hiller was able to do with less time in the Grand Canyon, andRussel though messed up by his alcholism and out of practice was a military fighter pilot and should have known how to use it. Other than that I greatly enjoyed the movie. It`s a real flag waver, and when Igot out I saw my home town`s fireworks display, that had just startedapproxmately ten to fifteen minutes before the movie let out."
Eric Lee Cline: "Here's a hopefully humorous homage ID4 pays to Return of the Jedi."
"Return of the Jedi: Black pilot (Lando Calrissian) and pale skinned copilot who babbles incoherently in an alien language invade a moon sized craft, blow it up, and barely escape with their lives, while Imperial ship following them doesn't make it."
"Independence Day: Black pilot (Steven Hiller) and pale skinned copilot who babbles incoherently about the environment invade a moon sized craft, blow it up, and barely escape with their lives, while alien ship following them doesn't make it."
Carrie Sager of Berkeley, CA: "Good movie, but I was really hoping some one would call the pilot 'Mike' or 'Crewman' or 'Jonas'"
James Sakal of Phoeniville, PA: "I find it odd that the alien fighters are of the same design today as they were 40 years ago. Think of it this way: Would the United States use World War II bombers in Iraq if they had stealth fighters? Of course not!"
Murray J.D. Leeder: "Throughout this undeniably thrilling movie one thought nagged in my mind: how is it that the aliens knew where the capital cities were? Even if they monitored signals sent from Earth, how could they make heads or tails out of them? Unless, of course, they had an informant on Earth." (Note from Phil: Well, the alien supposedly have been checking us out for some time. Remember Roswell.)
"Early on, a newscaster reports that alien ships are heading to all of the capitals. If I remember correctly, neither New York nor Los Angeles are capitals... not even state capitals!"
"Speaking of L.A., it appears to be the only city where wackos weren't even trying to leave the city. Clearly, this is a comment on the Californian lifestyle, but is it really realistic. There are wackos
everywhere, after all!"
"[Regarding the function of the towers on the city-destroyers,] Couldn't they be part of the mechanism by which the dock to the mothership?"
"In the static free room, what exactly were all those scientists examining? The alien bodies seem fully intact, and its certainly not anything for the vessel. That leaves the bio-mech armour. But could they
really have analyzed that for nearly fifty years? And also, why would that require the room to be static-free?"
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Copyright 1996 by Phil Farrand. All Rights Reserved.