“Welcome to Erf!”
30 years on, the summer of 1996 was dominated by what was arguably the peak of Roland Emmerich’s career—kickstarting the ‘90s disaster movie trend that saw the skyline of New York bashed around in increasingly demented ways, while also launching a young and sexy Will Smith into his cinematic career. From chortling over lack of alien password security, to the iconic scifi imagery it left buried in, how exactly does Independence Day hold up?
Well, for one, on a purely visual side…actually really well. The 90s saw the CGI revolution in Hollywood kick in for better or for worse, of course, but this one made heavy use of practical in-camera miniatures, from the city-sized destroyers to the buildings that got annihilated oh so satisfyingly by stuffing plywood with powder. We had intricate matte paintings still in use, while at the same time, all this was combined with new technology like the aforementioned computer animation for swarms of little craft and whatnot. I especially appreciate the mothership interiors we see, which were actually fog-choked sets that were lit and shot just right as to convey a sense of scale that decades later a lot of newer films don’t match.
And those aforementioned giant destroyers? Well, especially when viewed on the big screen, there’s a reason that’s an image homaged so much—there’s something harrowing about just seeing the sky replaced with metal, with these impassive hovering behemoths simply appearing, annihilating, and coldly moving on. Combined with the aforementioned intricate model work, giving them an actual in-camera presence, no wonder it was one thing that stuck.
It’s amusing then to think that, in a world were any random genre work from decades ago gets remade, that while this was essentially a harking back to the old cheesy invasion movies of the fifties, it did succeed in taking its own contemporary super-upgraded take on such things…and this sort of applies to the script. Most of characters are broad, yeah, from Judd Hirsch as every Brooklyn alter kocker rolled into one, to Harvey Feinstein playing, well, Harvey Feinstein. That being said, for such an over-the-top thing, if you can channel the right charisma, you can still sell such things—and who better than Will Smith at the top of his game? Combine that with Jeff Goldblum (playing the obligatory vindicated nerd you have in every Emmierch film, but better than Broderick that’s for sure) and the likes of Robert Loggia as the growling yet focused military general, there’s enough star power to give this kind of script the juice it needs.
That however cuts both ways, as we’ll get too. And of course we have Bill Pullman as an improbably young US President (though the story at least acknowledges this is proving a detriment to him at the start), fulfilling our American dream by hopping into a jet at the end—even at the time, some of his speecifying was seen as a bit much. Ironic given it’s a film directed by a German immigrant, but as we’ll also get too, for the time, it can be forgiven.
Despite that, though, the script at least remains consistent, there is a token attempt at developing our multiple lines of characters (including of course Randy Quiad as a half-crazed pilot, before he became a half-crazed lunatic in real life), the spectacle has impact, and the designs are memorable—the organic yet monolithic look of the aliens works, and I even like the distinct sound effects the crew went to the effort of making, from the weird howl of extraterrestrial fighters to the roar emerging destroyers make. Sure, it may be kind of cheesy, but it’s cheesy with effort, and for the mid-90s, it works.
Now, however, with all those ingredients in place, remove one and things suffer—the sequel 20 years later lost Will Smith, and with that a lot of charisma in selling what script it had. The combination of effects work was replaced with CG flurrying, and something was lost too—the alien mothership there was a billion times bigger, but it barely seemed to matter, and for a film with a more international focus, it felt even smaller, boiling down to more rushing about in the Nevada desert by the end. In fact, come to think, the same goes for the rest of Emmerich’s cinematography, which had similar over the top scripts but lacked both that critical star power in selling them, nor that feeling of weight.
And, well, that slightly wide-eyed feeling of brave heads of state does take us back in some ways to 30 years ago—at the same time, Tim Burton also gave us Mars Attacks, a more satirical flying saucer film with a schmuck of a president constantly trying to deal with obviously evil ETs. Some aspects here ring a bit truer than others now, maybe. And while post-cold-war speeches about a global July 4th played better back then—to an extent—it does feel like a much harder sell now, especially to one end of viewers. And, honestly, to another end, having a black man and a Jew be the ones saving the world would see different kinds of gnashing and hard sells.
So, there’s a bunch of ways to watch this one now—be it taking you back to the supposed end of history, admiring the technical work of cinematic techniques in transition, chuckling at dopey alien cybersecurity, or tossing back some beers while Will Smith punches out some tentacled fools. Options are always fun, at least !
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