I'd like to wish all of my American friends a Happy 4th of July! In the spirit of this day, I'm going to talk about (you guessed it) Independence Day!
Yes, I know I'm not the first reviewer in the world to talk about this movie on this fateful date, but it was either this or Team America: World Police. Since comedies are hard to review (there's only so many times I can say "this part was funny!"), I chose to review one of the greatest pure summer blockbusters of all time! Well, let's get this shit started, shall we?
Independence Day stars Lonestar as US President Tom Whitmore, Dr. Ian Malcolm as David Levinson (although Malcolm is actually playing Jeff Goldblum), Captain Steven Hiller as Will Smith, a bunch of other people with faces, and one of the coke dealers from Scarface. These people must band together in order to save the human race from an alien invasion.
The movie starts on July 2nd with an Imperial Star Destroyer... Err, Alien mother ship flying over the moon. As earthlings discover this bizarre object in the sky, they begin to scramble for information. As the ship breaks off into tinier pieces, politicians and Americans begin to panic even more. As these tinier pieces begin to enter the atmosphere, chaos on earth ensues. People are unsure whether these aliens are friendly or if they're about to wipe out every living thing on earth. Jeff Goldblum doesn't believe they're friendly, and with the use of his Cliché Technobabble Machine, discovers that these aliens are getting ready to shoot atom bombs out of their ships. So he rushes to Washington DC to warn his ex wife and president she was supposedly banging. Thankfully they believe him and they rush out of DC in time. The Fresh Prince's fiancée manages to get out of LA as well, along with the dog Boomer...
Of course, these Aliens end up wiping out New York City (at least Manhattan anyway), Los Angeles, Washington DC, and a bunch of other international cities that don't matter because this movie is for A'muricans!
A counter attack is attempted on the morning of July 3rd, but the alien ships are covered up with Spearmint shielding and the US Air Force gets pounded. Thankfully though, Will Smith manages to capture one of the alien beings by blinding it with a parachute, crashing its ride, and knocking it the fuck out! To all kids reading this, Will Smith was actually awesome in the 90's, and could pretty much beat the shit out of any alien that came his way! Chuck Norris was his fucking secretary!
Will eventually gets this creature over to Lt. Cmdr. Data at Area 51, just around the time that the survivors from DC get there on Air Force One. Unfortunately, Smith forgot to tell Data the alien wasn't dead, and the telekinetic fuckbag begins killing everyone in the autopsy room, including Data! GOD DAMMIT WHY DOES EVERYONE HAVE TO KILL DATA OFF?????
Anyways, this alien eventually communicates with President Lonestar's mind and warns him of earth's impending doom, because humans are stupid and they haven't figured that out yet. They try to nuke these spacecrafts instead of just sending planes after them (why didn't they do this in the first place?), but that fails miserably. Will Smith manages to reunite with his total fox of a fiancée, but Lonestar's wife ends up dying, and the day closes out leaving everyone without hope. I mean, if nukes can't beat them, what can?
We are now on the morning of July 4th (cue title), and Ian Malcolm is all pissed off about how recycling will destroy the world... Because... Uhh... Aliens aren't doing that already. Thanks to his dad warning him about a cold, Goldblum remembers the time when he watched War of the Worlds as a child and decides to rip that movie off. With this, he devises a plan to go into the mothership with an old alien craft, implant a computer virus that'll deactivate all shields, and coordinate a worldwide attack on those motherfuckers. I guess he's really banking on these aliens not renewing their Norton subscription, isn't he?
He goes on this trip with Agent J to the mothership, they dock with it, Goldblum's computer gives a reference to 2001: A Space Odyssey (hey. that movie gave birth to this review site, I guess I'll applaud it for that), and he implants the virus that eventually leads to the aliens' demise... Yep, you got that right, fucking nukes couldn't bring these fuckers down, but a Trojan Tracking Cookie could! WHAT THE FUUUUUUUCCCCCCKKKK!!!!
So the attack back down on earth isn't working out as well as it hoped, until one drunk redneck decides to go kamikaze on those bastards and flies his jet right into their primary weapon, reversing the effect of the weapon and blowing up the ship! This saves the day as the word spreads out how to beat these guys, and everything ends just fine... ALL BECAUSE OF AMUUUURRRRRICAAAAAAA!!!!
Ok, even though I've satirized and made fun of all of this movie's nonsensical and dumb moments, that's not what this film is about, it's not supposed to make you think. This is a fun, action-packed, over-the-top popcorn movie that you're supposed to go watch and shut your brain off for a while. That's what this movie sets out to do, and it accomplishes that tenfold!
The acting is decent, Jeff Goldblum plays his usual Jeff Goldblum self, and he has mastered that role! Will Smith is cool in this movie, he was a rising star at the time and Independence Day put him on top of the world... Bill Pullman does fine as the president here, although that speech near the end was cheesy as hell!
The writing isn't that good, it does enough to get by, but you're not going to watch this movie to hear a mind-blowing script and amazing dialogue. This an alien disaster thrill ride, not The Godfather.
The action scenes in this movie are breathtaking. Blowing up buildings and plane battles and punching in aliens the fucking face and shit... Yeah, FUCKIN' EH!
All in all, this movie has massive flaws and tons of illogic, but you know what, I think it's fucking awesome! I like it for the same reasons I like Jurassic Park, the story may be weak, but it just has an awe-inspiring factor to it that you can't ignore. Independence Day is a movie that knows what it is, it knows what its purpose is, and just has fun with it, and it allows the audience to have fun with it too. Need I say more?
I'm going to give this movie 896 Will Smith punches in the face out of 1000.
I know that rating might not make sense to you, considering all the problems I pointed out in this review... But hey, maybe I'm just as illogical as this movie is...
As usual, the comments section is down there for you to talk about some random spam diet you're going on that'll make you $1400 or some shit...
I'm out
- Mad Mike of Metal
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