‘Independence Day’ is the Greatest Film Ever Made

 

It’s the 4^th of July, which means that, in the United States of America, there are more fireworks going off than usual. While I’m planning on seeing Marc Webb’s webslinger reboot The Amazing Spider-Man tonight, I know what movie I’d much rather be watching. That’s right, folks, I’m talking about the greatest sci-fi/action/drama/romance/comedy movie ever made: Roland Emmerich’s Independence Day!!!! (yes, four exclamation points)

Let’s face it, Independence Day isn’t a work of Oscar-worthy genius like, say, Avatar pretended to be, but what makes it such a great movie is that it never once tries to be. Sure it’s characters act astonishingly serious about everything that they’re doing, but when you’ve got a cast that’s made up of everyone from Vivica Fox to Bill Pullman to Randy Quaid, and a plot that makes use of pretty much every aspect of American popular culture and level of their society, you can get away with having a few guys reading prayers and providing epic speeches while Will Smith cracks wisely, Jeff Goldblum mumbles scientifically and Quaid plays himself while pretending he’s method-acting on set (that half-empty bottle of whiskey was real, Roland).

Most movies spend all their time trying to be one thing and really, seriously pulling that aspect of their storyline off. Independence Day jumps genres repeatedly, showcasing awesome dogfights with alien ships in canyons, then jumping straight into West Wing-style presidential debriefs and then switches to scenes of everyday people in heroic situations like it’s a straight-up disaster movie.

There are probably only a few movies made that have ever been perfect, and I don’t mean “art” films either. I’m talking about regular old Hollywood blockbusters, or even comedies. Look at, say, the first Back To The Future, which is simultaneously entertaining, funny and clever all at once. It perfectly blends strong performances by a bunch of good actors with a near-perfect script. You might think it’s a lame example, but from a writing and directing standpoint, it basically fires off Chekhov’s Gun so many times that I’m sure film students watching it must’ve ducked behind something and started firing back like they were on the set of Lethal Weapon.

A good script really should set up key aspects of the plot while incorporating consistent characterization and focus on moments that actually have a vital payoff later on in the movie. Basically, the earlier parts of the movie should teach us about the characters and their personalities, so that when they do things later on in the movie, we find it believable. The early scenes should also provide even random visual cues that will pay off later in the movie.

In Back To The Future, Marty rolls up on his skateboard to meet Doc at the “Twin Pines Mall”. Doc says the spot where the mall is used to be a farm owned by a guy who was obsessed with growing pines. When Marty travels back in time, he obviously goes from the mall parking lot into the farm’s barn, and when he drives off he destroys one of the two pines standing in the yard. When he returns to the present… uh, comes back to the future, the mall is now called “Lone Pine Mall”. It’s subtle, barely focused on, but it’s all tightly incorporated into the movie’s plot using its own internal logic for time travel.

It’s also fucking awesome.

Independence Day makes use of similar basic scripting tactics, establishing the lives of several boring American characters that we don’t care about at all, and then brings them all together over the course of the movie’s plot. The President is a busy guy with a wife he’s distant from and a daughter he loves. Will Smith is a fighter pilot who loves his girlfriend and her son. Randy Quaid is a drunk who humiliates his kids by constantly saying he was abducted by aliens. And Jeff Goldblum is a programmer with an ex-wife and a stereotypical Jewish dad he’d rather completely lose touch with.

How do you get the President, a fighter pilot, a programmer and a Middle American drunk to come together to save the world? At the start of the movie, based on what we know about these characters, it seems pretty fucking impossible. And yet the movie pretty effortlessly brings them all to ground by staging a human resistance from Area 51. Will Smith crashes his jet in the desert while fighting an alien, he’s picked up by the Middle American drifters on a survival tour of America, they drive across the desert to Area 51, where the President is being briefed on the secret sci-fi history of his country and Jeff Goldblum is planning to defeat the aliens with a Mac virus from the mid-90s. No, really.

The movie is also an interesting study and reflection on The American Dream. While it’s something we observe cynically today – especially from the perspective living in another country provides – it’s still something that’s a dearly crafted ideal permeating everything from video games to superheroes. It’s that early idea of perseverance and success in a world that could be stolen from you at any day unless you stand up and fight for it. While I’m not necessarily for the fighting bit – I was always a bigger fan of Gandhi’s tactics – I can see the appeal. And yes, it’s a propagandist’s dream come true and has been used to wage war on many nations around the world, but in the context of the movie, it’s explored beautifully by bringing together the strangest components of American culture.

They’ve got a heroic black man; a white President who used to be a soldier; a lost, lonely bum from America’s ignored mid-section; and a Jewish boy who knows about computers. There’s a perfect synthesis of heart, body, soul and mind right there for you.

It facilitates the sort of amusingly accurate commentary that we haven’t seen in sci-fi-action cinema in a very long time. The sort of thing that Robocop, First Blood Part 2 or early Schwarzenegger films did so well. Avatar tried to be this movie, but it took its own message so seriously that it never stopped to have any real fun with its commentary on the modern corporate system’s sucking the life out of the environment to get motherfucking “unobtanium”. That’s because James Cameron takes himself a tad too seriously, I think.

And then Bill Pullman gives a speech that’s lame and awful and propagandist and you still kinda want him to win because of it.

 

And then they do win, and they smoke cigars, and it’s more fucking awesome.

There’s some talk now about making an Independence Day 2 & 3 with Will Smith in the lead. Here’s hoping they take a look at their original movie, its intent and its execution, and they filter in some of that magic. In a world where the American Dream is twisted and broken, it’d be pretty fantastic to see what they could do with the concept. Will the Americans fly off to the aliens’ base on Mars to tear down statues of their dictatorial leader? Does Will Smith get to be the pilot-turned-president in these ones?

Here’s hoping.