Okay, I probably should be reviewing Indpendence Day Resurgence, but I actually did that already on The Gospel Herald. In case you haven’t realized this week, I’ve been a bit lazy with my posting.

So, I decided to review Independence Day, a film that I will have to say is a B-movie, and it seems like the creators knew this. The issue is that it dealt with an alien invasion, so it could be on the vein of War of the Worlds. If you have seen that film from 1953, it is difficult to take seriously, and it might have something to do with its age. Independence Day wasn’t on the same tone as the Steven Spielberg/Tom Cruise War of the Worlds, which was an almost post 9/11 story of terror. There are reasons why I believe that film failed, but I won’t get into that.

The issue is that Independence Day is a popcorn movie, a planned summer blockbuster like no other before its time. It was before the age where there was a new blockbuster every week during the summertime.

The film is considered a landmark because it is a mix of a disaster movie with an underdog story. The issue is that Independence Day explores the horror of what would happen if aliens came to Earth, and thought of us as so inferior that they would have no problem killing us. For this reason, there isn’t any attempt on the writers to give sympathy for the aliens. They are motivated by plummeting planets to gain their resources, but it isn’t explained why they just blow up cities.

Independence Day takes its time before it gets to the action, introducing the main players like the President (Bill Pullman), the nerdy scientist (Jeff Goldblum), the hillbilly alien abductee (Randy Quaid), and the hotshot pilot (Will Smith). There is nothing more to these characters than stereotypes, but this was the film that established Will Smith’s career as a movie star. The characters are pretty well balanced out, and the film has a good editor spotlighting them when the story needs to.

The premise is that they arrive on July 2, they attack on July 3, and on July 4, Earth fights back. When the aliens arrive, it feels very realistic in how modern society would react. That is, there is fear, and there is wanting to know more.

When the aliens fry the cities of New York, Washington D.C., and Los Angeles, it is something that the viewer feels. There was a sense that all these people died, and devastation was everywhere. It feels like 9/11, five years before it actually took place.

When the film has these scenes, it takes its time for the characters to take it in. This was not the case for the sequel, and I think this is the film’s biggest a appeal. That is, planet Earth gets its butt handed to it, and then they regroup and plan an attack to take down the big bullies. Granted, it is an attack that has a lot of plot-holes.

I mean, the plan involves getting a 50-year-old ship that crash-landed at Roswell, sending it into space to dock with the mothership, then uploading a computer virus to take down the enemy force fields. The aliens probably should have been suspicious that an old ship of theirs that vanished 50 years ago would return back to the mothership. Also, I don’t know how Jeff Goldblum knew that this virus would work, but he figured out computer code form very advanced aliens in a few hours.

However, I can’t help but enjoy the ride when I watch this film. I wish I could say the same about the sequel, but I kind of knew it wasn’t going to be as good.