Lots of fun but had 2 critical scenes missing

Rating: 7/10 (11 January 2000)

The film was a lot of fun, great FX but had a couple of holes in the script that could have EASILY been plugged with just a couple of simple scenes.
Note: this is a spoiler, so if you've not seen this film yet, you may not want to read on.
Easy Fix 1: When Brent Spiner (Dr. Brakish Okun) is under alien control and being used as a "translator" to Bill Pullman (President Thomas J. Whitmore), the aliens should have said that they were there to retaliate for the Earth's shooting down of their exploration vessel, the one in containment at Area 51.
The dialog could have been ... Pullman: "Why attack?" Alien: "You fired the first shot" ...and the rest could come out in conjecture. The alien motivation would have been more personal and sadly justified.
Easy Fix 2: A simple scene where Jeff Goldblum (David Levinson) is told that 99% of our microprocessor technology came from the captured alien ship. This would explain why it was SO EASY for him to link his laptop to the Alien stream of data and manipulate it.
If the film had these scenes (and perhaps a couple others along these lines) it would have been more powerful, but it was a fun romp none the less.
Survivor.