ID4 Was the Highlight of My Summer in 1996; It's Lost Some of its Luster Now

Rating: 7/10 (8 January 2017)

If you had asked me what I thought of INDEPENDENCE DAY when it was first released, I would've given it a solid 10 out of 10. I was twelve years old when it first came to theaters and I remember seeing it that opening weekend. It blew my mind. I immediately went out and started buying the action figures and the alien fighter, and I even bought the movie novelization. I still have one of the big alien figures with motion sensors that make it roar and open its head cavity to reveal the little alien dude inside. I found it at a Salvation Army for something like $10 a few years ago. Of course I bought it because I seriously loved this movie as a kid. Now? Well, I still have a soft spot for it but it doesn't hold my attention as well anymore. I've grown and seen countless movies since INDEPENDENCE DAY hit theaters. My tastes have expanded and there's very little room for Roland Emmerich's alien invasion, other than nostalgia. Pretty much everyone has seen this movie at one point or another and are at least vaguely familiar with it. Aliens arrive at Earth on July 2nd and their enormous saucers settle in over major population centers while humans around the world lose their minds. Eventually the aliens begin a devastating series of attacks and send the survivors scrambling for some means of defeating them. Their ultimate solution: Will Smith, Jeff Goldblum, and an Apple computer.
There's no denying the sense of fun that comes with any of the big action sequences in the film. Watching the movie again after all these years, I love the dog-fighting scenes just as much now as I did then. And you know what? They still look great. I was recently made aware that most of these big action sequences were done with miniatures and motion-tracking, and that's really incredible. These dogfighting battles are chaotic with jets and alien fighters swarming and blasting each other out of the sky, and I never would've guessed it hadn't all been done with visual effects. There were some in there to give it that extra flair but a lot of those are miniatures. No wonder I can watch it now, 20 years after its initial release, and be just as engaged as I was the first time. And of course there's the massive destruction sequences for which the movie is famous. Everyone knows the shot of the alien beam weapon blasting down on the White House and exploding and, again, it was done with miniatures and it still looks amazing. From a technical and visual standpoint, INDEPENDENCE DAY is still marvelous. Watching it again now, it's no surprise that twelve-year-old me loved this movie so much. It's got great action, great FX, and some of the coolest creature designs I've seen in a movie. The aliens in INDEPENDENCE DAY are still one of the best designed science fiction creatures I've seen in film.
My problem with INDEPENDENCE DAY is that any scene that doesn't directly involve the aliens or the big dogfights is sort of dull. There is a lot of boring extra material in the movie and, at over two hours long, it could've used a trim. If they had edited this movie down to a solid 110 minutes, I'd probably still love it. Did we really need the whole Randy Quaid subplot? For those who don't remember, Randy Quaid plays Randy Quaid as a drunken crop-duster who we follow as he packs up his stepchildren in an RV and evacuates as part of a huge caravan where he eventually crosses paths with Will Smith and gets a chance for redemption in the big final battle. Who cares? Cut it. It added nothing to the film. We can also cut down a bit on the Vivica A. Fox subplot where she rescues the injured First Lady from a crashed helicopter and collects survivors in a tow truck. Don't cut it (her reconnection with Will Smith in the third act is nice) but trim it down. We don't need to spend as much time with them. Keep the focus on the alien invasion and how the government is dealing with it. Smith, Goldblum, and Bill Pullman as the U.S. President are the film's heroes and we shouldn't be cutting away from them so often; all the real interesting stuff is happening with them. No one thinks back on INDEPENDENCE DAY and fondly remembers Randy Quaid arguing with his son or Vivica Fox having a fireside chat with the President's wife. We remember Will Smith being chased by an alien fighter through the Grand Canyon or the captured alien awakening mid-dissection to tentacle-choke Brent Spiner in a crazy horror scene.
That about sums up my thoughts on INDEPENDENCE DAY. All the cool stuff you remember is still cool, and it's even more impressive that it still works twenty years later. Will Smith knocking an alien unconscious with a single punch and muttering "Welcome to Earth" is still awesome. But there's a lot of filler tossed in there to give this movie a more epic scope that just doesn't interest me and it can make the film's bloated runtime difficult to get through. Even moreso if you're watching the extended cut with an additional fifteen minutes of footage. It tries to take itself a little too seriously for a movie with Judd Hirsch cracking wise in Area 51 but, even with its flaws, it's still a classic in its own right.