A brainless wonder!

Rating: 2/10 (22 October 1998)

It is movies like this that fuel the rest of the world's resentment towards America. Here you have $100 Million plus and the best that can be produced is a braindead, stupidly simplistic, bigoted story of how wonderful the USA is and "What would the world do without us?", complete with visually impressive yet emotionally devoid special effects.
Contrary to this film's premise, the rest of the world would not be sitting around twiddling their thumbs waiting for America to save the day. Do we really expect that if a bunch of alien creatures that are smart enough to travel the universe and build incredible transports and weaponry technology decided they liked the look of our wee planet, that we would even have a hope of fighting back? Maybe you Yankees have an over-inflated perception of your abilities, but let's be reasonable here. Of course the film is about the triumph of the human spirit against all adversity, but really - how much more advanced is the super-evolved aliens' sense of "species pride" going to be? Do we really think twice when destroying an insect nest about the possibility of them getting us back?
This film is riddled with incredibly dumb things. Even if there were some memorable characters (there aren't) and some moving moments (cheesy unsuccessful attempts) we would be prevented from enjoying them because the story is so foolish. I list a couple of examples:
-An explosion that 'nukes' a city in seconds is not capable of being outrun and survived, in a tunnel, by a lone woman and the dog she loves very much.
-Giant ships hovering over the world's major cities, when destroyed, manage to conveniently end up crashed out at sea, or in the mountains next to the city. Um, how?
-A computer virus. How clever. Tell me, how did they link up with the mothership computer. Were the aliens conveniently using compatible computer systems and interfacing link-ups? Perhaps interested people could read Arthur C. Clarke's "3001: Final Odyssey" for an example of how this principle can be executed plausibly.
Need I go on? I think not. I will simply conclude by saying that perhaps the makers of ID4 should think about what it was about "Star Wars" that moved them and millions of others a long time ago, and go back to the drawing board.
Note: In New Zealand the promotional banners for ID4 contained a whopping great spelling mistake ("weren't" spelled "were'nt") Was this the case worldwide? I'd be interested to know. Just another example of the lack of intelligence associated with this film.