Watching Independence Day is like watching fireworks. Beautiful to watch and ready to explode.

Rating: 7/10 (4 July 2013)

Nothing says, American 4th of July holiday than a H.G Wells, "War of the Worlds" remake from Disaster King German Director Roland Emmerich call Independence Day. Honestly, this movie has nothing to do with American Revolution or the founding of the country. This movie has much to do with Independence Day, as killer giant Ewoks have to do with Grito de Dolores, (Mexico's Independence Day) which is little to none. I can see the rationale for why some people think Independence Day is the coolest Alien Invasion movie ever, and why some people think it's massively stupid. It's both, it's kinda dumb, but also lots of fun to watch. This movie isn't worth taking too serious, over. The movie is meant to be enjoy. And yeah, it's a War of the Worlds adaptation and probably one of the better modern update of that book because it's fun and works in the book's way of defeating the aliens in a modern way that's not too absurd. For a movie that channeling 'War of the Worlds', it does show other countries and other places trying to fight against the aliens, than the original movies. I do like that. It really does seem like a War of the Worlds. There isn't much to the plot besides the fact that Aliens attacking bit cities and people trying to fight them off. The narrative mostly focuses on a desperate group of people who are some of most stereotypical clichés characters ever, but also the most interesting and awesome, people I would like to be with, if Aliens ever do attack. In my opinion, I think the actors are mostly playing themselves in this film. There is Captain Steven Hiller (Will Smith) who flies in jet fighter planes and on his free time, punches aliens in the face while giving out some of the best bad ass lines. Not only is he the ultimate cool hero type, but Will Smith gives one charming performance. This movie, pretty much made Will Smith's movie career. He just move from one big explosion addict blockbuster Director (Michael Bay) to another big explosion addict blockbuster Director Roland Emmerich. The second best character in the film is David Levinson (Jeff Goldblum) who is pretty damn cool how smart he is in solving problems. Then you got President Thomas J. Whitmore (Bill Pullman), the Harrison Ford's Air Force One type of a president who gives one of the best speeches in the history of film. Last character worth noting is Russell Casse (Randy Quaid) who is pretty much just Cousin Eddie from National Lampoon's Christmas Vacation with a different name who helps pilot the last comeback attack. As less, the producers gave him, a jet plane, rather than his normal biplane. It wouldn't work if he had to fly that to keep pace with F-18s. The special effects are awesome, even by today's standards of CGIs. I really believe the cities were getting destroy. The music compose by David Arnold is brilliant. Very uplifting and adventurous. There are a lot of cool scenes in the film, and a lot of dumb moments. One is the dog saving scene. I know dogs in film are typically seen as innocent, loyal, and uncorrupted, but to value animal life more important than human lives in film is just silly and wrong. If I had to choose between protecting my child and saving my dog, I would protect my child. That's not cold-hearted; that's called being a good parent. There are other questionable scenes worth asking. Like how do the aliens know the most ironic buildings for each city for point of attack, why did they wait six hours until attacking, and how can people give an alien computer a virus when they didn't even exist on OSX or basic Linux at that time? Specifically that the software would be incompatible. The biggest complain that I got for the movie is that nobody notice the aliens coming, even knowing they exist since 1947. For goodness sakes, you would have thought somebody would notice to tell somebody what was happening. Overall: personally I like Independence Day, even though I know it's corny. Really, though, the first half isn't all that bad. It's a cool set up to what turns out to be a bunch of reality pushing clichés. The scene where the big flying saucers are slowly appearing over the cities while the score lays on the horns is pretty awesome. Similar scenes have been tried in other movies since, and they just seem lame or excessive by comparison. In my opinion, Independence Day is how you film a good popcorn flick.