This is Not the Movie You're Looking For...

Rating: 8/10 (5 July 2006)

My husband and I have a 4th of July tradition--after watching the local parade and having a cookout, we go home to watch "Independence Day" so it ends just in time to watch the Boston Pops on the Esplanade and fireworks on TV. Like Galadriel's prologue in "The Fellowship of the Ring," I've probably memorized President Whitmore's "We will not go quietly" speech--yet another iteration of Shakespeare's "This day is called the feast of Crispian" soliloquy/speech.
And now for something completely different...possibility of spoilers ahead for "ID4" and other movies.
If you're looking for an alien-invasion movie with rigorous internal logic, this isn't it; try "Contact" or "The War of the Worlds."
If you're looking for a serious science-fiction movie with inactive humor circuitry, try "The Andromeda Strain."
If you're looking for a science-fiction movie with great character development, try Kubrick's "Clockwork Orange"--but don't tell me about your nightmares or PTSD symptoms. I warned you.
If you're looking for a science-fiction movie with an evenly-balanced political world-view, this isn't it. Hmm, which science fiction does? Try "1984" (either production), or "The Matrix," or "A Clockwork Orange," or "Gattaca," or "Equilibrium"--oh, I'm sorry! They're all dystopias; my bad!
If you are looking for a funny, poignant, feel-good science-fiction movie to watch right before "The 1812 Overture" and fireworks--this is the movie. My essay's title is a riff on Obi-Wan's subtle Force-filled comment to the storm-trooper: "These are not the droids you're looking for."
I read nearly 70 comments posted for "ID4," and I have the feeling that a large number movie watchers and commentators, have either missed the point, didn't catch the details, or just plain Don't Get It.
Firstly, something about David: his father makes a casual remark as they're driving to D.C.: "eight years at M.I.T. and you're just a cable guy?" It seems that both Julius and most people have missed the clue-- David's not just a run-of-the-mill cable guy; that should have been evident when he popped the micro-mini directional antenna on the car's roof. I don't know if that's real or just a good prop idea, but I'm sure that, if it weren't a global crisis, the men in black from the NSA and CIA would be visiting David for his antenna after the brouhaha died down.
Also in the You Just Don't Get It department: Did *anyone* notice that David's name is David? Hello?! Small guy outwits a huge, unstoppable force that no one else can beat--does that remind you of anything, like, maybe, Goliath? Or, Sauron gives everyone of importance 'special rings' but forgets the little Hobbits, two of whom are unnoticeable enough to slip into Mordor and destroy the One Ring. Do any of you know what allegory or metaphor means? David's virus is the rock he uses to take down the alien Goliath-- Steve and the alien craft are the slingshot, but they're important.
For the people who complained about a 'human computer virus' infecting an 'alien computer system.' I'm no math or computer whiz, but I do know that to measure and calculate, one has to have numbers, and in prehistoric times, most humans used their digits. And one has to have something that can hold a tool to make things, therefore, hands (and feet, or analogous appendages). If you measure stuff, you need a system to record measurement, and here we go--we use Base 10; if we had 3 fingers and a thumb, we'd use Base 8.
In electronics, there's 0 and 1, two conditions, ON or OFF. Many programming languages exist, but all that code devolves back, is ultimately translated into electronic commands. David's specialty was signal clarity, strength, and the antenna dishes' configuration to receive signals from communications satellites--in abstract terms, encryption-decryption. That's how he discovered the countdown embedded in satellite transmissions--not literally decrypting their code, but finding the *pattern.* For someone to solve a puzzle like that, all one needs is to figure out the base system of the alien computer system; if Congress pays $30,000 for a hammer, then Area 51 probably has a Cray or two for David to run cracking algorithms on, between getting the idea of 'catching a cold' to the officer shooting the soda can off the wing of the alien craft. *We* didn't see the process, and in reality, it'd probably take more time than those people had, but it's a *movie,* and everything gets simplified and compressed; if you want realism, watch a war documentary on the History Channel.
This movie is less about the whole plot and more about scenes setting up events, more about parts than the whole; some people take dominoes or tiles and set them up to fall into complex and pretty patterns, and that's what this movie does. Each scene may be weak, but each falls into the next to create a pretty (or in this case, an explosive) whole. Yes, there *are* clichés--but each scene uses the *right* cliché for the desired emotional effect.
Summer blockbusters aren't meant to make people think, they're meant to get butts into seats and bucks into studio bank accounts. Huge explosions do that; scary aliens, energetic dogfights, last-minute rescues, tear-wringing deaths, and coincidences piled like thick frosting do bring people to the cinemas.
About the dog's stereotypical leap-to-safety: Do you know how many people would have raised a ruckus if the kid's dog was fried in an explosion?! Of course the plucky unmarried mom with a can-do attitude has to have a heroic dog! Of course the dog has to find the First Lady! Of course they're clichés, but they're the *right*cliches for an action-adventure summer blockbuster movie!! For all the weaknesses in plot and characterization, I give "Independence Day" 6 of 10 stars; but for the overall whole look, design, and feel (props, miniatures, alien design, casting), I give it 8 of 10 stars.