Science Fiction or Stupid Fiction?

Rating: Null/10 (15 August 2000)

My comments are full of spoilers:
But by now, everyone has probably seen this.
ID4 begins with a mistake and ends with a mistake. First of all, there's no air on the moon. Thus when the ship is flying over the Moon, it shouldn't lift dust or even make a noise. Yet it did. Watch the opening of this film.
Why did S.E.T.I (Search for Extra-terrestrial Intelligence) detect a signal? What kind of signal were the aliens sending? Did they notify the Earth that they were coming?
Why were they using the Earth's satellites to communicate? Weren't they positioned around the globe already? They didn't need the Earth's satellites.
If the satellites were unreliable, how come the USA communicated with squadrons around the world?
What did Jeff Goldblum mean when he said "Checkmate" to his work partner? Did he mean that the aliens were planning to take away the Earth's King? Hmm.
Wil Smith knocks out an alien with a punch. Then that same alien kills five people in a lab. How come nobody thought about punching it again?

The aliens had no vocal cords, but they made sounds when they were shot at.

What was the degree of the doctor in Area 51? He performed autopsies, fixed alien ships... I guess he's one of those multiple degrees people that are so rare to find.
Etc, etc, etc. My favorite mistake here is the virus thing. How did David (Jeff Golblum) bring down the shields with a virus? Did the aliens use Mac computers too? Or did David know the computer language of the aliens? And computer viruses won't work unless the aliens run them. Did any alien run the virus David sent? And even if the ship got infected with a virus, how come even the small ships on the Earth got infected? Ridiculous. The writers of this movie had created an enemy (The Aliens) that couldn't be defeated. Plain and simple. Thus what they did was wrapping the movie up with something that is technically impossible.
And when Wil Smith and Jeff Goldblum are inside the small ship, the blinders opened. Wil Smith says, "What the hell are you doing?" Jeff replies, "It is not me; they are overriding the system." If the aliens were able to override the system of a small ship, how come they weren't able to get rid of the virus or override the virus and raise all the shields again?
And the movie ends with the huge ship falling out of the sky. Remember when the aliens arrived the Secretary of Defense suggested targeting the ship and blowing it out of the sky? What did the general say? Here it is:
You risk turning one big falling object into many.
Well, that's what they did at the end of the movie: they turned one big falling object into many. That's more than enough to destroy humanity right there. That explosion and the aftermath were enough to create nuclear winter.
Those are the science mistakes. Now let's see the movie genre mistakes: it was supposed to be a science fiction film. After the alien attacks, it turns into a drama film. For a few minutes, I fell I was watching "The Day After".
The characters were stupid. The President spent the whole movie with a smile on his face. They seemed to be detached from the fact that they were being exterminated. Most of the characters here were completely unbelievable.
This film didn't need the whole patriotism thing. The main message of this movie seems to be this: don't mess with the USA. Plain and simple.