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Some of my recent choices for the "How Had I Never Seen" series may have leaned towards the esoteric. Probably most people don't wonder why or how they have never set eyes on Valley of the Dolls or Girlfriends. This time around, however, I've decided to fix a pretty deep lacuna in my movie-watching, one that's firmly in the mainstream rather than an arthouse curio. Today marks the 25th anniversary of Roland Emmerich's 1996 Oscar-winning mega-blockbuster Independence Day. To commemorate the date, I finally watched the flick that turned Will Smith into a star of the silver screen, redefined the effects-driven summer movie, and birthed a new era of Hollywood entertainment…
I'll be upfront with you, dear reader – I was not too fond of Independence Day. However, I'm not interested in spending the movie's anniversary lambasting the "poor" thing. So, let's try to get most of the negative stuff out of the way and concentrate on what's good about the box-office champ. In many ways, I look at Emmerich's seminal success in the same way I might regard the Dardennes' early films. It's a strange comparison so let me explain. More than the pictures' merits, I'm drawn to see these works by what they wrought. If the Belgian duo shifted the tenets of European arthouse realism and brought on an age of endless copycats that wore their aesthetic banality as a badge of honor, so did Independence Day establish an oft-imitated model.
Since I'm probably one of the few people in the world who hadn't seen the movie till today, I won't bother with much plot synopsis. Aliens invade the Earth with hostile intent, and many American heroes save the day on July 4th. Despite the sheen of 90s VFX, this is openly cribbing from midcentury B-movies. The big difference being that those sci-fi delights were sparingly short, acknowledging their silliness with aplomb. Independence Day, on the other hand, isn't as willing to embrace these aspects. What's more, it crossbreeds the 50s sci-fi B-movie with the tradition of 1970s star-studded disaster flicks. Tim Burton's Mars Attacks! did the same in 1996, but its intentions were transparently parodic.
The result of Emmerich's reference cocktail is indefensibly long at 145 minutes, cursed with a cast of millions that makes every death feel inconsequential even as the direction insists it's all very heartbreaking. Furthermore, the mixture of glibness and drama punches the air out of both modes of expression, nullifying them and creating a story where everything feels inconsequential even as the fate of Humanity is at risk. Finally, for as much time spent on character drama, those characters rarely rise above stock one-dimensionality. But wait, didn't I promise to be positive? Yes, I did, but one needs to establish why the success of one particular performer is so remarkable and necessary to counterbalance Independence Day's structural, tonal, and narrative failures.
Will Smith takes 22 minutes to appear on-screen, but it's like new life is breathed into the movie when he does. Now that's a star! Acting within the center of an epic is a great challenge, but this leading man manages to overcome it and make it seem effortless. He does so by relying on sheer charisma and the quasi-everyman quality his screen presence evokes. Only Will Smith could pull off a scene where his girlfriend says he's not as charming as he thinks he is, and the man rapidly responds with "Yes, I am." As embodied by Will Smith, he's right. The star thus grounds this inane monument of interplanetary violence while also making himself part of the bigger-than-life spectacle. It's a legitimately impressive achievement that's more difficult than one might realize.
Because of that, it's a real tragedy that Emmerich does so little with Smith. Independence Day could do with a lot more of his cocky charm. Apart from him, I have little patience for the movie's human element, and, judging by Emmerich's directorial choices, I feel like he might share the same disinterest. In contrast, he dedicates a lot of attention to the magnificence of the alien invasion that gives the movie its simple plot. And, to be fair, such commitment does pay off. There's a fantastic sense of scale to some shots. Notice the images of massive shadows appearing over New York, Washington, and Los Angeles. We're made to sense the might of what's to come before the impossibly large spaceships even become visible and the pyrotechnics start in earnest.
It's a great crescendo of threat that culminates in the movie's best and most famous sequence - the one that featured so heavily on the flick's promotional material, including its famous Super Bowl ad. The building tension is genuinely powerful, the propulsive score and nervous editing patterns heightening our sense of dread while tempering it with awe. As the city-size spaceships open up for the first time, one feels as if it might all turn out well, the light coming from its gaping maw shining with heavenly portent. But then, from celestial, it all turns to an inferno of immeasurable destruction and mind-boggling carnage. Being only familiar with posters and film stills from the original Independence Day, I didn't realize that a tsunami of apocalyptic hellfire followed the destruction of iconic hallmarks. The overambitious grandeur was a happy surprise.
The visual effects, combining CGI and practical models, still hold up. Still, it's the interplay of size, the contrasts of infinite possibility, and dreadful final judgment that make it all sing. Frankly, the movie lost me after the big set-piece, but I'm sure others have different experiences. As a horror aficionado, it was easy to find things to love about the surgery gone wrong scene, even though the alien designs are a bit derivative. Unencumbered by nostalgia and coming from a decidedly non-American perspective, I'm not the ideal audience for this movie in 2021 and am ready to admit it. Even so, I wish I could see it on the big screen at the height of its popularity. The big explosions are truly mesmerizing, and seeing them projected wide in the theater, along with an effusive audience, must have felt sublime.
Despite my ambivalent/negative comments about Independence Day, I am happy to have watched it and hope others keep getting more from it than I did. If you want to watch the movie, it's streaming on all HBO platforms.