Do they come in peace? Don't make me laugh. As David (Jeff Goldblum), a broadcast technician and computer whiz, soon discovers, they are using our own satellite system to time an attack.
How does he know that? Because his laptop receives the signal and displays it as a digital readout. As the hours and minutes tick down toward Armageddon, I had only one question: Why are the aliens using hours and minutes? Does their home planet have exactly the same length of day and year as ours? How very nice.
“Independence Day” is not just an inheritor of the 1950s flying saucer genre, it's a virtual retread--right down to the panic in the streets, as terrified extras flee toward the camera and the skyscrapers frame a horrible sight behind them. Like those old B movies, the alien threat is intercut with lots of little stories involving colorful characters, who are chosen for their ethnic, occupational and sexual diversity. Representing the human race here are not only David the tech head and the president, but also assorted blacks, Jews, Arabs, Brits, exotic dancers, homosexuals, cute kids, generals, drunken crop dusters, tight-lipped defense secretaries and “The McLaughlin Group. “There is not a single character in the movie who doesn't wear an invisible label.
Although the special effects in “Independence Day” are elaborate and pervasive, they aren't outstanding. The giant saucers area dark, looming presence at the top of a lot of shots, big but dull, and the smaller “fighter” saucers used by the aliens are a disappointment--clunky, squat little gray jobs that look recycled out of ancient Rocket Men of Mars adventures.
When the aliens attack, there are shots of the White House and the Empire State Building getting blowed up real good, but if these creatures can field a spaceship a fourth the size of the moon, why do they bother engaging in aerial dogfights with the U.S. Air Force? And why don't they blow up everything at once? Or knock out the Internet with a neutron bomb, instead of simply causing snow and static on TV screens? And why don't the humans react more? At one point, the news comes that New York, Washington and Los Angeles have been destroyed, and is there grief? Despair? Anguish? Speculation about what that will mean for professional sports? Not a bit--the characters nod and hurry on to the next scene.
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