Today, We Celebrate ‘Independence Day’

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Jul 04, 2025

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Independence Day is big. It is dumb. And it’s great! It is the quintessential summer blockbuster, the B movie to blow up all B movies.

It’s best watched on the big screen with a good crowd, which I did when it came out in 1996. Director Roland Emmerich did not build this movie to watch on your little tube TV.

Don’t expect any subtlety or complexity, though. We have no time for that malarky—we’ve got invaders from outer space to shoot up!

The formula is nothing new. Evil aliens show up and try to annihilate all of humanity. They destroy entire cities, but the good guys come back from behind at the eleventh hour and ultimately prevail.

Sometimes, you just need a big dumb noisy movie in which good triumphs over evil.

(Spoilers ahead. If you’ve never seen Independence Day, I’m sorry you missed the ’90s.)

These are not Star Trek aliens. The movie does not humanize them in any way. It does not explore their culture; the aliens are not a mirror in which to examine our own culture. There is nothing tragic about these aliens meeting their demise. They get no sympathy. Even the Daleks in Doctor Who have gotten more sympathy, and they’re a metaphor for Nazis.

These aliens are a global infestation, vermin we need to exterminate. They’re a pestilence. We don’t need to understand their motivations or see their side of the story. We just need to stop those evil suckers before they cause our extinction.

The human characters are fleshed out slightly better.

Will Smith stars as Will Smith. Jeff Goldblum stars as Jeff Goldblum. Bill Pullman stars as President Bill Pullman.

It’s a multi-protagonist movie. Randy Quaid is another protagonist, a drunk who was once abducted by aliens and would love the chance to pay them back. Then there’s Vivica A. Fox banding together with other survivors and even helping First Lady Mary McDonnell.

And there are supporting characters aplenty, such as Judd Hirsch as Jeff Goldblum’s father, and Margaret Colin as Goldblum’s estranged wife and President Pullman’s communications director. In addition to a future Battlestar Galactica actor (McDonnell), we’ve got a future Firefly actor (Adam Baldwin as a major at Area 51) and a once and future Star Trek actor (Brent Spiner as a kooky Area 51 scientist).

Some supporting players don’t last long. Alas, poor Harvey Fierstein and Harry Connick Jr., we never really knew your characters.

We meet all these people in their separate, normal lives before everything changes. And whether they already knew each other or were total strangers, their paths intersect throughout the course of the movie—the characters cross over like this is a proto–Marvel Cinematic Universe.

The pacing is just right. Sometimes, it’s right at the expense of logic. How exactly does Will Smith find Vivica A. Fox among all the damage and debris? Why are you wasting precious time on such silly questions? These people are fighting against evil aliens and struggling for their very existence, and you’re concerned about how one pilot located one person in the dark without any means of tracking her down? He’s got good eyes, okay?

The movie takes place over three days—July 2, July 3, and July 4. It doesn’t dwell on anyone’s pre-invasion life for too long; we see just enough to humanize everyone. Meanwhile, the alien vessels drift into the atmosphere like an oncoming storm. Everything is appropriately ominous even while the main characters remain blissfully unaware.

But bliss doesn’t last long in an alien invasion movie. The spaceships loom over major cities, alarming everyone. Why don’t the aliens strike immediately? Don’t think about that. Prioritize the tension. Remember, we never learn much about these aliens, so maybe they spent this time squabbling in bureaucratic committees until finally achieving a consensus on implementing Giant Laser Cannon 4B-5-C and scrapping Giant Laser Cannon 4B-7-F, which was only under consideration anyway because its designer was the alien admiral’s favorite nephew. We simply don’t know.

Eventually, the aliens do strike, and the results are catastrophic, killing millions and reducing major cities to post-apocalyptic wastelands. This huge first salvo sells the aliens as an unbeatable threat. How can we possibly prevail against such mighty weaponry?

A 1990s understanding of computer viruses, that’s how. Also, one nut’s noble sacrifice. Also, an idealized movie president, who gives the Hollywood version of the St. Crispin’s Day speech. And damn, it hits all the right notes (as does the score by David Arnold).

President Pullman even straps into a jet and fights in the final battle, never mind that he just lost his wife and has a small child who now entirely depends on him. He makes like an ancient king and personally fires missiles at the enemy. Fortunately, plot armor shields him from any danger. (To be fair, George Washington was similarly lucky on the battlefield. That man had plot armor in real life.)

Meanwhile, Will Smith and Jeff Goldblum sneak into the alien mothership using an old alien vessel that crash-landed on Earth decades earlier. Generally speaking, movie gasoline never goes bad, so an alien fuel source is obviously nonperishable.

These two characters had never met before the invasion, and now they’re saving the world together and bonding over cigars. Fun times. Oh, and it turns out their characters’ names are Steven Hiller and David Levinson. And President Pullman is actually called “President Thomas J. Whitmore.” Interesting.

Earlier in the film, President Pullman … or Whitmore … issues a token offer of coexistence to a captured alien—just in case you had any doubts as to which species holds the moral high ground here. But hopefully that’s not too difficult to figure out.

There’s plenty of value in thoughtful stories that examine the nature of evil and ask us to examine our own capacity for the same. But every once in a while, we just need to watch a rousing spectacle in which good people defeat seemingly unbeatable evil monsters.

Such a movie, however dumb, can be elegantly cathartic.