The best known of all film casualties of WTC attacks is Independence Day, 1996 science fiction spectacle directed by Roland Emmerich and Dean Devlin. On September 11th 2001 many horrified spectators and commentators, lost for words to describe their feelings and images that they had witnessed or saw, used the phrase "It is just like Independence Day". But they were wrong, because five years earlier, when they saw images of American cities and landmarks being obliterated, they cheered in the cinema, being entertained by that fictional destruction. Five years later the destruction wasn't fictional and the perception of Independence Day was forever changed.
The plot of Independence Day is rather simple. On July 2nd, two days before America's greatest holiday, SETI scientists discover giant meteor approaching Earth. The meteor is soon revealed to be huge alien space ship, from which 25 smaller ships come out and take positions over major Earth cities. While US President Thomas J. Whitmore (played by Bill Pullman) desperately wants to prevent panic and speculate about aliens' attention, former scientist and cable operator David Levinson (played by Jeff Goldblum) deciphers aliens' signals and becomes convinced that the attack is imminent. Next day, Washington, New York, Los Angeles and many other cities are destroyed. Survivors, led by President, take shelter in secret Area 51 military base, rumoured to have captured alien ship on its premises. From there, President and his team must quickly find ways to defeat seemingly invulnerable aliens before 4th July - the day when the aliens would finish off destroy all human life on Earth.
Without WTC tragedy, Independence Day would have been remembered as nothing more than terribly over-hyped, yet very successful Hollywood summer blockbuster. Like in many similar films, the most of the creative effort was invested in clever ways to promote the film and special effects - all at the expense of things like plot and characters. The result is the series of truly impressive images, but they are connected with rather weak story with plenty of serious scientific implausibilities and the characters are nothing more than the series of cliches - many of them introduced simply to fill up "PC" quotas. Yet, even with such creative flaws, there is something like a genuine artistic vision hiding under cover of Hollywood commercialism. Dean Devlin and Roland Emmerich obviously took this film as an excellent opportunity to make some of their childhood dreams true and spend tens of millions dollars in order to create good old-fashioned SF film about Earth having to fight brutal alien invasion. Many fans of SF cinema would be satisfied with many nods to genre classics like George Pal's The War of the Worlds, George Lucas' Star Wars or Ridley Scott's Alien. Emmerich and Devlin even manage to transcend the American chauvinism implied in the title and suggest that the only way for Earth to fight aliens and solve problems of similar attitude lies in better international co-operation and understanding. The positive attitude of the film could be seen even in the cast, which makes quite a valiant effort in order to elevate their characters over cliches. Bill Pullman is quite effective as President who transforms from indecisive weakling into resolute hero, while Will Smith with his wise-cracking helps the audience accept some of the less credible aspects of the film.
All in all, Independence Day probably didn't deserve all of its box-office numbers, but it didn't deserve snobbish critics' bashing either. One day, when the technology makes special effects obsolete and memories of 2001 fade away, new generations might see this film as one of prime 1990s guilty pleasures.
RATING: 5/10 (++)
(Note: The text in its original form was posted in Usenet newsgroup rec.arts.movies.reviews on February 14th 2003)
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