| Just when the science fiction genre was drying up, Independence Day came along and blew everything away. The theme is similar to H.G. Wells 'War of the Worlds'. Aliens from another world, not Mars though attack Earth and they're unbeatable.
It's set on three days culminating on July 4th, U.S. Independence Day. You see the story from four groups of people whose stories all merge at the end. The groups are the President, the meteorologist scientist who discovers their plan, the man
who believes he was taken captive by aliens and the gung-ho air force pilot. It was quite predictable from the outset that there would be an alien captive. When the producers wanted the U.S. Air Force ( U.S.A.F. ) for help, they were all too willing to help on the condition that reference to Area 51 were removed. The producers refused and the U.S.A.F. withdrew their help. Area 51 is a secret military research station in the Nevada desert that is believed by many to hold evidence of alien life. There is a nod to 'War of the Worlds' in that the aliens are defeated by a virus, the difference was that the I.D. virus was electronic. The special effects are ( excuse the pun ) out of this world. All the plans and alien spaceships that you see battling it out are all computer generated. When it came out, it became one of the highest grossing films of all time, just being beaten by Jurassic Park. |
