By Michael Lyons
Splashed across the top of a newspaper ad for Independence Day (or ID4 as it was dubbed) during the summer of 1996 was a quote from Rolling Stone film critic Peter Travers that read:
"ID4 delivers a full-throttle blast. It gives you aliens to hiss at, humans to root for, and the kind of fireworks that get audiences cheering."
A summation of why Independence Day was such a mammoth hit doesn't get any more perfect.
This July 4th weekend marks the 25th anniversary of this summer blockbuster that was like an invasion (into movie theaters) unto itself. Independence Day is from a time in the movie industry when studios knew how to create and market movies as events. ID4 emerged as the poster child for the colossal blockbuster that so many wanted to see.
And they did go to see it when it was released on July 3, 1996. The film grossed over $817 million worldwide, was the biggest film of the year and, at the time, the second highest-grossing movie ever.
Through it all, at the time, there were stories of audiences at showings of Independence Day standing, cheering, and pumping their fists in the theaters. If movies like 1993's Jurassic Park and 1994's The Lion King were events like concerts, ID4 became like a sci-fi-infused sporting event.
"It's an Independence Day for everyone," summed up Doug Smith, one of the film's two visual effects supervisors, in an interview just before the film's release in 1996.
Director Roland Emmerich and producer Dean Devlin (who co-wrote the script) collaborated on the sci-fi favorite, 1994's Stargate. They seemingly used the all-star 70s disaster movies model as inspiration for an alien invasion story over the July 4th holiday.
As the aliens in Independence Day close in on Earth, we meet Will Smith as pilot Captain Steven Miller, Bill Pullman as the President, Jeff Goldblum as engineer David Levinson, Robert Loggia as General William Grey, Mary McDonnell as the First Lady, Randy Quaid as an eccentric pilot named Russell and Star Trek's Brent Spiner as the geekish scientist Dr. Okun.
As if that wasn't enough in the jam-packed cast, the number of supporting roles includes Viveca A. Fox as Miller's girlfriend, Margaret Colin as the White House communications director, Judd Hirsch as David's father, and Harvey Fierstein as one of David's co-workers.
As the aliens begin to obliterate everything in their path, there's also an all-star array of visual effects as Independence Day employed every trick in the book to pull off its impressive scenes. Everything from miniature models and sets to computer-generated imagery was used.
"One of the things that Roland was trying to do was not overcomplicate these shots," said Smith. "He was trying to strip the ideas down to their bare essentials, so that things didn't get overthought or over ‘synchronized.’” Smith also added, “This film really encompasses the breadth of visual effects.”
This led to such iconic images as a giant, storm cloud-like alien spaceship hovering over a city, an immense wall of flame engulfing New York, and, probably ID4's most memorable shot: the destruction of the White House.
“The White House explosion was a very scary thing,” said Volker Engel, another of the film’s visual effects supervisors, in a 1996 interview. “It was a huge model that had to look excellent because everyone on Earth knows what the White House looks like.”
For this sequence, Engel and the team took extra pains when it came to the details. “I was very closely involved in the dressing and getting the right trees in the foreground so that you have the right scale of the leaves,” said Engel. “We even put furniture in the White House so that when the explosion happens, a lot of stuff is flying. You probably won't see furniture pieces flying towards the camera, but it's one of those things that you would recognize being missing.”
This attention to detail is just one of the many aspects of the film that audiences responded to and made us hate the aliens even more. The explosion of applause from audiences when Will Smith punches an alien in the face and shouts "Welcome to Earth!" (in the now-famous scene) felt so warranted. And the equally famous speech by Pullman as the President, where he declares, "Today, we celebrate our Independence Day!" elicited (and still elicits) applause from even the most blasé moviegoer.
All part of the reason why, twenty-five years later, Independence Day is still a fan favorite and now a July 4th movie-watching tradition.
Five years ago, in 2016, nostalgia for the film had culminated in the belated sequel, Independence Day: Resurgence that, unfortunately, disappointed on so many levels and failed to re-capture the spirit (and the box office) of the first film.
So why, twenty-five years later, does Independence Day still emerge each year around this time and elicit those same "event movie" vibes?
In 1996, when answering a question about what makes Independence Day unique and connects the film with audiences, Volker Engel provided a somewhat prophetic answer that still holds true, and seems even more relevant today.
"I think it's mainly everyone all over the world getting together," he said, adding, "Everyone else has to join forces against something that comes from the outside. If you want to use a metaphor, it could be something else; it doesn't have to be an alien race; it can be some other catastrophe. It's just such a beautiful thought that all these people are joining each other."
Happy Independence Day!
Sources:
Volker Engel interview with Michael Lyons, February 2, 1996.
Doug Smith interview with Michael Lyons, February 12, 1996.
Lyons, Mike, "ID4 Visual Effects: Supervisors Doug Smith and Volker Engel on Fashioning Alien Armageddon," Cinefantastique, July 1996.
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