{"id":3873,"date":"2019-07-07T17:14:33","date_gmt":"2019-07-08T00:14:33","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/samuraijosh.com\/?p=3873"},"modified":"2019-07-07T17:14:33","modified_gmt":"2019-07-08T00:14:33","slug":"watching-independence-day","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"http:\/\/samuraijosh.com\/index.php\/2019\/07\/07\/watching-independence-day\/","title":{"rendered":"Watching Independence Day"},"content":{"rendered":"

Images via Hulu<\/em><\/p>\n

I’m not going to lie, when I realized Independence Day was coming up I thought I’d try an experiment to see if I could try to get a slight surge in site traffic by taking advantage of the surge in Independence Day searches by doing a write-up on the 1996 hit movie ID4<\/em> or as it is better known to people, Independence Day. Unfortunately, I’m a little late with this post because I didn’t make this realization early enough and I also got side-tracked with a few things\u2014but hopefully I’m not too late considering I’m still hearing people light off fireworks so there should be at least a few spikes in Independence Day-related searches.<\/p>\n

Written and directed by disaster film artist, Roland Emmerich, Independence Day<\/em> became the highest-grossing film of 1996 and at the time became the second-highest-grossing film ever behind Jurassic Park<\/em>. On top of this, Independence Day<\/em> created renewed interest for the Sci-Fi genre in the mid-late ’90s as well as become the leader in the forefront of large-scale disaster films and would also become Fox’s go-to movie to play on Independence Day nights for the next several years.<\/p>\n

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The story of Independence Day<\/em> is this: On July 2nd, a large alien space craft is detected on approach to Earth. By SETI technician who in a good touch of foreshadowing is listening to “It’s the End of the World as We Know It “by R.E.M. After settling in Earth’s orbit this alien mothership would then dispatch several smaller city-sized space crafts to Earth.<\/p>\n

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These smaller ships would then proceed to destroy major cities and military installations in order to pave the way for a full-scale invasion of Earth.<\/p>\n

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On July 3rd, military forces from around the world launch counter-attacks against the alien ships. Unfortunately, all attempts at fighting back at the aliens are futile due to their advanced technology which includes protective energy shields around their crafts which human weapons are unable to overcome.<\/p>\n

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Using an alien craft that crashed in Roswell, New Mexico in 1947 and was being kept at Area 51, humanity finds a way to disable the aliens’ energy shields using a computer virus.<\/p>\n

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On July 4th, a mission is carried out to fly the recovered alien craft up to the alien mothership which is still in orbit and use it to distribute the shield disabling computer virus to all the alien ships as well as disable or destroy the mothership with a tactical nuke.<\/p>\n

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…while Earth’s remaining military forces launch full-scale attacks against the ships on Earth.<\/p>\n

The cast of Independence Day<\/em> consists of:<\/p>\n

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Will Smith as Captain Steven Hiller, a US Marine Corp pilot and leader of Marine Fighter Attack Squadron 314 AKA VMFA-314 AKA the Black Knights. In the film, after Hiller sees the rest of his squadron killed in a failed counteract against the alien craft which destroyed Los Angeles, manages to make his way to Area 51 where he volunteers to fly the captured alien craft up to the alien mothership to deliver the virus.<\/p>\n

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According to what I found online the writers, Dean Devlin and Roland Emmerich always envisioned Hiller to be played by an African-American and Will Smith was specifically chosen not because of his performances on Fresh Prince of Bel Air <\/em>or in Bad Boys<\/em>\u00a0but because of his performance in the 1993 comedy-drama, Six Degrees of Separation<\/em>.<\/p>\n

I like to consider Independence Day<\/em> to be at the center of what I call the Will Smith ’90s trifecta which alongside 1995’s Bad Boys<\/em> and 1997’s Men In Black,<\/em> three movies which helped establish Smith as a successful and bankable actor and also helped him make the transition from musician to prime-time sitcom star to Hollywood A-lister.<\/p>\n

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Watching Smith in Independence Day<\/em> and seeing him in more recent roles you can obviously tell that Smith has matured more as an actor.<\/p>\n