Nerding Out About: Independence Day (1996)

In this space-tacular episode of the Nerding Out About podcast, the crew reviews the 1996 Alien-Invasion classic, Independence Day! Starring Bill Pullman, Will Smith and Jeff Goldblum, this explosive summer blockbuster defines what summer movies should be!

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Movie Notes:

Initial Reaction:

• A movie that is now 20 years old still holds up like a champ. That blend of practical and CGI effects, like we saw in the first Jurassic Park, still looks great, and the movie manages to still Carry a solid storyline too.

Cast:

• Captain Steve Hiller - Will Smith
  • Mr. Charisma
  • Eddie Murphy was the first choice for the part of Steven Hiller. Tom Cruise, Keanu Reeves, Johnny Depp, Jean-Claude Van Damme and William Baldwin were considered for the part
• President Whitmore - Bill Pullman
  • The man I always confuse with Bill Paxton
  • Played this role so well, despite going full Shatner with it. I swear, he sounds like he hasn't taken a shit in weeks
    • His Independence Day speech is amongst the best in cinematic history
    • The President's speech was filmed on 6 August 1995 in front of an old airplane hangar. The hangar once housed the Enola Gay, which dropped the atomic bomb on Hiroshima exactly 50 years earlier on 6 August 1945.
  • Kevin Spacey was originally wanted for the role, and they intended it to be a Nixon esque president, but some fuckhead executive at Fox didn't think he had a promising enough of a career. House of Cards motherfucker
• David Levinson - Jeff Goldblum
  • Nice
• Robert Loggia
  • The Turtle
  • Refused to leave his trailer one day because a producer told him to get inspiration from the movie Airplane! He meant to say Airport
• First Lady Marilyn Whitmore - Mary McDonnell
  • accepted her role immediately after her agent pitched the film by simply saying "It's about 15-mile-wide spaceships".
• Miguel - James Duval, or as I like to call him, the Discount Keanu Reaves
• Troy - Giuseppe Andrews, or as I like to call him, the Discount Joseph Gordon Levitt

Conversation Starters:

• In terms of films featuring an Alien Invasion, like ID4, Day the Earth Stood Still and War of the Worlds, which film is your favorite vision of our planet getting conquered by a species from another planet
  • I honestly prefer the idea of Aliens coexisting amongst us, and slowly taking over from within, as seen in The Thing and The Arrival (Ron Silver was the bomb in Time Cop BTW)
• Spaceship-wise, how do you rate the Alien ships in this movie, to the ones seen in other flicks? Which are your favorites?
• Let's talk about one of my favorite things in movies, stupid scientists practicing stupid science
  • One scene that pops out to me is the clean room scene in Area 51, where they allow a group of people wearing contaminated clothing in, but Dr Okin was already
  • A single punch knocks out an alien in an exo-suit, so the scientists decide to go ahead and try to extract the alien instead of waiting for it to come around so they can knock it out
  • We also saw stupid soldiers practicing stupid soldiering
    • Will Smith steals a helicopter, because sure, that would be okay
      • By the way, it's hilarious that he manages to just find his girlfriend and First Lady while he's flying around.
    • In an important mission briefing Harry Connick Jr. Is more interested in making jokes no wonder why he can't fly his plane and gets killed
    • Let's let Drunk Randy Quaid take off in a modern jet fighter
    • Instead of the aliens destroying Area 51 via weapon attack, they can rest assured that the falling mass of their ship will still do the job.
• Let's take a second to talk about the release of the sequel, which Gabe and I saw last week. Did you guys see it yet?
  • Do you think that this film warranted a sequel?
  • Roland Emerich is known for his disaster, end of the world, movies, but he has done other styles of films (the patriot). But do you guys think he is a one note song?

Movie Facts:

• Producer Dean Devlin said that well over half of the dialogue in the scenes Jeff Goldblum shared with Judd Hirsch and Will Smith was improvised.
• Holds the record for most miniature model work to appear in one film. Model shop supervisor Michael Joyce estimated that more miniatures were used for this film than in any other two films combined. Due to the advances in digital technology since this film's release, most experts believe this record may stand forever.
• The film was banned in Lebanon under pressure from Hezbollah, because it included scenes where Israeli and Iraqi soldiers joined forces, in the montage where militaries around the world signed onto the U.S. plan to counter-attack the alien forces. For the last few decades, Lebanon officially boycotts any form of entertainment that features Israelis.
  • And that ladies and gentlemen is part of the problem with this world
• The abbreviation "ID4" was invented due to legal problems with the title "Independence Day". Before 20th Century Fox reached a deal with Warner Bros. for the rights to the title, they suggested the film be called "Invasion" or "Sky on Fire" among many other titles.
• The "futuristic" looking computer in the control center at Area 51 are components of an IBM AN/FSQ-7 Combat Direction Central, built in 1954 to protect the US from Soviet bomber attack. It was the largest and heaviest computer system ever built, the full system weighing 6000 tons and taking up an entire floor of a bomb-proof blockhouse. Components of decommissioned systems were sold for scrap and bought by film and television production companies who wanted futuristic looking computers, despite the fact they were built in the 1950s. The components used in this film were previously used in The Time Tunnel (1966) and The Towering Inferno (1974) amongst many others.