The Independence Day

Introduction

The Independence Day is a science fiction horror film produced by Dean Devlin and released on the 2nd of July 1996. The film grossed in excess of $817 million on a budget of $75 million. The film was co-written and directed by Roland Emmerich. Starring are Will Smith, Mary McDonnel, Margaret Colin and others. The focus of the film is on a motley group of survivors of an alien attack who gather in the Nevada desert. This disparate crowd of survivors, working along with the rest of the humans in the world stage a fight back against the invading aliens. This last chance attack occurs on the date of the Independence of the United States, which is on the 4th of July. As at the time of its release, the film was second on the list of highest grossing films of all time. It is currently 46th on the list. This film paved the way for other mass scale disaster films that were prevalent in the 1990s.

The Plot of the Independence Day

On the 2nd of July, a massive alien mother ship enters the earth’s airspace and strategically positions several dozen attack spacecraft over some major cities of the earth. The mother ship is about 500km wide while each of the saucer-shaped destroyers is about 24km radius. A graduate of the Massachusetts Institute of Technology, David Levinson, who at the time was a staff of a cable company in New York City discovered the hidden signals from earth satellites. On realizing that these transmissions were a countdown for a co-ordinated attack on the earth, he joins forces with his estranged wife, to gain entrance to the White House in order to warn President Thomas Whitmore of the impending attack. The president orders massive evacuations of the target cities but the aliens attack before the evacuations could be carried out.

The aliens carry out the attacks by using advanced high-energy weapons leading to massive destruction. The president, some of his staff and Levinson along with his estranged wife escape aboard Air Force One as the capital is destroyed. The next day, July 3, a group of marines attack an alien destroyer spacecraft near the desolate Los Angeles but their weapons proved unable to penetrate the force field surrounding the vehicle.

The aliens attack in defence decimating the squadron. Shortly after, majority of the military installations in America are attacked and destroyed and in the process, the Vice President along with most of the cabinet members who had been hiding in NORAD, one of the military installations, were killed. Eventually, Levinson succeeds by devising a plan to deactivate the force fields of the alien destroyers by implanting a computer virus in the alien mother ship. The Americans reveal the secret of how to destroy the alien attack spacecraft to other resistant forces around the earth thereby making the 4th of July the true ‘Independence Day’ of the world and a day of rejoicing globally.