Independence Day Recast?
July 4, 2012 2 Comments
Have you seen the movie Independence Day? If you have then you would know that aliens have invaded our world. There are aliens in the air and, you might agree, there are aliens on the ground in the form of the cast.
A blurb about the movie from the IMDb website: “The aliens are coming and their goal is to invade and destroy. Fighting superior technology, Man’s best weapon is the will to survive.”
Man’s best weapon here may be to laugh off this farce. I like sci-fi. I think Steven Spielberg’s Close Encounters of the Third Kind and Stanley Kubrick’s 2001 A Space Odyssey and the original The Day the Earth Stood Still directed by Robert Wise are some of the best in that genre. But this movie is epic as pathetic slap-stick sci-fi. Of course you can’t take it seriously.
Will Smith’s pre~Men~In~Black typecasting of silly No Fear bravado and Randy Quaid’s dad~is~crazy~but~somehow~his~zaniness~endears~us~to~him role adds fuel to this trash can fire. The role of President Thomas Whitemore is played by a stiff whose part would have better played better by a teleprompter. Jeff Goldblum as David Levinson portrays an MIT educated-computer expert~chess playing~environmentalist~satellite tech~you~name~it~he’s~got~the~answer~for~you~kind~of~guy who ‘triangulates’ the four corners of this going-nowhere movie.
The movie’s special effects won an Academy Award and I’ll never know why. The effects are third-rate at best. (I thought Twister should have won that year). The movie does, though, offer something for the political observer ~ a perfect realization of the Obama presidency.
The dark, foreboding and humongous space ship hovering over Washington D.C. is a perfect archetype of the Obama Administration. Out of the bottom of the ominous alien craft come lethal rays: Obamacare taxes and immigration fiats. Cities and people’s lives are instantly destroyed. America is under attack.
There is no reason given for why this is happening other than America is America and the aliens say that America must die. So it is that Eric Holder, an onerous chief alien, sits in the mother ship’s ivory tower directing America’s destruction with reserved glee.
“It’s the end of the world as we know it.” At least for America as we have known it.
…The space ship is hovering….
Constance (the President’s Press Secretary): “Now what do we do?
President Thomas Whitmore: “Address the nation. There’s gonna be a lot of frightened people out there.”
Constance: “Yeah, I’m one of ’em.”
Wow! Someone save us from the dialog! Thankfully the brave and ‘wacky’ heros played by Will Smith and Randy Quaid) come to America’s aid and help bring an end to this distraction of a movie.
Using viral computer ‘implants’ and sexy aircraft maneuvering the alien ‘death’ ship is decimated but only after hundreds of minor skirmishes with the pesky alien ‘gnats’ (the larva born in Obama’s ideological intransigence or perhaps in Jeff Goldblum’s The Fly movie).
The next time you watch this movie listen to the dialog. It deserves a Tom Servo and Crow T. Robot of Mystery Science Theatre over dubbing!
We can turn a movie off when the Hollywood kitsch gets to be too much or when the credits (and debits) finally roll. But we can’t turn off government when it makes no sense. Except if you and I begin voting it out of our lives.
Do you want freedom from annihilation by Obamacare taxation? How about “Fighting for our right to live ~ to exist” without own government’s tyranny, oppression and persecution? How about freedom from government’s intrusion of our privacy and its coercive mandates? Will the middle class now go quietly into the night now that it is being taxed into oblivion?
America’s Independence began when it resisted taxation without representation. Now we have representation that doesn’t represent our best interests and that mimics King George’s taxation edicts. Let’s throw off the shackles of tyranny and vaporize the black cloud of government that overshadows us wherever we go. Vote Obama and the Dems out.
It is confirmed. There is alien life out there. They are living among us: Obama, Reid, Pelosi, Holder, Napolitano, Durbin, Charles Rangel, Barbara Boxer, Elizabeth Warren…
Cindy Wity 
I thought the movie was better than that. Nevertheless, it is a fitting analog for the Obama administration.
Thanks for commenting. I’m glad that you liked the movie.
As noted above I thought the movie rather a paltry offer from Hollywood. I wanted to like the movie. The concept of menacing aliens hovering over the capitals of major countries was a good one. Sadly, the theme wasn’t supported by good writing, meaningful characters or by dynamic special effects. The movie was hokie and because of this the speech by the movie’s president, though wonderfully patriotic sounding, was a response to a bad joke – a ridiculous setup.
Another hokie movie with a promising but badyly handled underlying theme (science vs. faith) is the convoluted mish-mash called Contact starring Jodie Foster.
After watching Independence Day the night before I began writing the post as a movie review. But as I was listening to news reports in the background about more government overreach and Obama’s intransigence the post drifted into political commentary.
This movie is an overreach beyond quality and beyond entertainment into unredeeming alien culture.