An analyzis of "Independance Day" and the 90's American society

[Free Enterprise]

Originally posted by thestonesfan
Godzilla made Independence Day look like, uh, a classic.

Yes, that was a disgustingly fake version. The Toho serious is much better than the ridiculous version that came out around 2000.

 

[IglooDame]

Originally posted by vonork


You are all thinking about it in the wrong way. Now consider a young child, they ussaly rocks when it comes to computers, and break any copyprotection or security system... So here the humans was the child that quiqly learnd and mastered the Aliens system... er.. or somthing...

I find the neding of the movie more strange. The mothership is destroyed and the earth attacks... and wins sudenly without any problem... now every "small" ship must have been populated with a huge number of troops, and we had seen they had a huge number of alien fighters with superior weapons. What happend here.

Once the Aliens lost the shields for their small ships and fighters, Earth aircraft with air-to-air missiles were a match for them. Think what would happen if a modern infantry unit suddenly had their explosives (bullet propellant, grenades, mortars, etc) stop working, while they were going up against a Middle Ages sword-equipped army.

And aside from that, the mothership may have been providing energy to the smaller ships/fighters, there was a reference to the captured fighter "lighting up" when the mothership arrived at Earth. Perhaps they started running out of fuel.

 

[andrewgprv]

Call me a pessimests but this is my experience living in America

Americans think the world revolves around them. Americans think that the USA is God's gift to the world. A unique place of freedom, hell alot of americans still think Europe is ruled by absolute monarchs. Basically Americans really love America and think that everyone else in the world wants to be an American.

After all the only reason so much of the world hates us right now is because their jealous......either that or they are evil muslims.

 

[Sinapus]

Originally posted by andrewgprv
Call me a pessimests but this is my experience living in America

Americans think the world revolves around them. Americans think that the USA is God's gift to the world. A unique place of freedom, hell alot of americans still think Europe is ruled by absolute monarchs. Basically Americans really love America and think that everyone else in the world wants to be an American.

...and a bunch of people are awful enough to immigrate into the US and give Americans that feeling. Shame on them.

After all the only reason so much of the world hates us right now is because their jealous......either that or they are evil muslims.

Oh look, an either/or fallacy. How quaint. What's next, going to tell those icky Americans to "ask yourselves why they hate you?"

 

[anarchywrksbest]

Independance Day is one of my favourite films, but one thing I never got was - what the hell does ID4 mean?

Good analysis btw. I think you hit on some good points about America feeling humiliated.

 

[samildanach]

Originally posted by IglooDude
So they were working on a 51-year-old alien computer. The aliens would have found and patched the vulnerability long before the mothership got to Earth.

Unless of course the Aliens worked for Infogrames-Atari in which case the shields would have been patched but the guidance system would have been FUBAR as a result.
Alien mothership moves out of from behind the moon to begin the attack, puts up its shields to protect itself from the NASA space junk floating around and then promptly spirals out of control and plops down on the Sun incinerating the unfortunate aliens as they desperately attempt to install the latest patch. Or we could have an ending where the American president says to the world " Hell ! we know these Alien critters came a bazillion miles to put an end to american way of life but heck we are americans and we can't just let them crash into the Sun because those critters are the americans of the future. Lets saddle up them thar space shuttles and save their alien buts. Yee Haw!!"

 

[vonork]

Originally posted by IglooDude
And aside from that, the mothership may have been providing energy to the smaller ships/fighters, there was a reference to the captured fighter "lighting up" when the mothership arrived at Earth. Perhaps they started running out of fuel.

Think your right about that...

Hum, I only wonder how many humas died when the gigantic vesels crached down on cites... come to think about it, noone even seams to botter in the movie that they have killed a few 100 million alliens, was all of them pure evil.

However we should bless some pre-screening that they choosed to edit away the crop-duster plane and let him fly a real fighter... even though that might still be a strech.

 

[MrPresident]

I've said it before and I'll say it again. We need to destroy Hollywood and everything associated with it. Now if only I had some sort of patriotic movie to promote my cause...

 

[Theige]

Originally posted by Marla_Singer
Are you kiddin' ? The USA wanted to go alone in Afghanistan ! Britain and France had actually to convince Bush it would be a good idea if the thing would sound less "unilateral". Once France has sent a carrier, we wondered during a week if we would actually use it according to the fact Americans were saying to not move. It's only later that it's been finally used.

I never heard that the US wanted to go alone in Afghanistan. Besides I was talking more about Iraq, which is a vastly larger operation, tremendously more expensive and ties up a large part of the US army, where help is needed quite a bit more

 

[Aphex_Twin]

This was actually my favorite movie until about the age of 14. Too young to think for myself I actually believed the Americans had a right to rule the World and that leadership will bring a great age of Peace. You could say I was a neoconservative avant la lettre

Growing up and getting to know more about international affairs and history turned me around.

 

[IglooDame]

Originally posted by vonork


Think your right about that...

Hum, I only wonder how many humas died when the gigantic vesels crached down on cites... come to think about it, noone even seams to botter in the movie that they have killed a few 100 million alliens, was all of them pure evil.

Both fall into "collateral damage" on a mind-blowing scale. Anyway, there were probably a few aliens that survived, they probably didn't knock down all the alien fighters.

At one point they showed an alien ship crashed near the pyramids in Egypt, and I was thinking that would have been great "modern art" if it had crashed and spiked itself on the Great Pyramid.

 

[allhailIndia]

I was extrememly impressed by the movie when i saw it; I was 10 at that time.
Now, I start laughing at the jingoistic speech as I can almost imagine Dubya trying to look cool and macho by hitching a ride on a fighter. At least his Dad could fly one.

BTW if it is so easy to learn how to pilot an F-18 jet and take on advanced enemy fighters, why the hell does the Us still have Top Gun and Red Flag training systems.

 

[vonork]

Originally posted by allhailIndia
BTW if it is so easy to learn how to pilot an F-18 jet and take on advanced enemy fighters, why the hell does the Us still have Top Gun and Red Flag training systems.

Oh, did you not know, on todays fighters it's no more differnece hten a flight sim, all computerised Well, sort of, on the Swedish JAS 39 Gripen if the plan get's into an uncontrolled spin, the polit shall let go of the controlls and sit back and wait for the computersystem to take it out of the spin... it has crassed once and been closed to another time becouse the pilots want to controll the plane themself.

 

[Speedo]

BTW if it is so easy to learn how to pilot an F-18 jet and take on advanced enemy fighters, why the hell does the Us still have Top Gun and Red Flag training systems.

Once they got through the sheilds (and were able to destroy them) those little alien fighters weren't really that effective.

 

[Esckey]

I was just watching and I find it interesting that America took the brunt of the damage. You can assume that the capitals of all the major countries were taken out, but America loses Washington, New York and LA in the first attack, then Houstan, and a bunch of others. Canada wasn't even touched

 

[Riesstiu IV]

Originally posted by Esckey
Canada wasn't even touched

Maybe they like beer and hockey?

 

[allhailIndia]

Another rant.
If the aliens were so smart, why not take out the military bases with al the aircraft and missiles and then slowly slaughter the humans

 

[Drewcifer]

The problem I have with deconstruction is that it can be used to prove any point if you choose your source material properly. I should know, in college many of my professors were suckers for it and I often used it to cunning effect. Grunge rock was also popular in the US in the early to mid 90s. A deconstruction of grunge would give you a very different picture of the country than a deconstruction of "Independence Day"; both would have elements of truth but would miss the complexities of the whole picture. It is my experience that people use deconstruction the way a drunk uses a streetlight - for support rather than illumination.

 

[IglooDame]

Originally posted by allhailIndia
Another rant.
If the aliens were so smart, why not take out the military bases with al the aircraft and missiles and then slowly slaughter the humans

Given that no missiles (up to and including nukes) were able to do anything to the aliens, presumably they wanted to hit the cities in order to get as many humans as possible early on with only a few shots before the humans scattered so much and became much tougher to hunt down.

Of course, that would be my approach. Equally likely that the aliens just liked the cool way that the cities exploded, so they get their entertainment out of the way before they get down to work.

 

[thestonesfan]

Could a forcefield feasibly block out the intense heat of a thermonuclear explosion?

Oh well...they were aliens. That would have been too easy.