30 Years Ago, I Saw Independence Day In The Theater, And You Had To Be There
The movie has become a meme, but in 1996, it was like a rock concert.
Thanks to the speech delivered by Bill Pullman as fictional U.S. President Thomas J. Whitmore, the Fourth of July, at least among movie fans and sci-fi buffs, has a meaning beyond the obvious historical reference. As the United States of America celebrates its 250th birthday, the 1996 film celebrates its 30th anniversary. But what can be said about it that hasn’t already been said a million times? Who among us hasn’t recited some of President Whitmore’s speech just for the hell of it?
Because of the meme-worthiness of Independence Day (“Welcome to Earth!”), there is one aspect of the film that’s been forgotten. This was, in many ways, the 20th century’s last old-school blockbuster, a film that continued the traditions established by Star Wars in 1977. After ID4, massive blockbusters that united nearly every kind of viewer didn’t truly return until after the turn of the century. ID4 wasn’t ahead of its time; it was the last of its kind, and seeing it in the theater in 1996 was a massive, life-changing experience.
To borrow a phrase from James Murphy: I was there. I was there in 1996, on the opening day of Independence Day, and no subsequent viewing can possibly compare.
In 1996, when IMAX was associated with immersive educational movies about oceans and volcanoes, seeing Hollywood blockbusters on the big screen meant the discerning cinephile had to simply know which nearby movie theater had a great screen and excellent sound. Luckily, the summer I turned 15, my father knew where the family would see Independence Day — the Harkins Cine Capri, a massive one-theater movie spot that boasted a curved, 70-foot-wide-by-30-foot-tall screen. At the time, the Cine Capri was famous for being the theater that played the original 1977 theatrical release of Star Wars for over 60 weeks, a national record.
I was too young to have seen the 1977 Star Wars in the theater. But because the Cine Capri held repertory screenings all the time, I had seen Return of the Jedi there in 1995, and the original theatrical opening of Star Trek Generations in 1994. In a time before non-educational IMAX, seeing the Enterprise crash or speederbikes fly across Endor on a massive, immersive screen was a big deal. And the pinnacle of this in-person theater experience was seeing Independence Day on opening day with my entire family on July 4, 1996.
ID4 remains a super fun movie to stream today, because it’s timeless in its corniness and shockingly simple in its basic idea. Oddly, it feels older than its 30 years, mostly because of its brazen earnest optimism. Even in 1996, it felt like Roland Emmerich was making a throwback film, something that audiences hadn’t really seen or felt since, well, Star Wars.
The basic setup of ID4 is well known: massive flying saucers suddenly appear over major cities, an image that Emmerich didn’t invent but used more effectively than any other filmmaker before or since. And, unlike Star Trek, or even the sly, subversive Starship Troopers (released just one year later), the movie has an unwavering good-versus-evil philosophy, in which the entire world bands together to fight the alien menace, which includes a last-ditch Star Wars-esque plan to destroy the alien mothership by sneaking inside it with a stolen alien fighter (a storyline also reminiscent of the original Battlestar Galactica finale).
Will Smith and Jeff Goldblum in Independence Day.
In other words, the plot and world-building of ID4 are absurd, clichéd, and should not be expanded upon or made explicable in any way. This notion of explaining the movie was the mistake of the bizarre 2016 sequel, Independence Day: Resurgence, a film most of us have thankfully forgotten. But in 1996, what made ID4 amazing was the spectacle. I’ll never forget the way the walls of the Cine Capri rumbled, nor the shock of seeing the White House obliterated by the spaceship blast.
The awe of these scenes was enhanced, at least for me, by the knowledge that ID4 was still employing many practical effects. The famous explosion, created by miniature explosion expert Joe Viskocil (who worked on Star Wars), is iconic because of its attention to detail. Little pieces of doll furniture inside the White House made it seem more realistic as it blew up. And for a sci-fi obsessed teenager, you could read all about the making of the movie in the 20th anniversary issue of Starlog.
Everything about ID4, from the hype to the experience of actually seeing the movie, was analog, even if some of the VFX were digital. Will Smith punching the alien in the face was the kind of Will Smith physical altercation we wanted and even needed to see. Jeff Goldblum oddly calls back to Jurassic Park, recycling his “must go faster” line during a tense scene in the alien mothership, which got a huge roar from the crowd.
In some ways, ID4 was like Spaceballs without jokes, rolling out the greatest hits from huge sci-fi blockbusters and rewarding the audience with the biggest movie we’d ever seen. There was nothing like it, and yet it was exactly like every movie we’d ever wanted to see in the theater. The aliens weren’t really scary unless you were 10, and yet the adults in the audience believed that maybe Randy Quaid did have a drinking problem, and perhaps fighting aliens would help sober him up.
The famous White House scene.
It was still daylight when I left the theater, and I remember the bright Phoenix sun burning my eyes. I felt amazing. ID4 injected my soul with synthetic optimism and a strong belief that movies can bring all sorts of people together. My thought after seeing it was simple: everyone loved that. Since that day, I can think of few shared experiences that come even remotely close. I wouldn’t say I was patriotic about America, per se, but I was suddenly very partisan to the idea that the best thing someone can do on a hot summer day is to bond with a stranger they’ll never meet by seeing a crowd-pleasing movie at the same time.
In 1996, I believe the success of Independence Day proved that if a big dumb movie is good-hearted enough, it can win over everyone. There are few parallels today, although this year’s Project Hail Mary comes damn close. Still, thinking about ID4 — with its rag-tag group of famous people banding together to fight aliens — it feels like a moment in cinema we can never recapture. ID4 was clearly nostalgic for a type of movie that had come before, but what we couldn’t have known then was that it was quite literally the end of an era.
