[THE CHALK-OUTLINE]
Independence Day (1996) The Special Edition: Breakdown by Rantbo
A drunken ex-pilot, an environmentalist techno-geek and the Fresh Prince save mankind from a WAR OF THE WORLDS. And successfully kill off 80s action in the wake.
[THE EXECUTION]
Essentially, aliens attack Earth, because they hate how awesome and united we are and it’s up to a rag-tag group of Americans to save the planet with our ballsy initiative, quick thinking skills and camaraderie in the face of adversity. You know, a bunch of flag waving rah rah bullshit and explosions. And as this was the SPECIAL EDITION version, I had the honor of watching 9 more intense minutes of Randy Quaid’s kids! And you can too!
WATCH as the little one gets sick, stays sick and then at the end—is magically not sick! SEE the girl from MRS. DOUBTFIRE try futilely to get some teenage coward to stick his penis in her! And BE SURE to stick around…
I’m not a fan.
In fact, I have special contempt and loathing for this movie, which I’ve went over once before in a rant I did last year, so here’s the relevant part of the article, paraphrased and re-edited for your reading pleasure:
The date: June 11th, 1993. Steven Spielberg’s technological masterpiece JURASSIC PARK opens in wide-release in the United States. Young and old moviegoers alike are delighted as computer graphics take film to new heights of visual spender and achievement. It was truly a great day for cinematic history.
The date: June 21st, 1996. Almost three years later to the day, Action Icon Arnold Schwarzenegger‘s Action thriller ERASER opens and marks the last official 80s Style Action film to be released theatrically. And though it is panned by critics and girlymen alike, it delivers all it promised and more. Machismo, one-liners, a large body count, explosions, and Arnold wrestling a crocodile. A blast of a film, it now remains a bittersweet entry to my action collection, as ONE WEEK later, Bad-Ass cinema took unto itself a blow from which it has yet to recover.
The date: July 3rd, 1996. On the eve of America’s finest day, a tragedy strikes the hearts, minds and eyes of Action fans, leaving us bewildered in its wake of mass pussification. INDEPENDENCE DAY opens in wide-release. Gratuitous violence is officially forced into the backseat of moviegoers hearts as computer graphics commandeer the Action bandwagon, without a single practical shot fired.
Checkmate.
The family-friendly hero was born from the womb of a big-eared blabber-mouth named the Fresh Prince of Bel-Air and liberal pussies everywhere swooned to his distant cat-call “WOO! I HAVE GOT TO GET ME ONE OF THESE!” The crowds couldn’t get enough of the shiny computer graphics and lost in the spender of the pretty colors, lost sight of what made an action movie so special: Unapologetic R-rated violence.
The summer blockbuster was re-defined. Out went the muscle-bound, homoerotic beefcake gun-nuts that Action fans had come to know and lust after, and in came the good-looking inoffensive pretty-boys that get Mom’s stamp of approval, and along with it, the studio chiefs. And forever more shall us BadAss cinema fans read, an invisible banner, underneath the marquee… ‘Abandon All Hope, Ye Lovers Of Action, this land has been overtaken, in the name of Mass Attraction.” Proclaimithed July the third, nineteen-hundred and ninety-six, he who doth “Woo!”
If that’s not reason enough to make you hate INDEPENDENCE DAY, I’ve got a few more.
Like most end-of-the-world movies this one has non-stop plot-holes, illogical scenarios and outright stupid shit. Here’s a few I noticed in-between bouts of acute narcolepsy.
-You can avoid so much as a skinned-knee by hiding in a maintenance closet 2 feet from a city sized fireball. And furthermore, survive a helicopter crash if you’re related to a central-plot character. At least until after you hug your kid and have a tear roll down your cheek.
-The alien spaceships have a force-field that can deflect nuclear warheads, but get fucked-up beyond repair after crashing into some sand.
-Jeff Goldblum can take leaps in logic, like Superman can clear buildings, and yet no one bothers to question the thought process of his poor writi—er, conclusions.
-At the end, Smith and Goldblum have 30 seconds to evacuate the alien mother-ship; they take over a minute and a half. You don’t even have to time that shit, it’s quite apparent it’s 3 times longer than it should be. Same could be said about the movie as a whole.
It’s also packed with pseudo-clever cutesy referential bullshit. REM’s ‘It’s The End of the World…’ plays during the beginning, some poor white trash watch THE DAY THE EARTH STOOD STILL on a shitty broken television set in a winnebago. And of course, you can’t do a SCI-FI movie without peppering some un-inspired groan-inducing 2001: A SPACE whatever references throughout your picture. Not to mention ID:4 is just a tech-savvy version of WAR OF THE WORLDS.
Worst of all, this movie clearly influenced Michael Bay…
It’s chalk full of un-funny comedic relief, nothing happens for almost an hour, it has more special effects than ideas and the last half an hour is one giant homage to god and country. And money, can’t forget money.
I’m starting to get pissed off—long story short, this movie is long, boring, insipid stupid garbage. It’s pro-god, pro-military, pro-marriage, pro-war and pro pretty much everything else I can’t stand. But, if you dig crap like VOLCANO, ARMAGEDDON, THE PASSION and 2 GIRLS, 1 CUP—well, INDEPENDENCE DAY could be your new-old favorite film. And, if it is, and you are over 16 years of age, GTFO my website. Happy 4th of July.
[HOW BAD-ASS IS THE MAIN CHARACTER?]
Will Smith is Captain Steven Hiller is a Pussy
I got nothing against Will Smith, he genuinely seems like one of the nicest celebrities in the game, but fuck ‘em. Fuck him right in the ass, with a big rubber dick. I find it hard to believe that this asshole’s charisma, shitty pop music and good looks were able to single-handedly trounce the beefcakes of the glory days. It’s like watching Rambo slaughter an entire army with his bare hands and then die of an infected hang-nail a week later. This has to be a conspiracy. Anyways, I’ll do my best to be, not fair, but not completely bias and volatile here.
Smith punches out an alien wearing foot-thick bio-armor. That’s kinda badass. Later he does a pretty good pimp-away walk from some flaming wreckage. And he is quite ripped, and when shirtless, emits a fair amount of homoerotic vapors. But then he tries sucking on a stogie, and can’t pull off looking anywhere near as cool as Schwarzenegger. So fuck him thrice for trying.
Outside of making Disney-style heroism mainstream, I have to say I hate him almost as much for his goofy non-stop babble. Smith never shuts the fuck up. He’s constantly jabbering and filibustering his own dialogue with crap like the following…
“That’s what you get! Ha Ha! Look at you! Ya ship’s all banged up!”
“Who’s the man? Huh? Who’s the man? Wait till I get another plane! I’m a line ya friends up right beside you! Where ya at, huh? Where ya at?”
Can’t he just stand there and look stoic? Is that so much to ask? When did silent angry reflection stop being cool? Oh, wait: July 3rd, 1996—right, I almost forgot.
[THE BODY COUNT: YOU FIGURE IT OUT]
A plane full of people explodes.
Four helicopters full of people explode.
The cities of L.A., New York, Houston and Washington D.C. explode.
A bunch of missiles explode.
Eleven jets explode.
An air force base explodes.
NORAD explodes.
A room full of Area 51 doctors get slaughtered.
An alien gets shot in the head.
A Pepsi can explodes.
A bunch more jets explode.
A bunch more missiles explode.
Alien fighters explode.
Another airbase explodes.
Randy Quaid explodes.
The alien warships explode.
The alien mothership explodes.
Then my brain shut off—and exploded.
[MOST SATISFYING DEATH]
I’ll go with the city of Houston.
No, wait. Harry Connick Jr.—NO, Houston. I’m sticking with Houston.
[DUDESWEAT AND MACHISMO]
“Don’t get premature on me soldier, we don’t light up till the fat lady sings!”
“This is our victory dance. Not until the fat lady sings. This is important.”
“Fat lady. I gottcha.”
The whole ‘fat lady’ shtick is based around Will Smith getting to smoke a cigar. Sigmund Freud once said, “Sometimes a cigar, is just a cigar.”—but, George Carlin once said, “Yeah—well sometimes it’s a big brown dick!” This is a latter representation of the metaphor. I believe that ‘the fat lady’ is Will Smith’s nickname for his penis. It’s long, it’s brown and Harry Connick Jr. sucks on the wet end of it. That’s a black man’s dick, no doubt ‘bout it.
“I ain’t heard no fat lady!!!”
“Forget the fat lady, you’re obsessed with the fat lady!”
“Let’s kick the tires and light the fires, Big Daddy!”
[EXPLOITATION AND MISOGYNY]
Vivica A. Fox (KILL BILL) plays a stripper, but as this movie was PG-13, you don’t get to see so much as a nipple. Plus, she pretends not to be ashamed of her profession as a slutty dance-whore. But she ain’t fooling me. Inside, I bet she’s slowly killing herself with self-loathing and disgust. This thought alone allows me to sleep at night.
[EPIC MOMENT AND BEST ONE-LINER]
I liked it when the dog outran the giant slow-mo explosion. That shit was INTENSE!
Run Boomer! RUN!
One-liners? Christ, take your pick, this movie is a constant steam of mid-nineties grade school trash talk…
“Just a little anxious to get up there and whoop E.T.’s ass, that’s all.”
“Welcome to Earth–[PUNCH] Now that’s what I call a close encounter.”
“I have GOT to get me one of deez!”
“Payback’s a bitch, ain’t it!?”
“All right, you alien assholes! In the words of my generation: UP YOURrrrrrS!”
“Ha-ha-ha! Hello, boys! I’m BAaaaaaaaCK!!!”
“We’re gonna have to work on our communication!”
“Oh! Elvis has left the building!”
Personally, I can’t pick just one. I hate them all, equally.
[THE MORAL OF THE STORY]
Roland Emmerich has a hard-on for fucking up Lady Liberty. I think he hates freedom. We should lynch his America-hatin’ ass before he does it again in 2012.
[THE CHECKLIST: 18 outta 25]
[ ] Athlete(s) Turned “Actor”
[X] Clinging To The Outside Of A Moving Vehicle
[ ] Crotch Attack
[X] Dialogue Telling Us How Bad-Ass The Main Character(s) Is/Are
[ ] Ending Featuring An Ambulance, A Blanket or A Towel
[X] Factory/Warehouse
[X] Giant Explosion(s)
[X] Heavy Artillery
[X] Improvised Weapon(s)
[X] Macho Mode(s) Of Transportation
[X] Main Character Sports Facial Accessory(s)
[X] Manly Embrace(s)
[ ] Notorious Stunt-Man Sighting
[ ] Passage(s) Of Time Via Montage
[X] Politically Fueled Plot Point(s)
[X] Senseless Destruction Of Property
[X] Shoot Out(s) and/or Sword Fight(s)
[X] Slow-Motion Finishing Move(s)/Death(s)
[X] Stupid Authoritative Figure(s)
[X] Substance Usage and/or Abuse
[X] Tis The Season
[X] Torture Sequence(s)
[ ] Unnecessary Sequel
[X] Vehicle Chase(s)
[ ] Vigilante Justice
