So Bad It's Good
May 29th, 2007
Independence Day is a bad movie. It uses so many cliches that it actually creates meta cliches. Not content to just have the pretty girlfriend of the hotshot pilot outrun a fireball, they have her actually stop, turn around, and save her dog who then joins her in outrunning the fireball.
I could go on and on and on about all the silliness… but nobody does a better job than the Insultingly Stupid Movie Physics site and their review of the movie.
Seriously, this movie is so bad, yet I watch it every time it's on TV. Is it purely for the stuff blowing up? The pretty colours? Is it because, gosh darn it, we've got all that destruction coming to us?
Come on, I know I'm not the only one out there who watches it.
Oh, I totally watch it. And I’m not sure it’s as bad as you think it is.
OK, I take that back. It *is* that bad. But rather self-consciously so.
Let me explain: Roland Emmerich, who directed and co-wrote the film, is German. My friends from Munich claim that while Emmerich’s interviews in America were all “ra-ra, USA, national pride, sis-boom-bah,” all his interviews in Germany talked about how it’s a big send-up of American culture. So it’s still a big joke, but the rest of the world was in on it.
Of course, that could just be Emmerich covering his butt following response to the movie, but it’s still pretty interesting.
One of the most interesting stories about the movie that I heard was that originally, the scene at the end where Randy Quaid flies his F-18 kamikaze style into the bottom of the spaceship, destroying it, was supposed to be him flying his crop dusting plane into the belly of the spaceship.
This would have been sooooo cliched and over the top that there’s no question it would have left us no other choice but to assume it was all a joke.
Apparently it didn’t test well with audiences, so they changed it. Presumably even the rowdiest and least imaginative of test audiences would have seen that crop duster flying in and screamed, “Oh COME ON!”
You have to talk to Chris about this. This is his FAVOURITE movie…however, he constantly rants about bad movie physics. I’d love to hear how he justifies it. I imagine it’s mostly for the constantly blowing up stuff.
He’s a complicated man, and no on understands him but his woman.
And actually, from the sounds of it, her understanding is marginal at best!