Independance Day (ID4)

[kg redhead]

On July 2nd, communications systems worldwide are sent into chaos by a strange atmospheric interference. It is soon learned by the military that a number of enormous objects are on a collision course with Earth. At first thought to be meteors, they are later revealed to be gigantic spacecraft, piloted by a mysterious alien species. After attempts to communicate with the aliens go nowhere, David Levinson, an ex-scientist turned cable technician, discovers that the aliens are going to attack major points around the globe in less than a day. On July 3rd, the aliens all but obliterate New York, Los Angeles, and Washington. The survivors set out in convoys towards Area 51, a strange government testing ground where it is rumored the military has a captured alien spacecraft of their own. The survivors devise a plan to fight back against the enslaving aliens, and July 4th becomes the day humanity will fight for its freedom. July 4th is their Independence Day...

[kg redhead]

The abbreviation "ID4" was invented due to undisclosed legal problems (long since resolved) with the title "Independence Day".

Bill Pullman used the memory of a decayed tooth which was pulled from his mouth in order to come up with a terrified expression when speaking with the alien invaders.

James Brown's distinctive scream was used as a sound effect for the alien energy beam backfiring as Russell's plane crashes into the giant ray gun.

The visual effect of the giant alien ray gun exploding is simply the same footage of the Empire State building exploding turned upside down.

The scene on board the submarine U.S.S. Georgia uses the a set from Crimson Tide (1995).

The characters "R" and "2" on the Area 51 doors are a reference to R2-D2 in Star Wars (1977).

When David Levinson opens his laptop computer (an Apple Macintosh PowerBook) it greets him with the message, "Good Morning Dave." - a reference to the talking computer HAL in 2001: A Space Odyssey (1968).

When escaping the mother ship, Levinson (Jeff Goldblum) says "Faster, must go faster", a line which Goldblum's character said in Jurassic Park (1993) when being chased by the T-rex.

To achieve the effect of flames traveling down the street, they a had miniature tilted upward and had the explosives at the bottom with a camera mounted on the top.

Two scenes, one where a replica of the bus from Speed (1994) crashes through a billboard for the movie Stargate (1994), also directed by Roland Emmerich, and one where a theater whose marquee reads "Coming Soon: Independence Day" is destroyed, were filmed but didn't appear in the final cut.

In the Special Edition, during the scenes where David is searching for his wife's telephone number, his computer screen displays humorous street names such as "Heresheis Avenue."

As is the case with many 20th Century Fox Films, the film cans for the advance screening prints and show prints had a code name. Independence Day was "Dutch 2".

The final sentence of the President's speech was not in the original script and was added at the last minute for dramatic effect in an effort to convince 20th Century Fox not to avoid a legal battle to earn the right to name the film "Independence Day."

Director Roland Emmerich got the idea for the film while fielding a question about the existence of alien life during promotion for Stargate (1994).

Composer David Arnold reused some of his score for The Young Americans (1993).

The President's speech was filmed on 6 August 1995 in front of an old airplane hangar. The hangar once housed the Enola Gay, which is infamous for dropping the atomic bomb on Hiroshima exactly 50 years earlier on 6 August 1945.

The man in the office building that is destroyed in the initial attack, is played by Volker Engel, the movie's visual effects supervisor.

Cameo: Dean Devlin the producer and co-writer is the voice of the fighter pilot alongside the President's plane who says, "I'm on it," targeting the alien ray only to be blasted out of the sky a moment later.

Cameo: William Fay the co-executive producer can briefly be seen on the TV in the Oval Office as a SETI employee during the "Operation Welcome Wagon" scene.

When Will Smith and Jeff Goldblum depart in the alien fighter, Smith goes backwards and hits a wall and then he says "Whoops," because someone wrote the instructions wrong. The situation and quote was taken from the Daffy Duck cartoon of Duck Dodgers in the 24½th Century (1953). Although the situation was from "Duck Dodgers", the actual quote from the cartoon is, "Silly Me! I had the stupid thing in reverse!"

Will Smith's squadron were stationed at El Toro air base. This is the same name as the air base from which the Flying Wing Bomber flew out of to drop the A-bomb on the Martians in the movie The War of the Worlds (1953).

In the special edition Vivica A. Fox's character gets fired from her job as a stripper, when she leaves she says to her boss, "Nice working for you, Mario" in a very sarcastic tone. This is a jab at producer Mario Kassar, who forced Roland Emmerich and Dean Devlin to cut some scenes from their last film, Stargate (1994).

"Everybody Wants To Rule The World" by Tears for Fears was originally picked to play during the film's introduction before it was replaced by R.E.M.'s "It's the End of the World As We Know It".

Mae Whitman who plays the president's daughter, appeared in episode #3.10, "The One Where Rachel Quit", of the sitcom "Friends" (1994) playing a girl who wanted to go to space camp and become an astronaut.

Harvey Fierstein, who plays Marty Gilbert, makes reference to his psychoanalyst, Doctor Katz. Fierstein had just made an appearance on the Comedy Central show "Dr. Katz, Professional Therapist" (1995).

Matthew Perry was originally offered the role of Captain Jimmy "Raven" Wilder but pulled out at the last minute. His father John Bennett Perry plays a secret serviceman. The scenes with the stealth bombers used sets from Broken Arrow (1996).

The White House interiors were originally built for The American President (1995), and were subsequently used for Mars Attacks! (1996).

Cameo: Harry Belafonte is one of the men looking at the spacecraft in New York City.

Dr. Okun is a reference to Jeffrey A. Okun, one of the visual effects supervisors from director Roland Emmerich's previous film Stargate (1994)

After the attack, Dylan is seen playing with a toy Mecha-King Ghidorah, from the Japenese Godzilla film Gojira tai Kingu Gidorâ (1991).

When Smith accidentally backs into a wall with the spacecraft and says, "Oops," Goldblum responds with, "Oops? I know what I've done when I've said oops, now what did you do, saying 'oops' there?" This is a quote from one of Bill Cosby's first recorded stand-up routines, "I Started Out As A Child".

Producer Dean Devlin said that well over half of the dialogue in the scenes Jeff Goldblum shared with Judd Hirsch and Will Smith was improvised.

The line, "Eh, f**k my lawyer," was improvised by Harvey Fierstein and the expletive was dubbed over with "forget" in the final cut.

An entire scene in which Jeff Goldblum explains the nature of the alien signal had to be cut to avoid possible controversy that would have arisen from a shot in which Harvey Fierstein planted an unscripted kiss on an unsuspecting Goldblum.

Footage of fiery debris was captured on film after a pyrotechnics malfunction occurred on set. The footage was used as the falling wreckage of the "Welcome Wagon" helicopters.

The scene from black and white movie shown in the Casse trailer is from The Day the Earth Stood Still (1951)

The line "Elvis has left the building!", which Will Smith yells toward the end of the movie, is translated "Last train to Mikkeli has just left!" on the Finnish DVD. Mikkeli is a town in Finland.

Over 70 mock news broadcasts were created for the film.

Production designer Patrick Tatopoulos presented director Roland Emmerich with two concepts for the aliens. Since Emmerich liked both designs so much he came up with the idea to use one design as the actual alien and the other to be a bio-mechanical suit the aliens could wear. Both of Tatopoulos's concepts appear in the film.

The orientation of the bent street lamps and overturned cars as seen through the tank's night vision makes them resemble the Martian spaceships from War Of The Worlds.

Before being launched out of Area 51, the alien attacker floats in front of a circular indentation in the wall behind it. Together they form the shape of Darth Vader's helmet from Star Wars.

The film's original ending had Russell flying his red bi-plane into the ray gun instead of an F-18.

Traditionally, Roland Emmerich's regular film crew gives the crew or cast member the nickname "Evil" if their name appears in the credits at the same time the music turns ominous. With this film, 'Julie Moran' (who appears as herself) received the honors.

Holds the record for most miniature modelwork to appear in one film. It is said more minatures were used for this film than in any other two films combined. Due to the advances in digital technology since this film's release, most experts believe this record may stand forever.

Among the sounds used to produce the noise the televisions make when they're experiencing the reception disturbance is the famous breathing of Darth Vader from Star Wars (1977). It is best heard at the moment when all the channels displayed on the wall of TV monitors switch to the president's speech from the White House press room.

The initials of several model shop crew members can be seen as graffiti on a wall behind the tank that's parked on the freeway in Houston.

During the alien's initial attack, the shots of cars landing on other cars was achieved by using cranes that released actual hollowed-out cars onto cars loaded w/ explosives.

Director Trademark: In any Roland Emmerich movie in which news broadcasts are depicted, his foreign news station of choice is Sky News. Here, it appears in Russian. SkyNews is owned by NewsCorp, the same company that owns 20th Century Fox, which released this movie.

Originally Russel Taylor, Randy Quaid's character, flew his crop duster in the final battle, because the military had rejected him as a pilot. He appeared with a missile attached to the crop duster, then flew the crop duster into the alien ship. But when it was screened to test audiences, they felt it was too comedic, so they re-filmed the scene.

According to producer/co-writer Dean Devlin, the US military had agreed to support the film by allowing the crew to film at military bases, consulting the actors who have military roles, etc. However, after learning of the Area 51 references in the script, they withdrew their support.

On the DVD commentary, visual effects supervisor Volker Engel reveals that the fire engine seen tumbling through the air was simply a model purchased at a toy store.

The alien spacecraft was 65 feet wide.

The White House which exploded was built at 1/12 scale, just to be blown up. Nine cameras filmed the explosion at various speeds, one of which was 12 times slower to make the explosion seem larger on film.

The movie features, thanks to special effects, 3,978 F-18 Hornets, 52,278 pieces of debris, 3,931 alien attackers, 1,549 missiles, and 22,014 light balls.

[kg redhead]

On July 1, 1998 a Special Edition was released on LaserDisc. This edition contains ca. 8 minutes of extended/additional footage:
* The first dialogue between President Whitmore and Constance Spano was extended.
* A few sentences were added in the scene as Whitmore proposes to go to DefCon 3.
* The first added scene is a dialogue between David Levinson and a colleague at the TV station. He explains that an unknown signal is responsible for the bad TV broadcasting and that he may be able to block this signal.
* In the next extended scene Russell Casse meets his son after he was released from prison.
* Up next the dialogue between Jasmine and Tiffany in the strip club was extended.
* Then there is an extended dialogue between David and his father on the way to the White house. Right after this is an added scene in which David is searching for the number of Constance's handy.
* Another added scene features David and his father in the oval Office. The father is talking about the persons who visited this office. Actors, football players and now himself...
* Right after Jasmine found the truck, there is an added scene in which the illness of Russell's youngest son is described.
* The next added scene features Jasmine as she drives the truck and some survivors through the destroyed city.
* Later in Area 51 there is an added scene in which David Levinson and Dr. Brakkish Okun go into the alien spacecraft. Here the Doctor explains some of the alien technology.
* As Captain Steven Hiller arrives with the alien visitor, a scene was added in which Russell asks for a doctor for his ill son.
* The last extended scene shows Russell's daughter establishing a new friendship while the fight rages above Area 51.

In most versions shown in cinemas and also the ones available on video, scenes are missing that stress the global dimension of the alien attack. In these scenes, international tv-journalists report about the devastation in their respective countries, and the destroying of international cities is shown (e.g. Paris). The cast list still contains some of these reporters, e.g. it names Jessica Cardinahl as German reporter, and also Korean and Russian reporters. These scenes were interesting, as they illustrate that the aliens are not an American problem, but a global one.

The laserdisc special edition includes an alternate ending to the final aerial battle sequence. In it Russell Casse was rejected as a pilot for one of the jets to attack the alien ship approaching Area 51. However, he arrives at the end of battle flying his crop duster (which he has been towing behind his motor home) with a missile strapped to it. He then flies the crop duster into the energy beam weapon of the alien ship to bring it down.

In the original UK theatrical release during the closing sequence in the desert as Levinson (Goldblum) and Hiller (Smith) are walking towards the jeep, Hiller suggests to Levinson that he needs a new 'hero' walk and to swing his hips more. This dialogue, that explains Goldblum's odd walk, is missing from the video release

In the Australian/New Zealand video and theatrical release several shots were edited out so the film could receive a PG rating. These include the destruction of the AWAC as it enters the fire cloud and the shot of the helicopter pilots when the alien destroyer shoots them down.

Several of the media reports shown in the movie were actually shot on videotape (including special effects). A number of these scenes, plus others not in the movie, were edited together into a fake newscast that is available on the DVD release.

In the UK Television version of the film (possibly also VHS and DVD versions) all TV news reports are changed from the american broadcasts to Sky News broadcasts (a British news channel and, at the time of the movie, the only 24 hours news service in the UK)

In some cinemas in the Middle East, all scenes including Judd Hirsch were removed. In the film, Hirsch's character speaks Yiddish and wears the traditional Jewish yarmulke.