Independence Day: This movie sucks donkey balls. Seriously.

[Apathy]

See title. Also:

Mario: hey, while I'm makin' calls and generally workin', could you start the Independence Day thread? I forgot to make it yesterday

Jon: I would make any thread but that. I don't think "I hate this movie intensely" is a good starting point for discussion.

Mario: heh, it's a good way to start things off. I started Uncle Sam by pointing out its shortcomings
Mario: talk about why you didn't like it. Movie clubs aren't just supposed to be us gushing about how awesome some guy's fake rubber monster costume was

Jon: I hate that bit that starts at the beginning of the movie and ends at the end of the movie.

Mario: that's just ridiculous! The movie was good cheesy SCIENCE! fun and you know it. You only hated the part near the end where the Britons in Iraq were glad to hear that the Americans had formulated a plan

Jon: No, pretty much all of it sucked.
Jon: The only good bit was when the President nearly got his brain melted. But then he didn't. So it wasn't good.

Mario: Will Smith punched an alien in the face!
Mario: he defeated superior technology and biology with a punchin'!

Jon: Yeah, apparently so hard that he knocked it out through the armour it was wearing.

Mario: they said it was bio-armor. I'd assumed the alien had tactile feedback through it
Mario: also, it just crash-landed, so it may have already been in a weakened state

Jon: Building pain receptors into armour kind of defeats the purpose.

Mario: then why make bio-armor at all, if it's not supposed to be a natural extension of your own physiology? Without pain receptors, you might not back off from the heat of fire or something, and before you can do anything your entire bio-armor is engulfed in flame

Jon: Bio-armour to me means it's more been grown than manufactured.
Jon: And sure, you'd maybe put in tactile feedback, but you sure as hell would limit it.

Mario: it looked enough like normal tissue to me. They were able to cut it open with a scalpel

Jon: That'd make it pretty crappy armour then, really.

Mario: it was probably better than their frail bodies. The big heads and tiny bodies aren't really conducive to walking around and picking fights

Jon: I dunno about that. I mean he did manage to kill an entire medical team.

Mario: in his bio-armor

Jon: Weren't they his tentacles from within the armour?

Mario: I couldn't tell where they originated from. The tentacles were flailing about when he was in the ship too, in full armor
Mario: besides, they were a technologically-dependent species. Once their shields went down, their ships' hulls weren't terribly resistant to conventional human weaponry. The fighter planes went down with a few stray machine gun bullets

Jon: Yeah, it really just doesn't bode well for interstellar species. Apparently these jerks were shit-hot at the conquering thing and they got beat by fighter jets and a drunk.

Mario: supplemented by a computer virus. Without Jeff Goldblum's amazing programming skills, the drunk guy would have been grossly ineffective

Jon: It would have been funny then though.

Mario: oh, no doubt. But also a bit of a downer when all of humanity is wiped out by the alien ground troops

Jon: No, I'd probably still find that funny too.

Mario: we watched some sort of special edition of the movie, with re-integrated deleted scenes
Mario: I must say, it was right to remove them, because they just created more useless backstory
Mario: but it was nice to see Brent Spiner get an extra scene, he deserved it

Jon: Which one was Spiner?

Mario: the nerdy scientist at Area 51 with the long grey hair
Mario: also Data from Star Trek

Jon: Oh, the marionette.

Mario: yeah
Mario: Stef was pleased to see a cameo by Jayne from Firefly

Jon: Presidential security dude?

Mario: Area 51 security dude

Jon: Actually, speaking of that, we could put Serenity on the list.
Jon: Possibly Mars Attacks.

[hlavco]

I saw this movie a really long time ago, and don't remember much aside from Will Smith on a plane.

[mario]

Posting our conversation about how you need to make a thread hardly counts as making a thread!

Also, Independence Day was hilariously awesome. So there.

[Apathy]

There is a thread. A thread has been made.

And the movie sucked. Even if you ignore the gaping plot-holes.

[Night Lord]

God, one thing I don't like about alien invasion movies is the fact that the world has hundreds of countries, yet everytime, they always land in North America! And then usually in Washington DC or New York. Even the war of the worlds (Which is in my opinion one of the best books ever written) movie was set in america (Film is probably the worst film ever made).

[Stef]

Night Lord, they first appeared over the Middle East in Independence Day and then they attacked all of the world's major cities.

I actually liked this movie. Especially with edits, it did a great job of presenting a story with a number of interesting character and very little unnecessary exposition. Sometimes movies like these take half of the damn movie to bring us up to speed on both the characters and the aliens.

[deku12345]

For some reason, I have never seen this movie.

However, I agree on all fronts that Serenity should be on that list.

[X'o'Lore]

I recently caught a few minutes of this on TV. It wasn't a good movie when I saw it the first time and I wasn't about to waste precious time watching the whole movie again so I went and played video games instead. Much more fulfilling than a cliché alien invasion movie that was ruined by an oversized budget.

[Amoeba Boy]

If only the aliens had Linux...

[General Salt]

Originally Posted by deku12345

For some reason, I have never seen this movie.

Me neither.

[Drooling Iguana]

Originally Posted by Night Lord

God, one thing I don't like about alien invasion movies is the fact that the world has hundreds of countries, yet everytime, they always land in North America! And then usually in Washington DC or New York. Even the war of the worlds (Which is in my opinion one of the best books ever written) movie was set in america (Film is probably the worst film ever made).

London, England has been invaded far more times by creatures from across time and space than any city in the U.S.

Also, the aliens should install Linux.

[Nukivaj]

Actually "Mars Attack" made more sense, and it was funnier.

[Melted Jhonnycake]

I don't claim to be an alien invasion movie aficionado but it occurs to me just now that the aliens never really utilize ground troops, I wonder why that is?

I mean even if the aliens have superior technology and a mass aerial strike is more efficient, wouldn't it really make for a better movie.

Also, I know mars attack and war of the worlds have ground things, if any one was gonna bring that up.

[Takeru]

Speaking of Mars, did you know that the Transformers in the upcoming movie are going to be from Mars? And that they're also going to KILL US ALL, OMG RUN!

[jc]

A little embarrassing disclosure: I waited in a very long line to see this movie on opening day. I shouldn't have done that, but I didn't know any better. Sadly, I did the same thing for the next movie from the same people. I don't know what else to say except that I didn't have any damn sense. Also I lived in Longview, Texas and what else was I going to do?

Best thing about the movie: Bill Pullman was also in Spaceballs.

Second best thing about the movie: I bought a toy version of one of the 'preserved' Area 51 aliens at K-Mart for a dollar, and it came with a little vat that lit up on the inside.

Third best thing about the movie: I knew a girl in high school who had a serious crush on Jeff Goldblum.

[jason]

Originally Posted by Melted Jhonnycake

I don't claim to be an alien invasion movie aficionado but it occurs to me just now that the aliens never really utilize ground troops, I wonder why that is?

Two words: Starship Troopers.

Which is a movie very different from the philosophizing book, but good (as a B-movie send-up) in its own right. Well, with the exception of the Cheshire, who also did her best to murder SCIENCE! as a physicist in a Bond movie. But Starship Troopers has ground troops in droves.

I vaguely remember liking ID4 when it came out, with the exception of the President's soliloquy and the much-mentioned Apple-luvvv, but it's been ...that long since I've actually seen it.

My summer sublet is just down the street from a Blockbuster, so maybe I can start watching and stop commenting without watching...

[Serephel]

I would like to punch an alien in the face. That would be pretty manly.

And Jeff Goldblum really could write up a simple virus in a few hours to wipe out an alien mothership with technology vastly superior to ours. Because he's Jeff Goldblum, that's why.

[Night Lord]

Originally Posted by Drooling Iguana

Also, the aliens should install Linux.

Which Distro? It should be Ubuntu or Fedora, but NOT Red Hat

[mario]

Originally Posted by Melted Jhonnycake

I don't claim to be an alien invasion movie aficionado but it occurs to me just now that the aliens never really utilize ground troops, I wonder why that is?

Actually, the aliens were preparing for a ground assault. Jeff Goldblum and Will Smith flew over a legion of alien soldiers, and Goldblum surmised (with his dizzying and wholly illogical powers of deduction) that they were weakening Earth's main defense forces with the ships, then moving in on the ground to finish humanity off.

If you want an example of when ground assaults are a bad idea, see Signs. Except don't ever actually see Signs.

jason, please watch movies with us!

[Takeru]

I liked Independence Day because America won at the end. Not like in Planet of the Apes. That movie sucked, because America was taken over by a bunch of apes, which could never actually happen.