Independence Day: ID 4

This film was BIG. HUGE. MASSIVE. It was one of the biggest (if not the biggest) films of my era. The theatres were packed out for months to see this film, and you were lucky to get a seat even if you did queue. I'd never seen anything like this before. It must have made quite a lot at the box office.

I think to see this movie we had to book our seats in advance, that was how in demand it was, and I'd had never watched a movie that I needed to book. I mean sure, a lot of the popular films were sold out for a week or two but the excitement usually died down after a few weeks. Not this film. Cinema was packed out for months on end until it came on Film. In fact I think my mum had to wait for film because she couldn't get to see it at the cinema.

I mean I can see why though. We had just made big advancements in CGI and this one was promising to use almost all of them. Not only that, Will Smith was a heavy hitter back in my day -- he was just fresh out of the Fresh Prince of Bel Air and had already struck a few hits, and this was his new one. Boy were we all excited for this film.

Independence Day was a film about Earth finally being openly visited by Aliens. They were non communicative and had positioned themselves amongst some of the most densely populated cities in the world. It was obvious that they had been studying us for quite a while, knowing where to go.

The world's leaders did not know what to think, because the Aliens arrived in Cities but did not communicate with us at all. We were confused as to whether it was a language barrier, or something more. Worse yet the world's populous was split between those that wanted to welcome them, and those that wanted to escape the cities, some even resorting to looting their own areas and also firing at the spaceships.

As all that was happening a young communications engineer had found a hidden code within the ships, it was like how they were all talking to each other, and after some time, he realised that embedded in the code was a countdown, so he rushes to the American Capital to warn the president.

As he manages to wade through the security and give the president the information he has found then they all decide to vacate the premises and run to air force one. Just in time too because the timer reaches zero and the Aliens start to simultaneously destroy all of our cities from well known cultural landmarks.

It's quite a film. Heavy on CGI, a bit light on storyline. Whilst this is three hours long I wouldn't categorise this as a best of all time. The CGI for the time was top tip, and it was worth watching that for the effects and seeing aliens on film alone, but the storyline was meh at best. They could have done a lot better with the writing. I wasn't as gripped as I have been with some films.

But nevertheless, still worth a watch as it's a classic from a forgotten era!