The 10 Best Things About America I Learned from Independence Day
9. It isn’t pretty, but it works.
It’s muddled, it’s schlocky, it’s unoriginal. Most of it is just ported over from Stargate (directed by the same dude), sometimes shot for shot. And yes, hacking an alien spacefleet with a mid-90s PowerBook is, I’m told, not very “realistic.” But with a lot of hard work and millions of dollars in special effects, it somehow all comes together. Just like us.
There wasn’t anybody in history more American than Thomas Edison, and there isn’t a movie out there that says “1% inspiration, 99% perspiration,” more than Independence Day.
8. The President is a regular person.
Bill Pullman performed the George W. Bush presidency four years before it started — a former flyboy elected mostly for his looks, simplicity and awkward charm is manhandled by sniveling advisors and forced to 
watch with a combination of horror and willful ignorance as his country falls victim to an unexpected and perhaps unpreventable attack that he nevertheless did very little to anticipate or stop. He then launches a reckless and unplanned war with inadequate resources and no idea of how to win it.
This is clearly not the work of somebody who rules by Divine Right or the Mandate of Heaven.
George W. Bush told us he was a regular guy, a simple guy, and a man of action. And, lest we forget, we responded to it. A lot of Americans really liked the guy and wanted him to lead our country, especially in crises. In this movie, Bill Pullman’s character is all the the things George W. Bush said he was, at least four years earlier.
And regardless of how all that worked out, Bill Pullman is the kind of leader America generally wants to have: A Cincinnatus who shares our values and sees the call to power as a call to service. Somebody who steps forward when it is his time to lead and steps back to normal life when it is not. Not “His Highness” or even “Your Honor,” just “Mr. President” (or “Ms. President” someday soon). That’s the most enduring legacy of George Washington.
When Bill Pullman refuses to stay behind when others fight, he reaffirms and insists that he is a guy with a job he needs to do just like everyone else.
His regular job just happens to be “fighter pilot.” Must be nice.
Gab on Wed, 1st Jul 2009 2:28 amAm I going absolutely nuts, or is this a repost? It’s good, it’s great, but why do I feel like I have read it before?
DaveW on Wed, 1st Jul 2009 8:52 amI was asking myself the same question Gab. Good to know I’m not crazy :)
That said, still a great post.
Matthew Wrather on Wed, 1st Jul 2009 9:55 amMore like a second edition. :) Pete added, changed, and revised a bunch of stuff.
almost witty on Wed, 1st Jul 2009 10:40 amBest of all? It’s written by a German, who were formerly enemies of the United States.
Then again, Bill Pullman’s fighter pilot being a prototype of George Dubya Bush is a bit of a scary idea…
fenzel on Wed, 1st Jul 2009 11:25 amThe scarier part is how much Bill Pullman resembles Ronald Reagan and how similar their careers have been up to this point in their lives ;)
But yeah, I wanted to bring this back and update it, because it’s one of my favorites and because we have grown a lot in the past year, and it will probably be new to a lot of folks.
Chris Richards on Wed, 1st Jul 2009 11:54 amLoved it! Also, the fact that you compared Cincinnatus to Bill Pullman…possibly the best thing ever. Also, Mary McDonnell is a nigh-indestructable tour-de-force herself (see her turn as cancer-ridden Secretary of Education Laura Roslin who becomes President of Humanity after surviving numerous Cylon-incited genocides in Battlestar Galactica). Also, not to be nit-picky, but the First Lady was leaving LA, not Washington.
Wade on Wed, 1st Jul 2009 12:11 pmExcellent. “Crazy people are our greatest natural resource” is a line for the ages.
dock on Wed, 1st Jul 2009 7:02 pmTo this day I still get goosebumps (and the occational lump in my throat) when I hear that speech. It was also the first time I, myself, heard a theater erupt into cheer during a movie. I wish they would re-issue this movie in theaters the way they did ET. On July 4th, of course.
lee on Wed, 1st Jul 2009 10:22 pmI’ve always seen the President in this movie as a reaction against Bill Clinton, who was oft criticized by the right as a pot-smoking draft-dodger. Contrast that with the President who’s military enough to strap himself into a jet and fly into battle.
I suppose the election of George W. Bush was in some ways also a reaction against Bill Clinton, so maybe it’s not so much of a coincidence that Pullman’s President presaged W.
David on Thu, 2nd Jul 2009 12:21 pmGreat article. “Independence Day” is one of those movies I’ve always been ashamed to like among my film-snob friends. But Whitmore’s speech always gives me the chills.
And the point about crazy people is priceless.
Trevor on Thu, 2nd Jul 2009 1:57 pmI get the feeling that, in Randy Quaid’s death scene, we were supposed to be moved by his final words. The only problem is, he’s got so many lines to choose from, it’s hard to pick which ones we remember and which ones we consign to the dustbin of history. I would’ve been fine with “tell my kids I love them.” Or even “in the words of my generation: Up Yours!” But did he really have to go with the “hello boys, I’m back!” That’s just final-line overkill, in my opinion. Luke Skywalker didn’t talk Rebel Command’s ear off with a bunch of potential catchphrases strung together in the hopes that something would take hold, a la Nathan Hale’s “I regret that I have but one life to give for my country.” He just blasted the Death Star and got the hell outta there.
rhys on Fri, 3rd Jul 2009 2:09 amwasnt the first lady in LA on a book tour or some shit? not in washington? regardless this is pretty over thought…2 thumbs up.
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