The first third or so is the buildup. Giant UFOs appear out of nowhere over multiple major cities. There's no indication what they're there for, no communication with Earth at all, they're just there. The main cast is introduced and set up, and the plot at this point simply revolves around reactions to the UFOs and trying to figure out what they're there for. Then the
oh shit moment when Jeff Goldblum realizes their transmissions to each other have a countdown encoded in the signal. "And then what?" "Checkmate."
(Although, if I'm gonna be pedantic, there wasn't really any indication what the countdown was for. Could've been a big surprise party. Imagine all the UFOs opening their doors and instead of city-destroying lasers, it's just millions of balloons and tons of confetti. Okay, tangent over.)
And then comes the disaster porn. Rewatching the scene, it still holds up, with some fantastic miniature work:
What's really noteworthy to me is how the score just completely cuts out as soon as the lasers go off. Two solid minutes where all you hear is the deafening roar of the explosions and the panicked reactions of the crowds. It honestly jolted me when the score kicked back in at the end of that video, in that I hadn't noticed it was gone until then. It really highlights the sheer terror of the situation, with no blaring music to try and play with your emotions until it's time to return to the main cast again. And in contrast to today's quiptastic dialogue, aside from Harvey Fierstein's "oh crap," not a word is said to take away from the destruction.
Another interesting aspect of the movie, in rereading the plot summary, is that really, that's the bulk of the disaster porn. The remainder of the movie is how humanity fights back in the aftermath, with the second third involving failed counterattacks against the saucers and the revelation of their plans at Area 51, and the final third being the aerial assault over Area 51 and the (still hilarious in hindsight) plot to upload a virus to the mothership to lower the shields and nuke the alien bastards. We don't really see any more major destruction between the initial attack and those lovely spaceship explosions at the end.
And it's that restraint, ironically, that sets Independence Day apart from Emmerich's later disaster porn movies, where he always seems to be trying to one-up himself. In The Day After Tomorrow, climate change makes superstorms that flood and then freeze a huge chunk of the planet. Then in 2012, the magnetic field shifts and all the Earth's tectonic plates get thrown out of whack. Then in Independence Day: Resurgence, the ayys are back with a giant starfish ship that rips up huge chunks of the planet and threatens to drill a hole to the core. And now in Moonfall, we have
the entire fucking Moon coming into Earth's atmosphere and doing all manner of gravity-related shenanigans. And with all of these, you don't really get much of a chance to breathe before another giant CGI nightmare happens, Moonfall being the worst offender.
Look, I appreciate a good turn-your-brain-off disaster porn movie if I'm in the mood for it. They're not high art, and I'm not expecting any more than that. But you can still make a
good disaster porn movie, which isn't something I think Emmerich has done for quite some time. Far be it for me to tell the man what to do, but I feel that pulling back on his worst impulses instead of wanting to see the entire planet get sploded every time would result in a better film. I mean, hell, it'd legitimately be hard to top this one unless he plans on blowing up the Sun in his next movie.
Oh no, I think I accidentally predicted his next movie.
