Independence Day

Will Smith and Jeff Goldblum mug their way through this overblown shambles as they try to save Earth from an alien invasion. 

Director and co-writer Roland Emmerich an extravagant 13 months on physical production and just four paltry weeks on the script. The result is as you’d expect: laughable dialogue, cardboard stereotypes, and a plot that’s sacrificed for special effects overload. 

Top it all off with a cheesy ending and a tone of cloying sentimentality and you’ll be praying for aliens to invade you anally if it stop this assault on your intelligence. 

And yet, the film does deliver on the exploding helicopter front. No fewer than four of the bad boys are blown up in the name of "entertainment".

In a misguided attempt to welcome the alien invaders to the planet General Gray (a sleepwalking Robert Loggia) sends up a "welcome wagon" of three Sikorsky S-64s. As the helicopters approach the saucer, the spaceship fires a powerful laser blast that destroys each helicopter in with a minimum of fuss.

Later in the film, the First Lady (Mary McDonnell) flees the White House in a presidential chopper just as the aliens attack. The White House explodes (in what has become an iconic shot) and the helicopter is engulfed in the all-encompassing explosion. 

Artistic merit

This is a big budget movie so the CGI explosions look pretty realistic but lack the gritty satisfaction that only a real-life fireball can deliver. Shots of the burning debris as the helicopter wreckage plummets to the ground are a nice touch though.

Number of exploding helicopters

Four

Exploding helicopter innovation

A hattrick of helicopters being destroyed by alien laser fire is not something you see every day. Sadly, it's not as impressive as you might think.

Do passengers survive?

The three pilots in the ‘welcome wagon’ meet-and-greet team are instantly turned to toast. Amazingly the First Lady survives the mother of all explosions only to die later in the film from internal bleeding.

Positives

Emmerich might not know how to make a decent movie, but he knows how to blow things up with the aid of CGI. The White House scene which went some way to win the Best Visual Effects Oscar still looks pretty good 15 years later and the wall of flame that destroys the Presidential chopper is about as eyebrow singeing as it gets.

Negatives

How on earth does the First Lady survive the impact of an explosion equivalent to that of a nuclear bomb and the subsequent crash to emerge with a few scratches and some internal bleeding. In the real world the fireball would have bypassed the need for the President to cremate her.

Favourite quote

A news announcer warns viewers against interacting with the aliens: "Do not fire your guns at the spacecraft. You might inadvertently start an interstellar war"

  

Battle: Los Angeles

Oh, dear. This is a lurching Frankenstein of a movie, made from successful bits of other films clumsily cut out and stitched back together.

Look! There’s District 9’s spaceship. Wow. There’s Independence Day’s stirring speech to the troops. Hey. Isn’t that the big Hummer from Aliens driving through a confined, tunnel-like structure and mowing down all the, er, aliens?

The film lumbers from scene to stolen scene, each one only reminding the viewer how much better the originals were. Even Aaron Eckhart seems aware something’s not right, and he kept a straight face all through The Core.

And in a movie that lifts so shamelessly from its betters, the odds that each helicopter was going to thrum-thrum its way safely through to the final credits were always narrow.

How we reach the pivotal scene is thus: a small band of marines is, for no good reason whatsoever, sent deep into alien-held LA territory to rescue some people from a police station. (Note for military fans: the latest marine-enemy-incursion technique is to walk full stride down the centre of enemy-occupied streets talking loudly about relationships.)

The aliens – a spectacular piece of filching: essentially District 9 prawns with Predator heads – pretty much let the marines walk to the police station, then lay siege to it (just like in Assault on Precinct 13). Before long, the heroes also catch a live alien and experiment on it (Independence Day again) and escape in a runaway bus (Speed).

Having established its cut-and-paste credentials so confidently, by the time a ‘rescue’ helicopter lands next to the station the only real question is how it’s going to be despatched. Now, I don’t want to spoil all the fun, so I’ll just lay out the bare facts and see if you can guess.

The helicopter lands and is loaded full of injured marines – several of whom have been given hastily constructed ‘backstory’ in the opening scenes (pregnant wife, something to prove etc) so we care about them. At the very last moment, Aaron Eckhart runs out of the station holding two young children, but is JUST TOO LATE to get the adorable young scamps aboard the unquestionably safe airborne vehicle before it takes off.

As to what happens next? Well, I was as shocked as you’ll be. The helicopter is barely 50 feet in the air when a District 9-lite spaceship either shoots or goes straight through it. (I’ve rewound three times and still don’t know. The CGI is terrible and the editing so fast-cut that Michael Bay reportedly wrote in to complain.)

The explosion itself is prime computer-generated-tat. Tonnes of burning shards of unconvincingly rendered metal and rotor blades crash down all around the marines and kids. However, given that such a quick death would afford no opportunity for a final ‘Give this to my wife’ / ‘Marines. Ra-hoo!’ emotive speech, no-one is even scratched.

Not that you’re interested, but that woman from Girlfight – here making her turn in Avatar look like Sophie’s Choice – works out that if they can just destroy this one, hard to reach silo then the whole baddie infrastructure will come toppling down (Star Wars, anyone?). By the final scene, I felt like toppling over myself.

This is a deeply unnecessary film.