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Independence Day
Strange phenomena surface around the globe. The skies ignite. Terror races through the world's major cities. As these extraordinary events unfold, it becomes increasingly clear that a force of incredible magnitude has arrived. Its mission: total annihilation over the Fourth of July weekend. The last hope to stop the destruction is an unlikely group of people united by fate and unimaginable circumstances.
1996 · Directed by Roland Emmerich · 145 min · Action · Adventure · Science Fiction · Screenplay in the scene database · 17 frames
Tagline
The question of whether or not we are alone in the universe has been answered.
Plot
On July 2, 1996, an extraterrestrial mothership, entering Earth's orbit outside the Moon, deploys its flying saucers, each 15 mi (24 km) in diameter, over major cities worldwide. U.S. Marine Captain Steven Hiller and his unit, the Black Knights fighter squadron stationed out of MCAS El Toro, are called back from Independence Day leave; his girlfriend, Jasmine Dubrow, decides to flee Los Angeles with her son, Dylan. Retired combat pilot Russell Casse, now an alcoholic single father and crop duster, sees this as vindication of the alien abduction he has been claiming for 10 years.
In New York City, technician David Levinson decodes a signal embedded within global satellite transmissions, realizing it is the aliens' countdown for a coordinated attack. Aided by his ex-wife, White House Communications Director Constance Spano, David and his father Julius reach the Oval Office in Washington, D.C. and alert President Thomas Whitmore.
Whitmore orders evacuations of Los Angeles, New York City, and the District of Columbia, but it is too late. Each saucer fires a beam, incinerating every targeted city, killing millions. Whitmore, Spano, the Levinsons, and a few others barely escape aboard Air Force One while Jasmine and Dylan take shelter in a tunnel's inspection alcove and survive the destruction of Los Angeles.
Plot summary from Wikipedia, CC BY-SA.
Crew
- Screenplay: Roland Emmerich, Dean Devlin
- Cinematography: Karl Walter Lindenlaub
- Edited by: David Brenner
- Music: David Arnold
- Production design: Oliver Scholl, Patrick Tatopoulos
- Produced by: Dean Devlin
Cast
- Will Smith as Capt. Steven Hiller
- Bill Pullman as President Thomas J. Whitmore
- Jeff Goldblum as David Levinson
- Mary McDonnell as Marilyn Whitmore
- Judd Hirsch as Julius Levinson
- Robert Loggia as General William Grey
- Randy Quaid as Russell Casse
- Margaret Colin as Constance Spano
- James Rebhorn as Albert Nimzicki
- Harvey Fierstein as Marty Gilbert
Production
- Country: United States of America
- Language: English
- Studios: 20th Century Fox, Centropolis Entertainment
- Budget: $75,000,000
- Box office: $817,400,891
- Themes: spacecraft, showdown, independence, patriotism, countdown, invasion, alien, ufo, extraterrestrial, disaster
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