TODAY WE CELEBRATE OUR INDEPENDENCE DAY (SEQUELS)!!!

I'll be curious if anyone from the original cast returns.

I'll bet Big Willie Style does a cameo only and I think they'll find a way to get Goldblum back since he's well-liked and won't cost a fortune.

 

What's with him and some of these depressing movie choices? 7 Pounds certainly didn't brighten anybody's day, either.

 

It is a very entertaining movie. The group of characters were special, with Smith and Pullman and Goldblum and Vivica Fox and Quiad. The fact that they are making sequels just continues to show that 1) people are stupid and will give money for products probably not worth the price of admission and 2) money is the root of all evil.

 

In one of the Halloween movies, the first one I think, you also see (or at least hear) Michael Myers snap a dog's neck.

 

Have you ever seen "Everybody's All-American"?
I think I almost got addicted to antidepressants watching that, and I only watched it once.

 

You don't get one of these shooting guns and cracking wise, unless you're 70-something and on your last legs.

 

OK, maybe I'm going to show my age here but Independence Day is one of my all-time favorite action/sci-fi flicks and BOTH Deep Impact & Armageddon aren't that far behind either.

ID4 came out when I was in middle school and, man, was I pumped for it. Loved the previews, loved the "book" that I picked up before the movie at the local supermarket. And with the exception of the hippie doctor and anything to do with Randy Quaid, I loved everything about that flick. I could watch it over and over and over again and would be in line, at the midnight showing, to any and all sequels.

I'm convinced I love Deep Impact just for Morgan Freeman but I also love the sense of doom that that movie showed for 9/10ths of its screen time. The end was a giant cop-out and disappointed me but, still, I liked the idea of the lottery and watching society crumble.

Armaggedon? Man. You guys can f**k off. That movie is comedy gold. It might not mean to be but, sh*t, I could watch this 1,000 times in a row and I'd still get misty eyed 1.) When Bruce Willis tells Liv Tyler goodbye and 2.) When the "astronauts" and the Earth crew have their reunion.

So, to conclude, I've been waiting 14 years for a sequel to Independence Day and even if I'm the only one in theaters the day it comes out, you can bet your sweet ass they'll make at least $10.

 

Deep Impact also had Frodo outrunning a Tsunami while on a bicycle.

 

Yeah, it was a dirt bike, and it's been thoroughly covered here. Thanks for weighing in, though.

 

I think they'd bring back almost everybody from the original cast who was apparently alive at the end of ID4. Only Smith is at the big-star level his salary would be a huge consideration for the movie. It's not like Goldblum or Bill Pullman are pulling down mega-millions for every movie these days.

Capt. Steven Hiller and Jasmine would now be President and First Lady -- that's almost a no-brainer. Plus Jasmine could do some pole dancing in the East Room just for old-times sake and the obligatory Fox movie strip-club scene.

Her son Dylan would now be in his mid-20s, probably a Marine pilot himself. Undoubtedly the Hillers would have had several other kids since then, all given to making snappy witty one-liners to liven up conversations.

David Levinson and Connie are still remarried, of course, with a child born a year or so after ID4. He would now be Secretary of Technology in the new cabinet. She would probably be VP or more likely Secretary of State.

Julius would still be around delivering pithy Jewish one-liners, probably chomping on prime Cuban cigars delivered to the White House. He would have become a rabbi.

President Whitmore would have returned to active duty in the USAF after leaving office, would be the nation's first living 6-star general and chairman of the JCOS.

Little Munchkin would have grown up by now, and inspired by the example of Jasmine who helped save her life, would have taken up a career as a stripper and would be married to Dylan the Marine pilot.

Weaselly Al Nimczicki, the Secretary of Defense fired by Whitmore, would have become a media celebrity on a talk-show news network devoted almost entirely to attacking both the president (Whitmore) and his successor (Hiller), second-guessing how they handled the invasion crisis and blaming all the millions of deaths directly on them.

 

I think it would be interesting to draw a parallel between the events in ID4 to the way young people view 9/11 today.

In many ways, I'm sure in that world you would never have gotten over the invasion but, at the same time, I'm willing to bet that given time the true impact of the images would be lost on the new generation of teenagers more concerned with Twilight and texting than anything of consequence.

And, of course, I'm sure the immediate reaction to an invasion like that would be a global focus on understanding the universe and increasing technology to expand enough so that we'd have more time to prepare for a second wave of attackers.

It'd be interesting to see what the pundits would have to say about an alien invasion some 15 years later. I imagine most would debate whether it was a one-off situation or the start of something bigger and, by this point, society would probably return to the idea that, now that we've killed the bad guys, we're back to being alone in the universe.

 

I'm glad you seem to think my generation was full of substance, though I'm inclined to doubt we were grounded in issues of consequence any more than today's tweens.

Maybe they'll go all Ender's Game on us, and in a ruse cleverly disguised as training to fight the next alien attack, they'll use Will Smith to annihilate the alien homeworld.

I don't think that will happen — the idea of fighting for Earth on Earth is too enticing for a summer blockbuster — but it'd be impressive if they did go that route.