40 Years Ago: Big Trouble in Little China (1986)

One of my all-time favorite cult movies is John Carpenter’s Big Trouble in Little China (1986), a film involving an American hero treading into a mysterious, non-Western world where he feels like an “outsider.”  That world, in this case, is not literally another planet, but rather the mystical and dangerous world of Chinese black magic. 

So. movie audiences get an on-screen representative of “us” countenancing a strange land and strange customs, but Big Trouble in Little China leverages tremendous humor not only from the peculiarities of this culture clash, but from the rather dramatic presentation of the American hero in question.   

To wit, Kurt Russell’s truck-driving, self-important protagonist, Jack Burton, is a swaggering, blundering John Wayne-voiced blow-hard.   He’s Jack Blurtin’, so-to-speak.

And yet Jack also reveals (in the words of the screenplay) “great courage” under stress, and his heart is always (well, almost always...) in the right place.  I have always maintained that the accident-prone but intrinsically heroic Burton represents director Carpenter’s most positive silver screen depiction of American dominance upon the world stage, especially compared with the perspectives showcased in the dystopian Escape from New York (1981) and the 1980s social critique, They Live (1988).

I also wrote in my book The Films of John Carpenter that “it’s all in the reflexes,” to quote Jack. So Big Trouble in Little China serves as Carpenter’s almost reflexive tribute to the style of Chinese martial arts films.  Thus, this is a movie that rests largely on Carpenter's unimpeachable film-making instincts, his fully-developed directorial muscle or chops.  The action sequences -- particularly an early one set in a Chinatown alley -- represent a visual tour de force.   The final battle in the film is one of the most giddy, over-the-top, visually-dynamic set-pieces put to celluloid in the 1980s, and a high point for the fantasy/action genre.

But here's the big secret in Little China: the film is much more than action too. 

What is Big Trouble in Little China, then?   Well, the film is one part culture clash, one part genre pastiche and all camp humor. Writing for the Village Voice, Scott Foundas suggested Big Trouble was a “far more enjoyable mash-up of classic Westerns, Saturday-morning serials, and Chinese wu xia than any of the Indiana Jones movies, with Kurt Russell in full bloom as Carpenter's de rigueur hard-drinkin', hard-gamblin', wise-crackin' loner hero—a bowling-alley John Wayne.”

And as critic Richard Corliss wrote in Time Magazine (“Everything New is Old Again”), Big Trouble in Little China “offers dollops of entertainment, but it is so stocked with canny references to other pictures that it suggests a master’s thesis that moves.”

And boy, how Big Trouble in Little China moves.  It never stops moving, in fact.

This is one frenetically-paced spectacular, and the feeling of unfettered delight Carpenter engenders simply from the film’s manic sense of speed is a remarkable thing.  One scene near the climax that begins with a close-up of a hammer pounding an alarm bell escalates to such intense velocity that your heart threatens to leap out of your chest.  And naturally,the moment ends on a joke.  After running a gauntlet of monsters, bullets, and opponents, Jack Burton is nearly undone...by a red traffic light.

Frankly, I’ve never understood why so many critics rejected this film upon its release in the summer of 1986, but as I always argue: don’t bet against John Carpenter in the long-run.  Big Trouble in Little China has ably survived the slings and arrows of bad reviews and stood the test of time to emerge one of the most beloved cult movies of the 1980s. 

I think this is likely so because of Jack Burton.  Other films have been set in distinctive "underworlds," and many movies have been set against the backdrop of Chinese myth or legend.

But there is only one Jack Burton.

“Everybody relax. I’m here.”

When his friend, Wang Chi (Dennis Dun) is unable to re-pay a bet, surly truck driver Jack Burton (Russell) tags along to the airport to pick up Wang’s betrothed, Miao Yin (Suzee Pai).  Unfortunately, the green-eyed beauty is abducted right out from under the duo by a Chinese gang known as the “Lords of Death.”  Miao Yin is then delivered into the custody of an ancient warlord and cursed spirit called Lo Pan (James Hong).  Lo Pan believes that if he marries and sacrifices a green-eyed woman, he will be rendered flesh again, after two-thousand years as an insubstantial ghost.

Jack and Wang pursue the gang to Chinatown and become embroiled in an all-out gang war.  Jack’s parked truck is stolen from an alleyway, and the theft draws the skeptical American further into the realm of Chinese black magic.  Soon, Jack teams-up with an elder sorcerer, Egg Shen (Victor Wong) and a crusading lawyer, Gracie Law (Kim Cattrall) to stop Lo Pan and recover Wang’s would-be bride and his own ride.  This quest takes Jack deep underground, into the Hell of Upside Down Sinners, into Lo-Pan’s secret lair, and into fierce battle with monsters, warriors and ghosts of all shapes and sizes.

“May the wings of liberty never lose a feather.”

As the The Village Voice review notes, Big Trouble in Little China can be interpreted as an example of the Chinese literary and film form known as the Wu xia, or simply “wuxia.”  

In stories of this type, a young hero survives and overcomes tragedy in his life, undertakes a heroic quest, and ultimately emerges as a great fighter and an adult, all while maintaining a strict code of honorable behavior.  To state the matter broadly, “wuxia” is the Chinese equivalent of the western-based “heroic journey.”  It’s a rite-of-passage tale, and one that heavily features a romantic component.

Big Trouble in Little China conforms with many details of the established wuxia formula if and only if the viewer considers Wang Chi the film’s prime hero figure.  Wang loses his bride-to-be, undertakes the quest to save her, and becomes – during the course of the film – a real hero.   Each time he fights, Wang becomes stronger until, by film’s end, he is actually an equal to Lo Pan’s invincible minions, the Storms.   

Of course, the quality that makes Big Trouble in Little China so unusual as wuxia and as action film is that the capable hero – the man on the quest and with all the heroic capabilities – is but a sidekick or second fiddle to the star, the bumbling, accident-prone Burton.  

Thus, in some significant but very funny and subversive way, Big Trouble in Little China questions and teases long-standing Hollywood assumptions that America and Americans must always stand at the center of the cinematic action, and must always play the “hero.”  This film suggests there’s another tradition and source of inspiration for cinematic adventure too.  

After all, George Lucas raided the film oeuvre of Akira Kurosawa to create Star Wars, so here John Carpenter pays tribute to Eastern-produced martial arts fantasies and their unique style of heroic storytelling.  

Again and again, then, Big Trouble in Little China invites us to view our "hero" Burton in distinctly funny and non-traditional terms.  He faces the implacable bad guys with bright red lip-stick marring his face, for example.  Far from striking fear in the heart of his enemies, Jack’s battle cry actually renders only himself unconscious.  At one point, we see Jack miss his intended target with a knife throw, and on several occasions he expresses fear and uncertainty about the creatures and world around him.

In spite of all this, Jack is certainly persistent and loyal and yes, heroic. So you get the feeling that, when held in contrast to the film’s Asian characters, Carpenter’s depiction of Jack charts an intriguing new global dynamic.  

Specifically, American might and bravery joins with Asian complexity for a great victory against evil.  Jack is a big and strong American, grounded in stereotypical western concepts, whereas the Asians are more introspective and ambivalent. In other words, Jack seems to live on the surface of reality; reality as his (limited) imagination weighs it. This quality enables him to see clearly “right” and “wrong.”  By comparison, the Chinese characters dwell in a more ambivalent, complicated self-doubting state; one where modernity requires them to eschew the beliefs they know to be true.

In terms of the film’s characters, the Americans in Big Trouble in Little China are defined basically by what they look like and what they say.  Jack is a muscle-bound, athletic truck driver and looks every bit the traditional hero.  Gracie Law is a beautiful lawyer and simultaneously a walking parody of the old Hollywood film cliché: the lady crusader.  “I’m always poking my nose where it doesn’t belong,” she enthuses at one point, effectively defining her own purpose in the narrative.  Both Jack and Gracie boast an exaggerated sense of self-importance too.  At one point, Jack blusters into a room and says, flat-out, “Don’t worry, I’m here.”

The Eastern characters, by contrast, seemed defined…differently.  On the surface, Egg-Shen appears to be a little old man and bus driver, but in reality he is a powerful sorcerer.  Wang Chi is a skinny, diminutive man who works in his uncle’s Chinese restaurant, and yet is actually a warrior of superb skills.  The Chinese heroes seem to possess layers of self-awareness, modesty and contradiction that Jack and Gracie do not.

Kurt Russell does a mean John Wayne impersonation as Jack, and that choice underlines the film’s unique approach to heroism.  When we think of John Wayne, we think of the idealized American hero, a man from a time when “men were men” and  when morality was as plain as black and white.  But Jack Burton drives his truck into an alleyway in Chinatown in this film, and all bets are off.   Suddenly, he might as well be on another planet, just like Flash Gordon because he’s asked to countenance an ethnically diverse world where all the truths he holds dear about the nature of the universe may no longer apply.  Certainty is harder to come by.  

If John Wayne had met the moral ambiguity of the late 1970s or 1980s, perhaps he’d be Jack Burton.  

The front-and-center placement of the anachronistic John Wayne character in a drama about foreign mythology and spiritual is the very thing that makes Big Trouble in Little China more than just your average adventure film, but rather a commentary on our shifting position in a globalized world.  In the 1980s, when it looked like the East (particularly Japan) was rising to eclipse America in terms of innovation and technology, along came Big Trouble in Little China to -- with tongue-in-cheek -- critique our place in the new world order.  

“I’m feeling a little like an outsider here,” says Jack.  “You are,” is the reply from the Chinese.  But then, as they must readily admit, the Chinese protagonists need Jack.  Their destiny rests in his “capable hands.”   He is the one they require (with his black and white views of the world?) to bring "order out of chaos."

Jack has a lot of catching-up to do in the film in terms of understanding Chinese lore and mysticism, but in the final analysis, who ultimately takes out Lo Pan?

When Jack does save the day (because he was born ready, remember), he does so, literally, with time-worn reflexes.  Lo Pan tosses a knife at him, and Jack instinctively tosses it back, with fatal results.  When Jack states “it’s all in the reflexes” it’s a deliberate comment on America too.  Our reflex – our instinct - is to act heroically, even if we don’t always think our way fully through a problem before jumping in.  We may have to play catch up, like Jack, but when big trouble rears its head, the world counts on us to do something...and we invariably deliver.  

Moving with breathtaking speed and with ample good humor, Big Trouble in Little China is much smarter than it tends to get credit for.  It takes the long-standing cliché of American Exceptionalism and both questions and re-affirms it for the age of globalism.  But if the delightful, one-of-a-kind Jack Burton – warts and all – is an insult to our traditional American images of strength and power as some film scholars insist, then, to quote the great man himself, “Go ahead…insult me.” 

Because when the "chips are down," you can count on Jack Burton.  

(Not to mention John Carpenter).

40 Years Ago: Labyrinth (1986)

Although it bombed at the box office in 1986, Labyrinth -- director Jim Henson’s elaborate follow-up to The Dark Crystal (1982) -- is one of those films that, across the span of decades, has attained cult classic status. More than that, the film has found meaning and relevance for generation after generation of enthusiastic, imaginative children.

Although the film’s final act degenerates into unnecessary and ultimately uninteresting violence, Labyrinth finally deserves its longevity because it symbolically and effectively makes its case for female agency, for the explicit right of its fifteen-year old protagonist, Sarah (Jennifer Connelly) to chart her own path as she reckons with maturity and the world surrounding her.

As is plain from any close analysis of the film, Labyrinth acutely concerns a young woman who is trapped between two worlds both literally and metaphorically. At fifteen, Sarah is no longer a child, nor precisely an adult. Instead, she is somewhere in between, and not certain where, precisely, she belongs.

Importantly, Sarah also resides at the half-way point between childhood fantasy or imagination, and real world responsibilities, as befitting her age. 

The film’s opening scene reflects Sarah's uncertain status of “in-between.” Labyrinth’s inaugural shot reveals Sarah dressed in a flowing white princess gown. 

She runs through a fairy-tale glade, an ivory owl perched in the composition's foreground. After a moment, however, the audience realizes that Sarah is not some damsel dwelling in Never-Never Land, but rather a modern teenager in 20^th century America, acting out a scene from a book (titled, not coincidentally, The Labyrinth).

Throughout its running time, Labyrinth sees Sarah go from world to world, from childhood fantasy to reality and back, making choices as she goes and reckoning that whether life is fair or not, “that’s the way it is.” 

Armed with this fact, Sarah must make decisions based on that knowledge, and that are true to her heart.

Many, many films of the 1980s (E.T. [1982], Invaders from Mars [1986] to name two) involve the trope that I call “This Boy’s Bedroom:” a peek into an adolescent boy’s world of interest. It is his sanctuary and lair, and a place of model kits, monsters, and action figures. Delightfully, Labyrinth provides us a peek at “This Girl’s Bedroom” for insight into Sarah’s psyche. There’s a case to be made that every fantastic event in the film is based, at least in part, on the inspirations we see in this domain, whether it be Maurice Sendak or M.C. Escher. 

Furthermore, another item in Sarah’s bedroom -- a scrapbook -- helps audiences understand Sarah’s existential quandary. 

Delightfully, no dialogue points us towards this understanding, and the film allows us to draw conclusions about this hero’s journey based primarily on well-placed images.

“Things are not always what they seem in this place.”

Tired of babysitting her baby brother, Toby, the imaginative Sarah (Connelly) calls upon the Goblin King to take the child away to his kingdom.

Unfortunately, Jareth the Goblin King (Bowie) has been listening, and complies with Sarah’s demand.  

Now Sarah has just thirteen hours to navigate the king’s labyrinth, reach his palace, and rescue her brother. If she fails, Toby will be a goblin forever more.

On her journey through the labyrinth, Sarah encounters a variety of strange creatures, both helpful and treacherous, including Hoggle, Ludo, and Sir Didymus.  

She also navigates dangerous terrain, encountering the cavern of helping hands and the Bog of Eternal Stench

Finally, Sarah must confront the Goblin King, and her own fantasies about adulthood as well…

“The way forward is sometimes the way back.”

Gaze closely at the scenes in Labyrinth set inside Sarah’s suburban bedroom, and you’ll detect posters, scrapbooks, and photographs of her (absent) mother.  

Her mother, an actress named Linda Williams, has apparently left the family behind for a love affair with an actor -- played by David Bowie. In the scrapbook, we read headlines of Linda’s on-again/off-again relationship with this actor, and see photographs of the couple together. 

In the same scrapbook, we see that Sarah has drawn hearts by the photos of her mother, and written the word “Mom” in red marker.  

Sarah now lives with her father, stepmother and baby brother, and has fantasized that normal existence as a sort of put-upon Cinderella-styled one. 

Her new “mom” reports that she doesn’t appreciate being cast in the role of “wicked stepmother," but Sarah persists in doing just that. She idolizes her own mother, who -- despite leaving the family -- lives in the glamorous world of romance and acting.

So, through visuals, Labyrinth establishes that Sarah loves her biological mother and misses her desperately.  But, at the same time, this imagery suggest her mother has abandoned that which is important: family.

The fantasy narrative of Labyrinth, in which Sarah must choose whether or not to abandon her baby brother, Toby, deliberately mirrors the choice her mother has made. And David Bowie doubles as both the actor who took away Sarah's mother (seen only in photograph form), and the Goblin King, Jareth, who entices Sarah to a life in which abandoning a child is okay...at least if fantasy and romance are involved.

The bedroom setting is vital to the film, not only for establishing the context of Sarah’s story (her first steps into adulthood) but also for revealing the direction of the eventual fantasy sequences. Virtually all of Sarah’s travails in the Goblin King’s world emerge right from the items we see decorating Sarah's bedroom.

In a long, slow pan, Henson’s camera falls across a strange, pink plush animal that later finds life in the Goblin world as the dancing fire gang creature (the one with the detachable limbs). 

Similarly, Sarah encounters the gentle Ludo, who looks like he came right out of Where the Wild Things Are.  Accordingly, a Sendak book also seen in the same pan.

The same pan also reveals a music box in which a beautiful princess stands inside a golden pavilion or frame work.  Later in the film, Sarah becomes that princess, at least for a time, after eating the poison peach given her by Jareth. She is then depicted wearing the same dress that we saw on the music box figurine.  he is also viewed inside a bubble, and the world -- like the music box -- is most definitely a gilded cage.  

Inside that gilded cage, Sarah can live a life with Jareth as her romantic lover, but the price for such romance and lust is that she loses her brother, her family, forever.  

In real life, of course, this is the “illusion” that her mother has already selected.  Linda went off and romanced an actor, a figure who might be correctly described as being deceitful in a sense, since he appears to be one thing, but is actually another.  

In the fantasy world, standing in for that kind of "two faced" figure is not just Jareth, but several masked individuals. They cloak their real identities behind those masks, but it’s a lovely, romantic world on the surface.

The film's central setting, the labyrinth, is also foreshadowed in that early, detailed pan across the bedroom.

Even the film’s final confrontation, in which Sarah must make a choice between Jareth or her brother, Toby, we see a visual reference to Sarah’s bedroom.  

There, on the wall, in the film’s early scenes, we see a painting of an impossible labyrinth created by Escher.  In the climactic scene, Sarah actually inhabits that labyrinth, and attempts to rescue Toby.  It takes some time to reach him, because the world -- like adulthood itself -- is so confusingly rendered.

In The Wizard of Oz, every character that Dorothy knew in Kansas had a double in Oz, and in Labyrinth, virtually every item, book, or figure (including a Goblin King custom figure!) in Sarah’s bedroom also comes to life in the fantasy world.  

One thing that remains so delightful and affirming about the film and this symbolic approach is that Sarah is ultimately able to make a good choice regarding her future (and her brother’s) without surrendering her right to imagination. These things in her bedroom (books, posters, etc.) are part of her gestalt.  

After the Goblin King is defeated, Sarah begins to say goodbye to those who helped her on her quest, including Ludo and Hoggle. But Sarah realizes that they are part of who she is now, and that since she is the one with the power, she can continue to have them as guides, going forward, as long as she wishes.

To grow up means to think differently, but it doesn’t mean you forget who you are. That was the mistake Sarah's mother made. When Linda left Sarah behind, she sacrificed too much for a “fantasy” image of perfect romance.

One of the most successful and symbolically-wrought scenes in Labyrinth comes soon after Sarah has rejected temptation and a life inside Jareth’s bubble or music box, symbolically rejecting the adult choice her mother made.

Next, Sarah ends up in a junkyard, and a junkyard representation of her bedroom.  A weird junk lady begins accosting Sarah with all of her old plush animals, all the toys she has outgrown. Sarah rejects the goblin's entreaties because she is no longer an innocent child. Those particular toys belong in her past, but the junk lady -- not unlike Jareth -- keeps trying to define her, keeps trying to tell her the things she “needs.”  In other words, if Jareth represents a negative "face" of adulthood that Sarah must avoid, the junkyard lady interlude represents a face of childhood that Sarah has outgrown.

Finally, Sarah defeats the Goblin King when she remembers a line from her book: The Labyrinth.  

That line asserts “You have no power over me.”  

This is Sarah’s ultimate recognition of her own agency, her own power and capacity to chart her path.  She is not bound by the actions of the junk goblin, who tries to infantilize her, nor seduced by the Goblin King, who wants her to believe that adulthood is, simply, an offering "of dreams come true.”

On the contrary, with adulthood comes Sarah’s reckoning that life isn’t fair...but that’s the way it is.  

The trick is to understand that fact (that life isnt fair) and plan accordingly, knowing the truth. Labyrinth is a delightful and valuable film because it suggests that adulthood is not about getting your dreams to come true, usually, or finding a fantasy love with an appealing, bad-boy figure (Jareth, and the actor who romance Linda).  

Instead, life is about holding onto who you are and your influences and beliefs even in the face of a world that is not always as you would wish it to be.

Even the film’s central idea of a labyrinth seems to reinforce this idea of Sarah’s heroic journey. She does not go through a maze, notably, but rather a labyrinth, which is a single path to a central location.  That’s what life is: finding the identity that is “central” to your personality.  Some might even call it your heart.

When I first watched Labyrinth many (many…) moons ago, I must confess I was disappointed with the film.  I felt it was a sort of creative pull-back from the uncompromising genius of The Dark Crystal: a film lighter in mood, with identifiable human performers at its center.  I felt that few of the creations here could rival the ingenuity or imagination The Dark Crystal put on screen in the form of the Skeksis, the Garthim, or Aughra.

I see now, as an adult, that I missed the point. By a mile. As much as The Dark Crystal charts a completely alien world, Labyrinth asks audiences to understand its “in between” worlds premise about Sarah, and make her journey to adulthood one we can relate to and understand.

And without making invidious comparisons to other films, the creation of Sarah’s fantasy world here is quite remarkable. The “helping hands” cavern is unforgettable, and Ludo seems to be Chewbacca by way of Where the Wild Things Are.

Yes, the final battle between Sarah’s allies and the Goblin King’s minions is largely unnecessary (especially the machine gun sequence…), but otherwise that the film ingeniously visualizes Sarah’s imagination, drawing “life” from the fantastic inspirations we see decorating This Girl's Bedroom.

I am also quite certain that, as a teenager, I entirely missed the idea that the Goblin King had a surrogate in reality, as the man who took Sarah’s mother away from the family. 

With full knowledge of this today, the metaphor underlying Labyrinth is all that much clearer.  Jareth is the bad boy and romantic promise of adulthood (sex, romance, dreams, adventure come true…) that allows the idea of sacrificing family even exist as a possibility.  What’s truly intriguing, too is the idea of Toby’s fate if left un-rescued. He will grow up to be a Goblin, to be a “family thief,” essentially, if raised by Jareth.  In other words, the cycle of raising "goblins" continues.

Labyrinth is by no means a perfect film. Some of the musical sequences seem badly-dated, and the pacing is a bit off in spots too. But nonetheless, this is a fantasy film with heart, and it features the relatively rare occurrence of a female hero driving and motivating the action. 

Labyrinth is also an implicit rejection of princess-ism, a true blight in our modern culture because it suggests that a woman has worth only by virtue of marrying a prince, or being born to a King. In other words, basically for a woman to be successful and special she must be connected to a powerful man in some way. In short...no agency of her own.

Sarah’s story, by contrast, is very much about her own agency. Labyrinth is about Sarah choosing her own path, and maintaining her own identity while she does so.

To quote the film: “that’s the way it’s done...”

30 Years Ago: Independence Day (1996)

"In less than an hour, aircraft from here will join others from around the world. And you will be launching the largest aerial battle in the history of mankind. "Mankind." That word should have new meaning for all of us today. We can't be consumed by our petty differences anymore. We will be united in our common interests. Perhaps it's fate that today is the Fourth of July, and you will once again be fighting for our freedom. Not from tyranny, oppression, or persecution, but from annihilation. We are fighting for our right to live. To exist. And should we win the day, the Fourth of July will no longer be known as an American holiday, but as the day the world declared in one voice: "We will not go quietly into the night!" We will not vanish without a fight! We're going to live on! We're going to survive! Today we celebrate our Independence Day! "

- President Whitmore (Bill Pullman) delivers an historic address in Independence Day (1996).

Independence Day (1996) remains one of the big “event” movies of the 1990s, a sci-fi blockbuster of monumental, almost unimaginable proportions.  The crowd-pleasing film successfully tapped into the decade’s unending fascination with aliens and UFOs (The X-Files, for example) and significantly augmented that interest too, resulting in a slew of further alien films and TV programs from Dark Skies (1996) to Men in Black (1997).

As an inside-the-industry cautionary tale, Independence Day also represented the (unfortunate) cementing of the Emmerich/Devlin blockbuster “formula” -- a revival of 1970s disaster film tropes.  This format would meet its Waterloo in 1998’s Godzilla, but nonetheless continues right into this decade with films such as the dreadful 2012 (2010).

Of all the Emmerich genre fare, I’m most fond of 1994’s Stargate, as it seems to strike the right balance between spectacle and intelligence.  After that film’s release, the scales in further efforts kept tipping towards spectacle and away from brains, and so the ensuing films suffer mightily for the imbalance. 

That established, I was certainly part of the enthusiastic audience for Independence Day upon its summer release, and I still remember how great the film looked on the big screen.  A recent re-watch confirms how terrific the miniature effects remain.  The scenes of awesome alien saucers lumbering to position over major world cities -- though obviously reminiscent of Kenneth Johnson’s V (1984) -- remain downright staggering.

What ages Independence Day most significantly, instead, is the pervasive shtick and the schmaltzy, sentimentality-drenched characters. At every step of the way during its narrative, Independence Day punctures its end-of-the-world majesty and gravitas with low humor and over-the-top sentimentality, qualities which today render the whole affair close to camp. 

Science fiction fans, of course, experienced conniption fits over Independence Day’s unlikely finale: a third act which sees an Earth-produced computer virus successfully uploaded to an alien computer aboard a mother-ship, thus giving humans the opportunity to strike back…on July 4^th, no less. 

The movie doesn’t pay even lip service to the idea that aliens from another solar system might have developed anti-virus software (!), let alone computer systems totally incompatible with our 20th century Earth technology. 

Given how badly things go for Earth in the first hour of Independence Day, it’s difficult to countenance the film’s final veer into outright fantasy as every heroic campaign – with split-second timing – comes together perfectly.

Despite my misgivings about the film’s humor, sentimentality, and narrative resolution, however, I still find the grave, apocalyptic, anxiety-provoking tone of Independence Day’s first hour worthwhile, especially the President’s grim choice to deploy nuclear weapons in an American city to drive off the aliens.   

It would be absolutely foolish to deny, too, that some of Independence Day’s imagery has become iconic in the annals of cinema history.  We all remember that portentous shot of hovering saucer pulping the White House for instance.  Thus -- even while criticizing this over-sized beast -- I've got to give the Devil his due for getting matters right on a visual terms

In terms of theme, Independence Day works overtime to remind all of us that although we are separated by oceans and other Earthly partitions, we are all nonetheless citizens of the same planet. It’s a laudable message in an age of hyper-partisanship to be certain, even if delivered with little nuance or subtlety.  This through-line in the film is consistently and well-conveyed, both in terms of incident and in the make-up of the diverse dramatis personae.  Who would have imagined our precious Earth could be saved by a war veteran, a drunk crop-duster, a Jewish cable repairman and an African-American fighter pilot?

Movie critics were understandably divided on Independence Day.  At The New York Times, Janet Maslin wrote: “Guess what: "Independence Day" lives up to expectations in a rush of gleeful, audience-friendly exhilaration, with inspiring notions of bravery that depart nicely from the macho cynicism of this movie season. Its innocence and enthusiasm are so welcome that this new spin on "Star Wars" is likely to wreak worldwide box-office havoc, the kind that will make the space aliens' onscreen antics look like small change.”

Writing for The Washington Post, Rita Kempley opined: “"Independence Day" is primarily a $70 million kid's toy, a star-spangled excess of Roman candles and commando games designed to draw repeat business from 9- to 12-year-old boys. Little girls won't find any role models among the barnstormers, though a plucky exotic dancer is featured among the heroines. Even with the end of the world in sight, she shakes her booty. It's for her kid. No, really.  Maybe the moviemakers' mission was to boldly go where everyone in Hollywood has gone before: the bank.”

Honestly, I can see both sides of the critical equation in this case. Independence Day is such dumb fun, and yet fun nonetheless.

“A toast...to the end of the world.”

The people of planet Earth watch with anxiety and wonder as three-dozen alien saucers descend from orbital space to take up positions over cities around the globe.  President Whitmore (Bill Pullman), a former jet pilot in Desert Storm, advises calm, but new information from genius cable repair man David Levinson (Jeff Goldblum) suggests the alien ships have initiated a countdown and are preparing a coordinated attack.

As the countdown ends, Levinson’s suspicions are confirmed, and the alien ships destroy Los Angeles, Washington D.C., New York and other population hubs. President Whitmore survives the attack on the Oval Office and escapes by Air Force One.  He promptly orders a retaliatory strike.  Pilot, top-gun, and would-be astronaut Steven Hiller (Will Smith) downs an alien ship during battle, and captures one of the fearsome aliens for study.  The rest of the fight, however, is a rout, and the U.S. jets are unable to penetrate alien shields.  Humanity stands upon the edge of extinction.

The President visits the secret military base at Area 51, and learns there that scientists there have been experimenting with an alien ship for close to fifty years.  When Hiller arrives, the President attempts to communicate with Hiller's captured alien, but finds the being implacably hostile.  The aliens, he soon learns, are like locusts.  They travel from solar system to solar system using up planetary systems and then moving on…leaving only carnage and waste in their wake.

After nuclear weapons prove ineffective against the aliens, President Whitmore is at a loss how to save the planet, or the human race.  But David comes through again.  He believes he can take the captured alien ship at Area 51 to the mother-ship and upload a computer virus there, thus bringing down alien shields…at least for a few minutes.  When Steven volunteers to fly that risky mission, it’s up to the President himself to coordinate and lead a huge aerial attack against the alien saucers, both in America, and world-wide…

“It's a fine line between standing behind a principle and hiding behind one. You can tolerate a little compromise, if you're actually managing to get something accomplished.”

For a film about such a terrifying topic – an alien invasion – Independence Day frequently plays thing...light.  At least a half-dozen major supporting characters in the film are defined by their shtick. Judd Hirsch plays a nagging Jewish Dad, Julius Levinson, and his lines and delivery are pure Borscht Belt ham-bone.   Harvey Fierstein plays another kitschy character, Marty, who hams it up and makes jokes about his therapist and his (presumably overbearing...) mother.  Harry Connick Jr. portrays a cocksure pilot who provides the film at least one dopey gay joke.

But the worst character is likely Randy Quaid’s Russell Casse, a drunken crop-duster (and alien abductee) who joins the air battle against the aliens during the film's denouement.  Quaid’s dialogue is so incredibly dreadful that it has become the stuff of legend and MST3K fodder.  “I picked the wrong day to stop drinking,” springs immediately to mind. 

Among all these actors hamming it up and stealing time, Brent Spiner likely fares the best as aging ex-hippie and scientist Dr. Okun. Spiner comes off as weird and eccentric, but not so dreadfully hammy that you want to turn away from the screen in shame for watching.  His last scene -- played with alien tentacles pressing against his larynx -- is also genuinely unsettling.

Why do I have a problem with the film's pervasive moments of low humor?  Well, Independence Day already boasts Jeff Goldblum and Will Smith continually cracking wise in leading roles.  Their dialogue is dreadful too, from "Welcome to Earth" to "Now that's what I call a close encounter!"  Given all this material from our leads, do we really need Judd Hirsch, Harvey Fierstein, Harry Connick Jr., Randy Quaid and even Brent Spiner dishing out lame one liners too?  The ubiquitous nature of these characters makes Independence Day, at times, resemble an overblown sitcom.  Maybe if the material were stronger, these characters would not seem so objectionable. I guess what I'm saying, is that these moments are rarely actually funny.

Another weak character is Secretary of Defense Nimzicki (James Rebhorn), a man who in one scene advises the full scale nuking of many American cities, but in a later scene argues against a “risky” maneuver to attack the alien mother-ship and upload the virus.  His objections to the (ultimately) successful plan make no sense, and aren’t consistent with the “war hawk” image he projects in the film all along; a guy who advises going to Def-Con 2 before the President has made his final decision.  Instead, Nimzicki is contradictory simply so the audience can boo at him, and the President can dress him down…thus appearing tough and resolute. 

While I have real disdain for much of the writing and characterization in Independence Day, I do feel that the film's visuals often still shock, and often still carry real emotional resonance.  One shot, set on July 3^rd, reveals the Statue of Liberty toppled, face down in the harbor...a massive saucer hovering low in the sky.  Colored in autumnal browns,  this is a terrifying composition of American culture annihilated.  

It’s tough indeed to compete with the amazing Statue of Liberty imagery of Planet of the Apes, yet this moment in Independence Day remains quite upsetting.    The film is also anxiety-provoking in the way it reveals American military might crushed before a more technologically-advanced enemy.  The battle sequences, the nuclear option, and other heavy moments are all deeply scary because one realizes that if America can’t save the world…the world ain’t getting saved.  Indeed, Independence Day plays up the alien threat so successfully in terms of spectacular visuals and special effects that there’s almost no way the scripted, climactic victory can ring true.  It’s like we’ve slipped into an alternate movie or something.

The first half of Independence Day is undeniably the strongest, as alien saucers push through storm and cloud fronts, and emerge over our cities, casting dark shadows upon bewildered and amazed populations.  These moments continue to impress, and pack an almost visceral gut punch.  We’ve all wondered if, one day, we’ll wake up to something like this imagery…a new dawn in which we learn definitively we are no longer alone.   As much as I deride Independence Day’s silly humor and bad dialogue, I have no quibbles whatsoever with the way that these scenes of “arrival” are vetted.  As I said in my introduction, many of these scenes still carry a staggering punch.

From its first shots to its final ones, Independence Day also makes an interesting point about mankind being unified by a threat from the outside.  The film opens with imagery of a plaque on the moon which reads “We came in peace for all mankind.” That’s a wonderful thought, the movie seems to suggest, but then the filmmakers set up a paradigm by which that hopeful expression of common cause is tested.  Suddenly, all mankind must work together to defeat the alien threat, putting competition and petty differences aside.  This idea is expressed through scenes set in Iraq, the location of America’s most recent war (Gulf War I).  There, in the desert, British and Iraqi soldiers join the battle against the mother ships.  The implication of such scenes is that mankind is indeed capable of working together.

The same idea is presented in the film in the (positive) character of President Whitmore.  Before the alien crisis, he is viewed not as a warrior, but as a “wimp.”  He can’t even get his Crime Bill passed by a hostile Congress. Whitmore laments that “it’s just not simple, anymore” and that people don’t seem to understand that compromise is the only path towards moving everyone ahead, together.  He then works with the nations of the world to defeat the aliens, and in the process transforms an American holiday into an Earth holiday.  Again, the message implicit in Independence Day is that we can apply ourselves to solve big problems, not just alien invasions. Why can’t we all band together to keep our neighbors and our neighbors' children from starving? Or to eliminate poverty? Once we acknowledge our common humanity, petty partisan differences shouldn’t really matter, should they?

In this sense, Independence Day -- set in part on July 4^th -- acknowledges a new, evolved brand of patriotism.  It is a patriotism not merely to party or to one nation, but to all of humanity. As a fan of Star Trek and a person who believes we can achieve great things if we sometimes accept compromise, I appreciate the film’s ultimate message of hope about human nature. This consistently-applied theme almost mollifies my concerns about the film’s ridiculous and ill-conceived conclusion, and the surfeit of characters who spew cliché after cliché, bad joke after bad joke. Almost, but not quite.  Still, I know I'm spitting in the wind against an 800 million dollar blockbuster, a veritable entertainment machine.

So am I a hopeless sentimental for recognizing Independence Day’s entertainment and social value, even amidst so many stupid groaners and moments of cynical, calculated humor?  

Or, like Randy Quaid's character...did I just pick the wrong day to stop drinking?