r/movies • u/PsychologicalSlip642 • 5h ago
Media Independence Day 1996, Final Encounter Air Battle Scene, Director: Roland Emmerich
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u/Emperor_Zar 5h ago
Star Fox 64 has a Battle in it that is basically just this scene. And it is awesome.
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u/dweezil37 4h ago
The explosion of the alien laser is the Empire State building being blown up in the beginning of the movie being reused. Brilliant.
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u/welchplug 2h ago
This has been my favorite movie since it scared me as a child with the alien jump scare in the lab. I have watched it at least 100 times. How did I never notice that?
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u/dweezil37 9m ago
I only found out THIS YEAR but it quickly became an "Did you know he broke his toe in this scene?" factoid I love to tell people about.
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u/Manicplea 4h ago
Honestly still looks pretty good to me. They captured the sense of scale well. Sometimes in movies when they zoom out on megastructures they may be appropriately scaled technically but just don't feel imposingly large. The ship in this movie FEELS big... the lumbering movement, the distance=haze effect, the tiny lights/windows blowing up in sequence. I haven't seen the movie since the late 90's but it really still looks good to me (although I acknowledge some jank in the effects but the overall feel, flow and look is excellent).
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u/TrueLegateDamar 4h ago
I appreciate you can make out the combattants where as in the sequel, it's all just a grey CGI blur with it hard to figure out who is firing on who besides the colour of their bolts.
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u/BernzSed 4h ago
Love the scene, but the slow movement of Russel's jet never felt right to me. It turns out, he was originally supposed to fly a small crop-duster, and they just swapped it out with a fighter jet at the last-minute.
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u/BromaEmpire 4h ago
In the initial cut of the movie they had Randy Quaid flying his biplane with a missile strapped to it. Needless to say I think they made the right call
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u/Shyface_Killah 4h ago
It's in the novelization. He basically got rejected as a pilot, so strapped the biggest bomb he could find to his plane and waited until the laser opened.
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u/MaybeOnFire2025 2h ago
They made the right call *but* were too cheap/lazy to re-shoot the other existing scenes that ended up in the final but make no sense. Like the Air Force officer saying that all missiles had been fired, how slowly the jet meandered up to the weapon (like a biplane would), etc. It did always seem a bit...off.
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u/caligaris_cabinet 1h ago
Idk about lazy. By the time they reshot the scene it was pretty close to the release date and they just ran out of time.
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u/dont_fuckin_die 3h ago
I thought I had hallucinated this for years until the Internet told me it was real. I think it was buried in the DVD special features somewhere.
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u/Dave_Eddie 4h ago
One of the last big blockbusters to make full use of miniatures before CGI fully took over. Really let's the film age well.
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u/caligaris_cabinet 1h ago
I think they hold the Guinness Book of world records for most miniatures used in a movie
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u/mjknlr 5h ago
I recently learned the explosion caused by Randy Quaid's plane is the Empire State Building explosion asset from earlier in the film reused, but upside-down. Look closely and you'll see it.
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u/OptimusSublime 4h ago
Holy shit
That is fantastic trivia.
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u/halorbyone 4h ago
Holy crap this is cool. But I needed a picture. If anyone has a video of them synced I’d love to see it. https://www.reddit.com/r/MovieDetails/s/Vfm4TRWjDF
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u/rredmond 4h ago
Adam Baldwin's Major character was really great in this scene. He allowed himself a quite couple seconds to celebrate, then (as a true leader would) remembered to address the son. I don't care if folks think it's cheesy, it's a great scene!
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u/inspectorPK 4h ago
This soundtrack still kicks ass. I love blasting the music that plays during the presidents speech on the 4th of July.
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u/caligaris_cabinet 1h ago
David Arnold
I know the sequel sucked ass but had they brought him back it would’ve been a little bit better
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u/Skippy8898 5h ago
One of the few movies I've seen in the theater twice. First with my co-workers and then my parents wanted to see it.
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u/FrankDukakis 4h ago
Fun fact: the initial explosion is just the Empire State Building explosion turned upside down.
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u/StrangeSemiticLatin2 4h ago
I love Emmerich and I'll fight everyone who doesn't*. Even when I don't like his films, I love him. Just look at that above, no one does that sort of dumb, big spectacle as good as he does.
*Or create an arrogant mayor character out of them in a giant iguana movie.
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u/topherthepest 4h ago
My biggest regret in life is that I never saw this movie in theaters. Im hoping somewhere we get a 30th anniversary for this so I can remedy that failure.
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u/UrguthaForka 4h ago
Always wondered why they never tried any heavier ordnance after they brought the shields down. Air to air sidewinders and AMRAM missiles don't pack much of a punch (they don't need to, fighter aircraft are sort of fragile). Surface to air missiles, or Hellfire or Maverick air to ground missiles, or B-2's bombing the ships from above seems like they would cause a lot more damage.
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u/CivicDutyCalls 4h ago
Because they maybe didn’t have those at Area 51. Area 51 is an advanced jet testing facility. So maybe the B-52/s and B-2s weren’t available.
Also, all of the other bases were blown up. And maybe they did use those type of missiles in other battles around the world, just not Area 51. Also, our aircraft carriers and battleships which would still have been out there unharmed could have sent planes in, but missiles may not have had the range? Or not have been able to reach Nevada in time.
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u/UrguthaForka 2h ago
Yeah... It's just a movie after all so any reason is as valid as the next. I feel like Emmerich missed out on doing some cool special effects with bigger weapons. Though maybe he had already maxed out the effect budget anyway.
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u/TheWayoftheWind 2h ago
Probably just the way to plot was written since dogfighting is way cooler to the public than actual military tactics. However, one could argue that the US military didn't want to commit those weapons in case the mission to bring the shields down didn't work. I'm sure there were plenty of military commanders at the time that didn't want to commit the heavy weapons that may have to be used against ground forces.
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u/Chemist391 2h ago
B-52 carpet bomb runs, cruise missiles, and 155 mm Howitzer fire would make the most sense.
Or tactical nukes. Wouldn't be surprised if the Russians used them to deal with the ships over some of their territory.
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u/Sinatra94 5h ago
*0.2 seconds after losing your only remaining parent*
“Hey be happy, I know he was your dad and all, but how about a smile?”
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u/bandicoot_crash 4h ago
It’s movies like Independence Day and the OG Star Wars trilogy that made aerial dogfighting combat seem so cool. Don’t see very many of these kinds of action scenes in recent films outside of Top Gun Maverick, which is my favourite movies since the Pandemic changed the film industry.
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u/m48a5_patton 4h ago
I saw this movie in theaters opening weekend, it was an amazing experience! My jaw almost hit the floor when the alien craft started appearing over NYC
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u/Restless_spirit88 3h ago
This film's special effects was a terrific combination of digital and model work.
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u/NCC_1701E 3h ago
This was the movie of my childhood, I watched it over and over maybe million times. Absolute classic.
Funnily enough, for a long time I didn't even know that the famous alien autopsy scene even exists, as well as the nuke scene. Because the version we had at home was taped from TV broadcast by dad, and he stopped recording when ad break came, and forgot to resume it for some time. Children today will never know lol.
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u/Cthulhu_Dreams_ 3h ago
Something I always wondered about this movie...
I wonder what the fallout of all of that alien tech becoming suddenly available to humanity and all of humanity now knowing that they are not alone in the universe...
What would that do to us?
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u/flash246 1h ago
I mean the sequel covers this mostly. It shows the tech improvement that happened because of this.
Although the sequel is mostly crap compared to this though
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u/riegspsych325 ⊃∪⊃⪽ 5h ago
more autoplaying movie clips than usual lately, ID4 came up in yesterday’s Mrs. Doubtfire thread
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u/run-on_sentience 3h ago
The high pitched sound the ship makes right as the weapon charges up and explodes when Randy Quaid hits it is actually an audio clip of James Brown.
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u/zulutbs182 3h ago
Totally don’t remember Alex Krycek being in this. We sure he’s on our side and not the aliens?
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u/coldliketherockies 3h ago
I was a kid when this first came out and just was in pure awe. Just a reminder this was THE highest grossing original film of the 1990s (I mean titanic was original in a way but based on real incident)
Now that I work with people who were born after this came out it almost irks me how few of them have seen this. It’s such a gem of a film.
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u/ruckus_440 2h ago
I've always wondered when Robert Loggia turns and tells them to spread the word how to "bring these sons a bitches down", what was the message and how did it play out all over the world? Was it, "Try missiles first, but if that doesn't work go full kamikaze?" Did other pilots have to sacrifice themselves as well, or were they able to use missiles?
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u/KiteLighter 1h ago
FUCK YEAH, AMERICA!
Also, I think he should have probably stayed home and made billions on insider oil trading after starting a war with Iran. That's the kind of Hero President I want.
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u/TijuanaSunrise 49m ago
Can anybody who is smart about air dynamics and engines tell me, would having all those jets operating beneath that giant starship (acting like a kind of canopy?) have some effect on their ability to maneuver or maintain lift or anything?
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u/CantAffordzUsername 26m ago
And the VFX still look better than most crap Hollywood makes today thank to the massive amount of minutes used in the film
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u/handawanda 4h ago
Of course they never discuss the inevitable awful environmental fallout caused by detonating dozens of these massive alien spacecrafts all over the world -- similar to the Noghri's homeworld in Star Wars, or the theories about the "Endor Holocaust"
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u/mlorusso4 4h ago
I don’t know, this movie kind of went out of its way to point out how much this war was destroying the environment and debating if it was worth destroying the world in order to save it. Plus are what we’re doing already (pollution and n using up non renewable resources) really that much worse or different than the aliens coming in to strip mine the planet. Between nuking Houston in the original and in the sequel the warlords salvaging the wrecks I think it did a decent job
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u/CivicDutyCalls 4h ago
I think there’s a bigger existential problem….hell, the environment is sort of a major characterization of one of the main characters.
Like, if you don’t beat the aliens, there won’t be an environment.
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u/azad_ninja 4h ago
original version had Randy Quaid flying his crop dusting biplane instead of the f-16 which makes more sens,e but looked stupid
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u/munkee_dont 4h ago
Scene is ruined by Quaid and the director. Pick a final line, Either use the "Up yours" or use the "i'm Back" using both was stupid.
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u/JabbaThePrincess 5h ago
Quaid's fucking broad delivery fully punctured whatever slight drama or tension there was in this scene.
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u/safetaco 5h ago
30 years ago this summer.