Happy belated Independence Day! No lie, I thought everyone in the world celebrated this historic day, but not everyone deemed themselves an independent nation from Britain. Still, the sacrifices made to create America are something worth remember. And the 1996 film Independence Day made it a global affair.
Independence Day got added to Hulu about a week ago, probably in preparation for this week. You can bet I sat and watched during my lunch break. Creepy puppet aliens, janky special effects. It was awesome. Despite the thrill of killing aliens and saving the world, the characters are the best part. And this was before we watched movies because so and so is featured. Names like Will Smith and Jeff Goldblum mean something now because of iconic films like these that focused on character development. Regarding Independence Day, there are four key characters that take this to another level with their character arc.
Captain Steven Hiller
“Steve” is a fighter pilot stationed just outside of Los Angeles, but he’s home with his girlfriend and her son for the 4th of July weekend. Snippets of conversation reveal his dream to become an astronaut, but he’s denied just before a mission. His friend says it’s because Steve is dating a stripper. This doesn’t deter his second dream: to marry his girlfriend and officially be the father of her child.
Then everything goes wrong. LA is destroyed. His team his sent to retaliate, but he’s the only pilot to survive the slaughter. After carting a captured alien to Area 51, he learns the base he deployed from was decimated. Everyone he knew and loved was gone. But he remained ready for anything. Even when reunited with his girlfriend and son, he volunteered for the ultimate sacrifice. To ensure humanity and his new family had a future.
Oh, and he ended up going to space (sorry, NASA).
David Levinson… and Dad
We’re introduced to David Levinson, an IT guy at a news network, closer to the beginning of the film. Living in Washington, D.C., he spends his time at working or arguing with his aging father. His father represents the best of sidekicks. Nowadays side characters run around complimenting the main character even if their ideas are terrible. David and his father bicker for a chunk of the movie. Global warming, conspiracies, faith, moving on from relationships. This beginning makes the ending worthwhile.
Back on topic, we learn that David is working way below his potential, which is why his wife left him. Skating through the mundane, he discovers a code in the seeming random interruption of satelite feeds. He and his father go straight to his former wife, an aid to the president. They escape certain destruction by a breath.
David spirals with every attempt to regain the planet, realizing they have little hope of succeeding. His efforts to stop global warming and destroying the world, what he considers morality, mean nothing. It’s his father who slaps sense into him, to not give up hope. This leads David to one last plan. Before he joins Steve on the mission, he gives his father some hope in the form of a yamaka and Torah. The Levinson’s are Jewish, but his father had given up on God after the loss of his wife. This moment gets me everytime because while they disagree about many things, they respect each other and desire to inspire the other.
President Thomas J. Whitmore
Loved during the election, despised in his presidency. President Whitmore is a former fighter pilot turned politician, a public servant wanting to serve the people once again. With his wife in LA defending his position, he holds the fort in D.C. as chaos unfolds around the globe. No one knows what’s happening or what to do when large ships appear in the sky. With his daughter in tow, he prays that he hasn’t destroyed the United States of America.
In the aftermath of the first attack and subsequent losses, President Whitmore loses hope. He believes his wife is dead for most of the movie, and when he gets her back, it’s only to lose her permanently. In his mourning, he must encourage a ragtag group of veterans and pilots to fight an enemy they might not destroy. This is when the greatest on-film speech is given, the speech that all heroic monologues are compared to. In his sorrow, he encouraged a nation, broken and tattered, to keep fighting for their independence. Best of all, he joined them in the air, stating quite clearly that he was no better than the rest. He’d fight just as hard for their freedom.
Russell Casse
If you’ve seen this movie a hundred times, you probably don’t know this guy’s name. One word: cropduster. Russell Casse flew in Vietnam and came back damaged goods. To support himself and his three children, he crop dusts several fields in rural America. Oh, the other highlight of this character is that he believes he was abducted by aliens. Drunk, tormented, and despised by his children, Russell now finds himself proven right by the appearance of extraterrestials.
This character doesn’t get a ton of screen time. Captain Steven Hiller finds him and a caravan of RVs when he’s carting his alien prisoner and directs them to Area 51. It’s here he volunteers to participate in the final assault. After expending their resources, he’s the last to fire his missiles. But they won’t deploy.
Throughout the film, he’s been a drunk lunatic mourning his sanity. The viewer wonders if the children following him are even his as they seemed inconsequential to his existence. But in these final moments, he’s lucid. “I won’t let you down.” He makes the ultimate sacrifice for his children and his country, ending his basic arc in a blaze of glory.
Why the Independence Day Crew is Iconic
Gosh, I’m crying. There’s nothing like old movies. The POVs in this film are based on establishing a coherent and logical sequence of events. Yet Independence Day doesn’t waste these characters. Even Russell Casse, the most removed from the military operation, plays an integral role in the movie’s conclusion.
Beyond each having an arc, I think this motley crew of flyers is iconic because of their diversity. I’m not talking physical diversity, but mental. You’ve got the fighter pilot reaching for the stars, the IT guy trying to save the world, the pilot who took on the world, and the lunatic who shied away. Every man in this film has a different perspective and experience of America. And they all banded together to save their country and the world. It’s America in a nutshell: people from different walks building one home.
Happy Independence Day.