15 Things About Independence Day That Don't Settle Well With Me

This isn't necessarily a plot hole in the movie, but it's one part that always bugs me. After the city has been destroyed we see one of the movie's female protagonists (played by Vivica A. Fox) having a heart to heart with the first lady (Mary McDonnell).

At one point she asks Fox's character, appropriately named "Jasmine", what she does for a living. Jasmine tells her she's a dancer and she smiles and says, "Ballet".

Could the first lady be any more clueless? Look at Vivica A. Fox and take into consideration that her name is "Jasmine". Now when she tells you that she's a dancer does any part of that add up to being a ballet dancer? Further more, ballet is more of a hobby than a profession, so if that was in fact the case wouldn't she have said she's a "ballet instructor" rather than a "dancer"?

I still think it's funny that by the end of the movie the first lady has died and the stripper lives happily ever after.

This is another part that doesn't ruin the movie so much as giving you a reason to question the intelligence of the people in it. We already know that Vivica A. Fox plays a stripper, and partway through the movie is a scene were you witness her performing at an almost empty club. She looks up from her dance and notices that nobody is paying attention so she walks off stage.

Now, given that a UFO had just been sighted that morning and was currently occupying a major portion of airspace I doubt that many people's priorities still included blowing their paycheck at the local topless bar, and the fact that it was open at all is pretty surprising. But the few people that were there decided to watch the news at a club where they'd most likely pay a cover charge and spend extra money on overpriced beer? Then again maybe they didn't have cable.

It turns out that the aliens in this movie weren't appearing on this planet out of the blue. Apparently 30 years after our first encounter with them they had decided that earth would be a great place to house their species until a better planet was found. We're also told that these aliens were responsible for the crash in Roswell, New Mexico. So you tell me; 30 years after 3 men are sent to an unexplored region and are never heard from again, why in the name of God would something decide to move its entire species there? Not to mention that this was 30 after their initial study, did they not realize there was a chance that the planet would be dead already? Or possibly gone all together?

Giant spaceships appear over major cities worldwide, what does the military do? Secure a perimeter to keep people away? Evacuate the city? No, they allow a countless number of weirdos to gather around it like it's a giant religious altar. Then the bottom opens up and...

Another flaw on the alien's part. shortly before the mother ship is blown up you can see an interesting sight. The fact that Will Smith and Jeff Goldblum fly their old UFO right through center of the ship while dodging a bunch of pillars that are either support beams or walkways. Whatever they are the argument still remains; Why the hell were they there?

Are the aliens so confident with their ability as pilots that the will never hit one of them and potentially damage a large part of the center chamber, as well as kill hundreds of the alien soldiers waiting below? I guess no matter how big your brain is only using 20% of it will cause you to overlook life threatening hazards.

Yeah let me tell you that those are nice suits that the aliens are wearing. Sure they're great if you want to look like a walking helmet with Doctor Octopus tentacles, but if you expect them to stop a bullet or even a scalpel you're shit out of luck. I find it hard to believe that these highly intelligent beings would be unable to build a suit of battle armor worth anything. For God's sake Tony Stark built a better one in a cave... From a bunch of Scraps!!!!!!!!!

Remember that horrifying scene where the scientist is grabbed by the aliens spooky tentacles and has his vocal chords hijacked so he can tell the rest of the cast that he wants them to do one thing, "Die"?

Just one question, how was that done? Have you ever spoken really fast to the point where you run out of breath? Do you know why that is? Because the air coming from your lungs are what's helping you create that noise that you call a voice. I personally haven't been able ever rub another person's throat and make them talk for me, but I'm guessing if the scene had depicted another tentacle giving the man chest compressions it would have looked pretty silly.

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So Will Smith forces one of these aliens to crash their fighter planes to the ground and the funniest thing happens. Now I realize that this was probably only done so everybody would realize how badass he is because he's not afraid of aliens like the rest of the world, but get this. He walks to the ship right after it has crash landed, because I guess there's risk of it blowing up in his face or anything, and the doors open to reveal the alien pilot.

Remember I said that those aliens are wearing suits of armor? Well it obviously protected one from crash landing, but it couldn't protect it from Will Smith's Falcon Punching ability seeing as how he punches it in the face and knocks it out in one hit. I remember after seeing this scene I started carrying around a cigar with me wherever I went just in case I ever got the opportunity to punch an alien in the face, because I wanted to be awesome too and relax with a cigar after knocking out an extra terrestrial with one blow.

That brings me to my next point, why was it wearing that armor in the first place? I'm starting to think that their alien leaders are like overbearing mothers who make their children wear every form of padding imaginable when they first start riding a two wheel bike, so in case their bikes happen to magically become twenty stories high and they fall off they won't suffer any injuries.

I guess the ship having a forcefield capable of withstanding the blast from an atomic bomb wasn't enough.

This entire scene bugs me for a few reasons, but I think what happens a few minutes later confuses me further. Will Smith wraps this unconscious alien up in his parachute and starts aimlessly dragging it through the desert. I'm guessing it's so he could occupy himself while searching for civilization by bitching it out for smelling bad and ruining the barbecue that he could have had. I don't even know if Will Smith was sure it was dead or not, but I'm guessing that when you can knock out an alien with one punch it makes dragging its 300 pound body around the desert a fairly safe operation.

Another thing about that scary scene where the alien is jerry rigging the scientists throat so he can talk for him and the only thing that could have made that more disturbing is if the alien had shoved it's tentacles up his ass and made him into a postmortem sock puppet. Why did it stay in the autopsy room and not attack the people on the other side of the glass? It was only glass! It probably felt pretty damn stupid for two seconds before it died from getting shot in the head from beyond the glass for assuming that the thin transparent sheet between him and his enemies was bullet proof and therefore he must not be able to smash through it himself. Not to mention that it was an autopsy room window, so I guess it's pretty standard for rooms that have maybe been used two or three times in the past to study something that's already dead to sport a giant indestructible wall so nothing escapes.

Independence Day has given us one of the most memorable explosions in movie history, the White House explosion. Surely the display of an unstoppable alien front obliterating the government which we've struggled in the past so hard to establish is one of the most upsetting acts of defiance one could witness. there's only one problem. How did the aliens know that the white house held any significance at all? Was the Taj Mahal defaced in any way because that building looks a hell of a lot more majestic than the white house. They could have been blowing up a giant meth lab for all they knew. But I suppose if they wanted to blow up everything they had to start somewhere, what a coincidence though...

I love how after decades of sitting around in an underground military base that UFO suddenly springs back to life once the mothership draws near. It's like a dog laying around the house all day and then suddenly going bat shit crazy once its owner gets home. It's also kind of interesting how it only takes about two hours for Jeff Goldblum to instal a port to plug in his laptop and successfully gain control of the ship with it. Good thing alien technology runs on Windows 95 eh? It reminds me too much of the way the Ghostbusters are able to control the statue of Liberty using a NES Advantage controller.

Now's one of the biggest problems with this movie. Sure it caused a tear jerking moment, I can understand that. Here's the problem, we're expected to believe that the United State's remaining air force completely ran out of missiles and there was absolutely nobody left around except this poor farmer with a grudge? And the only missile left was jammed under the wing?

The thing is, whatever was underneath this large UFO when it was firing its lazar was gone as soon as the ship showed up. Everybody knew what it could do, why would they stay underneath it once it showed up? That's the thing, they wouldn't. So there was no option to let them fire this lazar into empty space while the crew restocked their weapons and came back for round 2? I guess not...

Ok, now you're wondering what is the biggest plot hole in this movie? I'll tell you what it is. The fact that it ends. These aliens came from millions and possibly billions of miles away to take our planet and we blow them the hell away, and now what? Well you know that lightning never strikes the same place twice... But this isn't lighting we're talking about, it's an entire race of aliens that needs a new planet to live on. I highly doubt they brought their entire population on that ship while they were invading. They probably had more waiting on some other planet and the chances are they're going to come back and this time use a computer operating system on their ship that has some form of virus protection installed on it so the entire thing won't happen again! Maybe next time they should also wear body armor that will actually do some form of protecting instead of just looking scary! That's if they come back at all, but now that I think about it if I was those aliens I'd be too humiliated to come back again anyways.