Independence Day, this year’s box-office blockbuster, is not a science- fiction movie, even though aliens figure in the plot. It’s not a special- effects extravaganza, even though the startling image of the White House blowing up made Independence Day a cultural phenomenon six months before its opening; actually, the movie’s special effects are remarkably (and charmingly) cheesy. Nor is it a disaster film, even though we get to see various cities reduced to rubble as thousands of extras scream and flee. No, Independence Day is overwhelming present-day audiences because it is, first and last, a war movie — a classic Hollywood genre almost completely unknown to moviegoers who came of age in the last 30 years.
In an age of Hollywood pacifism — a psychotic kind of pacficism, to be sure, according to whose dictates an ultra-violent movie like Terminator 2 features characters who deliver long speeches condemning the military before pumping rounds of bullets into the exploding stomachs of hapless police officers — Independence Day seems like something new, and fresh, and vivid. Once you peel away the various plot devices and effects borrowed from science-fiction and disaster movies, what you have is a pretty standard war picture about flyboys of different races, creeds, and social status banding together in a heroic and touching effort to save America from the bad guys. And they save America from the bad guys by killing them with great exuberance.
