What Comes Next: Independence Day
(This is What Comes Next, an examination of what happens in the movies after the cameras stop rolling.)
I’ve seen Die Hard more than any other movie, and for good reason, because it’s just about the perfect movie. But there was a while in my life where the record-holder for that particular honor was Independence Day, Roland Emmerich’s absolutely ludicrous alien flick from 1996. These days, not only has Die Hard topped it, but so has Shaun of the Dead and any number of kids cartoon movies, since I now have a 9-year-old and twin 2-year-olds and could go into just ridiculous detail about the intricacies of A Goofy Movie. (Maybe I will for a future What Comes Next! And that “maybe” was ridiculous, because I absolutely will be doing this, and even as I write this sentence I’m considering pushing back ID4 for that.)
Still, Independence Day remains one of my most-watched and most-loved movies, even if objectively I have to concede it’s enormously silly. (We will be proceeding from here as though the sequel never existed, because the sequel never existed. I’m sorry, it’s true.)
What Comes Next: Independence Day
Steven Hiller and David Levinson have taken down the alien ship, while Thomas Whitmore recalled his fighter pilot past by flying with the crew that took on the ship centered over Area 51. Russell Casse died, but his kids live on. There is … actually a surprising number of survivors of this movie. Considering it was a disaster movie with the Earth facing an existential threat, the speaking roles that died were few: Russell, Marty, Marilyn Whitmore, Tiffany, Jimmy, and Dr. Okun (come on, the sequel didn’t exist, he died).
That’s a tiny number considering the type of movie we’re talking about here. I mean, Die Hard killed off far more speaking roles despite taking place in a building over a few hours; ID4 was a worldwide movie over three days and we lost six voices.
So who came out the best?
Gotta be Jasmine, right? She was an exotic dancer at the start of the movie whose boss was so strict that he made her work when she just happened to show up for her paycheck as the aliens arrived. Like, seriously, you run a strip club, and one of your strippers arrivers at the same time as a hundred goddamn spaceships, you tell her “Welp, get on the pole”? What the ever-loving hell. From there, she briefly saves the First Lady of the United States — at least long enough to get her to the president for a goodbye — she gets married, her new husband suddenly becomes the biggest hero on the planet. She is retired and can just about write her own ticket, at least as far as a rebuilding world would have allowed.
Also, Baby Nicky was a real cute kid. Good job, Jasmine.
Who came out the worst? (Among the survivors)
This is the most boring answer, but it’s Nimziki. Sniveling little dudes like him have an annoying ability to worm their way into the good, but there were so few surviving authority figures that he’s pretty well-known in any circles where he might be able to snivel himself into success. He’s stuck on the outs for the rest of his life.
Who came out sneaky-good?
You ready for sneaky? It’s Major Mitchell (Adam Baldwin’s character). At the start of the movie, he’s just a soldier at Area 51, which has to be the most thankless damn job. He can’t even tell people where he works, he can’t really socialize that much, he lives in the middle of nowhere. He’s just a tiny cog in the machine. Suddenly, he’s the most knowledgeable one of the facility, leading to he and Constance saving a whole load of civilians on the surface. He’s one of the soldiers who shot the alien trying to kill the president. Mitchell is a Congressional Medal of Honor recipient at a bare minimum, and he gets just an amazingly high-ranking job within seconds of things getting back to normal. Dude’s set.
Who comes out good and bad?
If things go the way I would predict, it’s President Whitmore. He was a decorated fighter pilot in the past. That’s automatically an honor. He got elected president. Also an honor. But then all the negatives came down, with people comparing him to Oliver Twist and saying he’s unfit to lead and all that crap. And then he (well, Steven and David, but he was the boss) leads America, and by extension, the world, through a potential apocalyptic event, he gets to give an all-time speech, and he gets to fly again.
But there’s a sneaky part. There is no damn way he remains president after the movie any longer than he has to. Sure, he has to oversee some of the rebuilding, especially since the vice president and joint chiefs and who-knows-who-else all died at NORAD and elsewhere. But the very minute it’s practical for him to step down, he flashes the deuces and he’s out. What else does he have to prove? He was a war hero and then an intergalactic war hero. His speech will be performed in dramatic monologues for the rest of forever. He captained the entire world through a potential mortality event. He’s a hero forever. They’re tossing him onto Rushmore.
Now, the downside. First, the obvious one, his wife died. That, you know, sucks. The second one: Dude’s gettin’ suuuuuuuuuuuued. There will be the silly, frivolous lawsuits, sure. But there’s also going to be anyone living (and surviving) in a multi-hour radius of Houston who suffered significant nuclear fallout because the president thought nukes might work. I know they needed to act fast, but they nuked their own city because they hoped it would work. Some/most/all of Texas is essentially uninhabitable after what happened in the movie. Whitmore is gonna face all the lawsuits.
So what was the next little while like?
Do you have any idea how much therapy Patricia Whitmore and Dylan (the two kids) are gonna need after this? These two are going to be some of the most famous kids in the world (to be fair, Patricia already was), but they are also going to have some major survivors guilt over the fact that they knew, however briefly, so many people who died. Alllll the therapy bills.
There are only two ways for Miguel’s life to go after this is all over. Either he follows in his father’s footsteps in the form of raging alcoholism, or he becomes an absolute badass super-soldier who wants to keep the world safe. I don’t know which one it ended up being, but I’d watch a Miguel movie.
General Grey retired freaking instantly. Robert Loggia was 65 during filming, and he had the voice of a 90-year-old for the last 30 years of his life. He would have shaken Whitmore’s hand after getting back from downing the alien ship, laughed uproariously, ripped off his military uniform, and never looked back. (Also, his name was Will, and like five minutes after Whitmore says “I’m a pilot, Will,” they move on to saying “fire at will,” and I always laughed at the idea that the finale of the movie was just everybody gunning down Robert Loggia in slow motion.)
Hey, Jeff Goldblum’s in this movie! Are you proud of me for making it 1,200 words in before mentioning him? It took some work. So here’s the thing with David: He saved the world. It was all he ever wanted to do. He also reunited, to some degree or another, with Constance. You know how he would change after everything is all over? Not one iota. This dude’s entire viewpoint, and he literally says this out loud, is “I was happy where I was.” He was happy! Sure, he figured out what the aliens were doing before anyone else and felt the call to action, and he acted. And ten minutes after everything is over, he finds the first cable company to start operation again and gets his job back. The rekindled relationship with Constance lasts five extra minutes, after which she’s double-bitter and double-dedicates her life to public service. In other words, the actual sequel should have been David Levinson having to warn his ex-wife-now-very-angry-president about another threat. But he still would have been a cable guy.
His dad, though. Julius always wanted more for David, and he thought he got there with the events of the movie. David, though, wanted no part of it. That bothers Julius after everything in the movie dies down, and he spends a few months trying to urge David to act, but he gives up on that before long and moves on to selling his story to National Geographic and Weekly World News and whatever other tabloid will have him. And ohhhhh man, does he exaggerate. He exaggerates hard.
And then Steven! All Steven wanted was to pilot the space shuttle, and he got to do a close facsimile flying the alien ship to the mothership. (Although “I watched this ship in action and know its maneuvering capabilities” is about a thousand miles from “I can pilot it as well as the aliens who know it even though my body doesn’t even do the same stuff.” C’mon, Steve.) So he’s fulfilled his lifelong dream. Does he now try to just be a regular old astronaut and go to space again? That’s guaranteed to feel anticlimactic, right? “Oh, cool, this regular spaceship any old dude can fly. I piloted a damn flying saucer, y’all.” No, Steven goes a different way. You know General Grey’s job that was vacated instantly because Robert Loggia was stupid old? Congratulations, Will Smith, you are now commander of the United States Space Command. Have a party.
And the minor characters?
I’m sure Alicia had sex eventually, even if her brother interrupted her from not dying a virgin initially. But I wonder if her little boyfriend survived or if he died a virgin.
Do you think Marty’s lawyer got out? Do you think he would have gotten out if Marty had called him instead of shrugging it off because “lol lawyers”?
Erick Avari and the SETI guys are out of work now, right? They were the first ones to detect the signal from the aliens, but, like, their job is literally “Search for Extraterrestrial Intelligence.” Job done, fellas. Hope you can find a new gig somewhere.
Just a random question, that I genuinely don’t know the answer to: Would a facility like Area-51 really have a chaplain on duty to perform Steven and Jasmine’s wedding? Part of me thinks that’s silly, the other part of me thinks, “Well, if they’re isolated, they gotta have their religious services somehow.” I really don’t know. But I’m curious.