Independence Day

Will Smith's girlfriend avoids an explosion by ducking into a janitor's closet inside a tunnel, yet the special effects show the beam knocking over buildings, and there's even a shot of the entire city being levelled. The next day, however, there's all sorts of debris and survivors left behind.

When Will Smith is trying to fly the craft, he pushes forward and the ship rams against the back wall. He then laughingly turns the "instruction sheet" taped in front of him upside down. This would also reverse left and right, as well as forward and backward.

You cannot put disks from a Macintosh into an IBM and have them work, yet Jeff Goldblum is able to send a virus from a Mac into a completely alien system which, for all we know, may not even run on electrons.

If these aliens are technologically advanced enough to travel distant worlds, create bio-mechanical suits, and have an organised docking system, how come they still rely on the mother ship, full of civilians, probably, for the shield power to hundreds, maybe thousands, of fighters?

When the fleet of alien vessels is wiping out the army base, they fire hundreds of shots, yet we never see any of them hit the ground, except to blow up a few planes.

On the map of Russia on the same broadcast, the caption reads TV"Chye"E (Chye being a Russian letter). There is, however, no letter "V" in the Russian alphabet.

The wedding ring was huge. It wouldn't have fit Jasmine's fingers.

Why did the aliens take up position over the First Interstate building in downtown L.A.? This is not the centre of L.A., nor is it a pivotal role in the functioning of the city, like the White House. Come to think of it, neither is The Empire State Building in New York City. These don't sound like very practical tactical positions. They must really hate bankers.

When Dr. Okun and the group of other scientists are operating on the alien, its head springs open. Dr. Okun then says "...and now comes the really icky part." The last aliens that were operated on were the ones from the crash in Roswell, New Mexico, back in 1947. How would he know how icky it was? He was a child the last time that aliens were cut open.

Before the ships arrive, the Secretary of Defence offers to blow the ships up, then a general advises against it for fear of turning one falling object into many. This still applies at the end when sizeable chunks of the ship are plummeting to Earth, but no one is worried about being struck by them.

When the alien wakes up, how come the alien doesn't try to escape through the glass, since the glass isn't bullet proof?

Why doesn't the Mother Ship recognise the 1953 model of the Alien Space Ship? Don't they make improvements on their models every year?

As Will Smith's girlfriend walks out of the tunnel, there are two palm trees still standing. If the flame bursts flatten buildings, how could two palm trees avoid being flattened?

How is it that Will Smith's girlfriend could live through the gigantic fireball that barrelled its way through the tunnel she was in? A fireball of that size would no doubt cause all the oxygen in the tunnel to either burn up (leaving her nothing to breathe) or become super-heated and kill her that way.

Will Smith's girlfriend finds an abandoned truck - why didn't the gasoline in the tank explode when it came in contact with the fireball? There is no way that fireball missed a truck that size sitting so close to the opening of the tunnel.

When jets are sent in to attack the giant UFOs, a missile is fired at it and is shown to turn one way, but when it flips to another angle the jet and missile are shown turning in opposite directions as to a few seconds before.

When Randy Quaid flies his jet into the giant ship, the ship was directly over top of the base where all the American military leaders were. As he blows the ship up, it falls to the ground. Now keep in mind, the UFO was 15 miles in diameter - how could it NOT land on the base?

When the First Lady is hopping in the helicopter to fly out of L.A., another helicopter is nearby. It flies past a building that has a large IBM logo on it. People are standing on the top of the building, giving the impression that it is one of the first buildings to blow up. Remember that the movie was sponsored by Apple.

Many people refer to the alien ships as "UFO's", yet UFO stands for "Un-identified Flying Object" These ships were clearly identified as alien craft, and are therefore in no way UFO's.

In the opening scene, the footprints on the moon are covered up as the Mothership flies by. How could this be? Without an atmosphere, no wind can be created, and in order for vibrations to disturb the moon dust, a part of the ship would have to be touching the moon.

In the scene with Will Smith ad Jeff Goldblum in the cockpit of the alien ship, watch Will Smith's hand as he holds the cigar up. His fingers are together from one camera angle, but they are separated from another.

When Will Smith and Jeff Goldblum are in the alien Mothership and they think they are going to die they light up their cigars. However after they escape and land in the desert they are still smoking them! They must have continued smoking them throughout the entire escape of 30 seconds and coming back into the earth's atmosphere.

When the President's assistant is waiting for him the first morning she is reading U.S.A Today. On the back there is a weather map and it is blue and green, the colours for cold in U.S.A Today. It was a hot July day!

When the fighter shot the nuclear missile at the ship, the radar showed that the plane was very close to the blast when it hit. The shockwave would've either destroyed the plane or killed the pilots within milliseconds! How could the jet possibly survive that?

When Jeff Goldblum and Judd Hirsch are playing chess, the radio next to them says it's 97 degrees outside. Yet the two men are both dressed as if it were winter time.

The three helicopters hover by the alien space ship. The ship then shoots a beam to destroy all 3 of the helicopters. But the two smaller helicopters start to explode from the inside before they are hit with the ray.

The ship in D.C. covers a significant portion of the city and doesn't move. It's raining when Jeff Goldblum and Judd Hirsch get there. Shouldn't the ground be dry under the ship?

Throughout the movie there are F-18s that have United States Air Force painted on the side of them. There are not, nor have there ever been F-18s in the Air Force.

When Jeff Goldblum is getting drunk and he's talking to his ex-wife, at one point he slams the bottle down on the counter and a little liquor sprays up out the opening, then they talk for a second, and he picks the bottle back up to pour himself more, but he now needs to unscrew the cap which was just lying next to the bottle.

When the dad stands up to talk about his flight experience and says that he was taken by Aliens 10 years before, everyone laughs. Well we know there are aliens, so why is everyone laughing?

While evacuating the white house thy used choppers - METAL choppers. The First Lady gets in one of those on the ground, 20 metres from where the beam hit, which has enough heat to blow up buildings by itself. The chopper should have heated up to at least 3000 degrees - more then enough to vaporise the First Lady.

When Jeff Goldblum is throwing a tantrum in the hanger housing the captured alien craft he knocks over several plastic garbage cans one of which is clearly labelled "Art Dept" - kind of odd for a top secret underground government military research facility.

When Will Smith is in his aircraft being chased through the canyon by by the alien fighters, I believe his airspeed indicator reads approximately Mach 2 or Mach 2.2 (or something in that range). As anyone who knows anything about flying and/or fighter aircraft knows, there is no way in hell an F/A-18 can go anywhere even close to Mach 2. I believe they have a maximum speed of between Mach 1.3-1.6, and that is from flying straight and level (or probably straight down) at an altitude of 35,000 feet. The actual numbers are classified. The bottom line, however, is that the only way an F/A-18 is going to go Mach 2+ is by crashing.

Even if we suspend our disbelief of the aeroplane's speed capabilities, and we say the plane was actually capable of going Mach 2, the pilot would still have to contend with the following:

1--The pilot would have to have superhuman reflexes to manoeuvre through a tight canyon at 1500 mph (or to put it in more down to earth terms: 2200+ feet per second). By the time the mind acted on the need to turn the plane, it would be too late.
2--Making radical turns through a canyon at that speed would rip the wings off the plane (thus causing it to crash). But that is a moot point because a plane going that fast would not be able to make tight turns, so being in such a tight canyon he would have just crashed into the side of the first turn he encountered.
3--The positive G forces from rapid manoeuvring would force all the blood out of his brain making him black out (and subsequently crash)
4--The negative G forces from rapid manoeuvring would force extra blood to his brain causing him to haemorrhage to death.

When the alien ship over New York blows up the Empire State Building you see the blastwave spill out in the street in front of the Empire State Building. This is in that part of the city that's built in a grid pattern. In front of the Empire State Building there's just another building, not a street where the blastwave and debris can spill into. All the people who are way down the street, looking at the building being hit by the beam just can't be there.

Various detailed ID4 thoughts from Igor

Updated 29/5/98 by JWES