Find TV Repair Service and Television Repairs in Vermont

Search Yext TV Repair for an up-to-date and complete listing of television repairmen in Vermont. Type in your zipcode to find a tv repairman near you.

Find VT TV Repair Service and Television Repairs in Vermont

Browse By County

Independence Day The Movie

Independence Day, The Movie, was released in 1996 and was the top grossing film of the year, grossing more than $305 million in the U.S. and a staggering worldwide total of nearly $820,000. Commentators noted that the movie was heavily publicized, including $1.1 million spent on ads during the 1996 Super Bowl, cementing for many the usefulness of advertising during pro football’s biggest event.

The movie was directed by Roland Emmerich and produced by Dean Devlin. Will Smith had the lead role and was paid $5 million to star in the movie, which helped to establish Smith as one of the top movie actors in the world. The production cost about $75 million to make and was 2 hours and 25 minutes long.

Other actors with significant roles in the movie were Bill Pullman, Jeff Goldblum, Mary McDonnell, Judd Hirsch, Robert Loggia, Randy Quaid and Vivica A. Fox. Smith played Captain Steven Hiller, a confident F/A-18 pilot who yearns to be an astronaut and flies important missions with a cigar, so he can have a celebratory smoke when the mission is over. Bill Pullman played President Thomas J. Whitmore, a former fighter pilot in the Gulf War who is all too ready to roll up his sleeves and get in on the action.

Jeff Goldblum plays David Levinson, a computer expert with an MIT-pedigree who is a tree-hugger and is divorced from the White House Communications Director Constance Spano, played by Margaret Colin. Judd Hirsch plays Julius Levinson, the father of David Levinson who has high hopes for his less-than-motivated genius son. Robert Loggia plays Gen. William Grey, who is Chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff and Mary McDonnell plays First Lady Marilyn Whitmore, who dies escaping from the destruction of Los Angeles. Rounding out the main characters is Vivica A. Fox as Jasmine Dubrow, the stripper girlfriend of Hiller.

Two days before the 4^th of July, scientists discover a huge alien ship orbiting Earth that soon sends out dozens of huge spacecraft to ominously occupy the airspace over some of the world’s biggest cities. Transmissions from the spaceship are discovered by the younger Levinson, who convinces President Whitmore to order evacuations of the targeted cities. However, the aliens attack, destroying many cities, and famously blasting the White House to bits. The main characters manage to survive the attack and virtually all make it to a huge top secret government facility in Roswell, New Mexico.

While there, scientists reveal to the president that there really was an alien who landed in Area 5 in the 1950s, after Hiller manages to survive an attack from fighters unleashed by one of the space ships . Hiller drags back a vanquished and nearly dead alien pilot. Eventually, Levinson, who escaped aboard Air Force One with the president just as the White House was being pulverized, determines a virus could be implanted in the alien mother ship. The plan is for Hiller to fly a captured alien vesse and, head to the mother ship where Levinson figures out how to upload the virus. The virus will lower the shields of all the huge spaceships around the world and a coordinated attack is planned.

The film is spiced by an over-the-top performance by hippy scientist Dr. Brakish Okun, who has been studying a pair of captured aliens and is eventually killed by the alien Hiller returns to Area 51. That performance by Brent Spiner, best known for portraying Data in Star Trek: The Next Generation is a favorite for many reviewers, while others criticize his brief performance as overdone.

In the end, a subplot involving Randy Quaid, who plays Russell Case, an alcoholic crop-duster who loses some of his grip on reality after his wife dies, joins a fighter mission to destroy the Roswell spaceship and sacrifices his life to fly his plane into the ship, which has lost its protective shield due to the work of Levinson and Hiller.

Independence Day now stands as the 19^th top grossing film of all time and won an Academy Award for special effects. The movie was very popular in Israel because of the positive portrayal of the Levinsons, high-profile Jewish characters. However, elsewhere in the Middle East, this sympathy to Jews was attacked by some Shiite Muslim groups. Pullman and Goldblum received the most kudos from reviewers, along with Smith, whose easygoing nature and likeability shine through in the movie. With Independence Day under his belt, Goldblum has now been featured in 3 of the top 20 grossing films of all time. The other two are Jurassic Park and the Lost World.

Some commentators, however, attacked the movie for a simplistic and unreal plot, which others claimed it was merely a rip-off, in large part, of Star Wars themes.