Independence Day: The Abridged Script
FADE IN:
EXT. THE MOON
We see a world dominated by an American flag. This is INADVERTENT FORESHADOWING. Then a shadow moves across the ground and the flag. This is SYMBOLISM. Then an immense spaceship crawls across the screen. This is STAR WARS.
INT. WHITE HOUSE
BILL PULLMAN
Being President sure is tough.
JEFF GOLDBLUM’S EX-WIFE
Excuse me sir, but aliens have surrounded the planet. I would use my own name above my lines except I really have no other plot function.
ROBERT LOGGIA
(gravely)
Oh, my God.
BILL PULLMAN
I will attempt to negotiate first.
MACHO ASSHOLES IN AUDIENCE
Wow, what a weak-kneed President. I hope he learns how to be a macho asshole before the end of the movie.
JEFF GOLDBLUM rushes in with his JEWISH DAD, who is an ANNOYING STEREOTYPE.
JEFF GOLDBLUM
(talking in hurried stop-and- start sentences)
I’ve used my nerdy powers to discover that the aliens want to kill us all.
ROBERT LOGGIA
(gravely)
Oh, my God.
As he says this, the ROUND, CURVY ALIEN SHIPS open up their MYSTERIOUS ORIFICES and begin destroying all the TALL, HARD, ERECT SKYSCRAPERS in AMERICA.
MACHO ASSHOLES IN AUDIENCE
Oh geez! For some reason this is terribly threatening.
Meanwhile, the characters all pile into AIR FORCE ONE and take off just as the WHITE HOUSE explodes in a gargantuan fireball.
AUDIENCE IN CANADA, BRITAIN, AND MOST OTHER COUNTRIES BESIDES THE U.S.
WOO-HOOO!!! YAYYYY!!!! WAY TO GO ALIENS!!!!!
Also during the alien assault HARVEY FIERSTEIN, who was playing the ANNOYING STEREOTYPICAL GAY CO-WORKER, is killed.
AUDIENCE
Yay!! No more Harvey Fierstein!!! Go aliens!!!!
Elsewhere, WILL SMITH’S STRIPPER-WITH-A-HEART-OF-GOLD FIANCEE saves her CHILD, but more importantly, her DOG.
INT. ARMY PILOT BRIEFING ROOM
WILL SMITH and HARRY CONNICK JR. are bantering humorously.
Suddenly HARRY CONNICK JR is killed by aliens.
WILL SMITH
NOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOO OOOOOOO!!!!
ROBERT LOGGIA
(gravely)
Oh, my God.
INT. MILITARY ROOM
What remains of the U.S. MILITARY is trying to cope with the situation.
BILL PULLMAN
Man, this really sucks. I am such a wimpy President for not realizing that the worst paranoid reactionist fantasies of our nation were true.
MILITARY AIDE
Sir, the aliens just destroyed Atlanta.
AUDIENCE
Yayyy! Ted Turner’s dead!! Go aliens!!!
Suddenly BILL PULLMAN’S DYING WIFE is wheeled in.
BILL PULLMAN’S DYING WIFE
I’m sorry I tried to lead my own life. If only I’d been completely subservient to you I might have lived. The worst of it is how I failed our child, getting killed in an alien attack like this.
BILL PULLMAN
The important thing is you see the error of your ways.
JEFF GOLDBLUM
(to his ex-wife)
You know, you should really give up on having your own life and come back to serve my interests. I mean, look what happened to Bill Pullman’s wife.
WILL SMITH
(to stripper-with-heart-of- gold-fiancee)
Strangely, your sexually exploitative job is the only one that won’t attract anger or divine retribution from this movie. How about that.
WOMEN IN AUDIENCE
I am beginning to notice a disturbing trend in this movie.
THE MOVIE
(distracting them)
BOOM!!!!!!!!!!!!!
INT. GEEK LABS
The characters have decided to go visit BRENT SPINER who is playing the role of THE BIGGEST GEEK IN THE ENTIRE WORLD. He is, needless to say, a STEREOTYPE.
BRENT SPINER
Look! I’m a scientist that’s a geek! Funny!
WRITERS DEAN DEVLIN & ROLAND EMMERICH
We are so proud to have written this movie.
BRENT SPINER attempts to operate on an ALIEN that WILL SMITH captured by PUNCHING it in the HEAD. However the ALIEN wakes up and kills BRENT SPINER.
AUDIENCE
Yay!! No more annoying Brent Spiner! Go aliens!!
The AUDIENCE wonders how the ALIEN will attempt its daring escape. The ALIEN dangles the obviously dead BRENT SPINER vaguely in front of itself.
ALIEN
Release me.
BILL PULLMAN
What if we do?
ALIEN
Then I’ll kill you all.
BILL PULLMAN
Hmmm, what to do, what to do.
Eventually our heroes hit on the brilliant plan of SHOOTING the alien. The alien DIES.
AUDIENCE
That had to be the stupidest alien ever seen in a movie. It didn’t even try to fool them into trusting it or anything, just stood there and announced how it wanted to kill them all.
A NUKE is set off to distract the AUDIENCE.
INT. AREA 51
WILL SMITH
We’ve got to do something, President Bill Pullman.
JEFF GOLDBLUM
I have an idea. We could use…..
(pause)
COMPUTERS.
AUDIENCE
Oooooo. That’s true. Computers can do anything. They are like magic.
JEFF GOLDBLUM demonstrates his plan with the help of a COKE CAN. The COKE CAN is of pivotal importance to the plan. We quite clearly see the COKE CAN. The AUDIENCE feels a strange compulsion to go buy some COCA-COLA.
BILL PULLMAN
Well, you’ve convinced me. I’ll go round up a bunch of idiots to fly our remaining fighters against the alien air force that wiped out our most highly trained and skilled pilots.
WILL SMITH
And meanwhile Jeff and I will destroy the mother ship using…. COMPUTERS.
JEFF GOLDBLUM’S EX-WIFE and WILL SMITH’S STRIPPER-WITH-A- HEART-OF-GOLD FINACEE smile approvingly, off to one side, with assorted CHILDREN and DOGS.
BILL PULLMAN
(to ROBERT LOGGIA)
Wouldn’t it be nice to be back doing Lost Highway instead of this garbage?
ROBERT LOGGIA
Yes, it would.
(gravely)
Oh, my God.
INT. ALIEN MOTHER SHIP
ALIEN 1
Look, that ship of ours that crashed into Roswell all those years ago, which has presumably been in human hands all this time, is headed towards us. And whoever’s piloting it flies like a novice.
ALIEN 2
Clearly the best course of action is to allow it to dock deep within the mother ship and not worry about it any further.
ALIEN 1
Hey, look, there’s humans inside.
ALIEN 2
Get out.
ALIEN 1
No, really. How about that.
ALIEN 2
They seem to have fired some device into the heart of the ship. Goll-lee.
ALIEN 1
We have got to be the most dimwitted aliens ever.
The NUCLEAR DEVICE fired by JEFF and WILL EXPLODES, destroying the MOTHER SHIP.
EXT. AREA 51
There is a terrific DOGFIGHT going on, in which the ALIENS have for some reason almost completely lost their ability to AIM. However, the humans stupidly USE UP their missles despite the fact that they are only denting the exterior of the ship.
BILL PULLMAN
(viewed in a cockpit, so he must be flying one of the planes, I guess)
Oh geez, I forgot that missles can only be used once.
RANDY QUAID
(in another cockpit, so he must be there too, in a plane)
I’ve got one! Ever since aliens buttfucked me I’ve been waiting for this!
AUDIENCE
Ever since the beginning of the movie we’ve been patiently waiting for you to fulfil your obvious destiny. So get on with it.
RANDY QUAID
This is my final stirring line before I gallantly sacrifice myself.
AUDIENCE
Here we go!
RANDY QUAID
Actually I have one more line before gallantly sacrificing myself.
BILL PULLMAN
Wow, they’re hardly even shooting at you anymore.
RANDY QUAID
HERE I GO TO GALLANTLY SACRIFICE MYSELF!!!!
AUDIENCE
Alright already.
RANDY QUAID
THIS IS IT!!!!!! I’M GALLANTLY SACRIFICING MYSELF!!!!!!
BILL PULLMAN
AMERICA!!!!!! AMERICA!!!!!!!!! It’s our INDEPENDENCE DAY!!!!!!!!!!!!!
THE COKE CAN
AMERICA!!!!!!!! AMERICA!!!!!!!!!!!! GOD BLESS MACHO AMERICA!!!!!!!!!! AS WELL AS REFRESHING COCA-COLA!!!
Finally RANDY QUAID plunges his phallic fully-erect FIGHTER PLANE into the alien ship’s VAGINA. The alien ship EXPLODES. We learn that JEFF and WILL survived the destruction of the evil MOTHER SHIP. JEFF GOLDBLUM’S EX- WIFE and WILL SMITH’S STRIPPER-WITH-A-HEART-OF-GOLD FIANCEE come rushing to meet them with their BREASTS thrust into the wind. AMERICA (and oh yeah, the rest of the world) is once more SAFE for MACHO ASSHOLES.
MACHO ASSHOLES IN AUDIENCE
All right!! What a satisfying conclusion!! The macho assholes, newly converted macho assholes, and second-class citizens that accepted their place survived, while the only serious casualtes were eggheads, career women and homosexuals!!!
END
















Love it. Never knew this film had such an all-star cast (haven’t seen it actually). Can’t believe you made no reference to the fact that the President was Lonestar from Spaceballs! (Granted, you probably think it’s pathetic I know that.)
October 31st, 2007 at 3:17 pm“We see a world dominated by an American flag. This is INADVERTENT FORESHADOWING. Then a shadow moves across the ground and the flag. This is SYMBOLISM. Then an immense spaceship crawls across the screen. This is STAR WARS.”
And then Leonidas showed up, and you know the rest.
November 1st, 2007 at 6:21 pmRuptured a blood vessel from laughing so hard. God bless you Alexander Wiebe. And God bless David Lynch too.
November 23rd, 2007 at 12:14 amGreat stuff! I think this was one of Will Smiths best films ever.
March 6th, 2008 at 8:01 amReally, really good stuff. I’d make the case that the aliens from Signs are the stupidest ever (”Actually, Glib-Glob, do you really think it’s a good idea for us to be invading a planet whose surface is mostly covered by a substance that makes us explode? Especially since we’ve managed to master the technology to travel faster than light but haven’t managed to build, for example, a raincoat?”), but the ID aliens who made their mothership Mac-compatible and didn’t bother installing a firewall definitely have to be in the conversation.
May 14th, 2008 at 8:17 am