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A 1996 movie by Roland Emmerich. At its core it is a straightforward Alien Invasion movie with a lot of elements taken from well known sources like War Of The Worlds. The archetypical Summer Blockbuster with a large cast of familiar character types, Stuff Blowing Up, fighter jets dogfighting alien crafts, Rousing Speeches, Area 51 and is otherwise fairly by-the-book storywise.

President Whitmore (Bill Pullman) is the recently elected U.S. President when a massive (one-fourth the size of the moon) spaceship enters the orbit of Earth. Sending out smaller (city-size) ships that scatter across the globe to all the major cities, it doesn't take long before they begin firing their Wave Motion Guns to wipe out entire cities at a time.

Humans fight back, with Air Force pilot Steven Hiller (Will Smith) and a computer programmer David Levinson (Jeff Goldblum) pulling together a plan to save the human race.

Needless to say, this is one of the most trope-filled movies of all time. Which is not to say that it's not completely awesome. Whatever Plot Holes there are is covered up with outstanding visual effects, likeable characters and just being honest entertainment. It falls just short of hanging lampshades on everything it can, while being entirely aware of just how silly it is.

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This movie provides examples of the following tropes:

• Achilles Heel: The open bay of an alien saucer's main cannon.
• Air Force One
• Alien Abduction: Russel.
• Alien Invasion
• Always Chaotic Evil: The aliens.
  President Whitmore: I saw its thoughts. I saw what they're planning to do. They're like locusts. They're moving from planet to planet... their whole civilization. After they've consumed every natural resource they move on. And we're next. Nuke 'em. Let's nuke the bastards.
• America Saves The Day: And how. The producers of a British radio spinoff were even given strict instructions not to portray the British as heroic or in any way contributing to America's victory.
  • It's mostly from the American point of view, but they do acknowledge that it takes a worldwide effort to win in the end.
• Apocalypse How: The aliens plan to strip Earth of resouces until it counts as a Class 4 Apocalypse.
• Area 51
• Authority Equals Ass Kicking: Partially subverted - the president was a fighter pilot, and does lead the raid against one of the ships, but doesn't get the final shot to take them down.
• Backed By The Pentagon: The producers tried to use this trope, but the Pentagon refused to back a movie whose plot involved Area 51.
• BFM
• Bilingual Bonus
• Bond One Liner: Will Smith does this over and over in this movie, to good effect.
  Steven Hiller (to crash-surviving alien): *WHAM* "Welcome to Earth!"
• California Doubling: Actually Utah Doubling; most of the movie after the first act was filmed on the Bonneville Salt Flats, near Wendover, UT.
• Captured Super Entity
• Cassandra Truth
• Chekhovs Hobby: A quick mention is made that President Whitmore is a former fighter pilot.
• Chess Motifs: "And when the countdown reaches zero, then what?" "... checkmate!"
• Collapsing Lair
• Contrived Coincidence: Oh so many.
• Crowning Moment Of Awesome: "WE WILL NOT GO QUIETLY INTO THE NIGHT!"
  • "HELLO, BOYS! I'M BAAAAAAACK!"
• Crowning Moment Of Funny: Do you even have to ask what scene? "This was supposed to be my weekend off. But nooooo...instead you got me out here dragging yo' heavy ass through the burning desert with your dredlocks stickin' out the back of my parachute. ...AND WHAT THE HELL IS THAT SMELL??? (repeatedly kicks unconscious alien) AHHHH! I COULDA BEEN AT A BARBEQUE!"
• Deadline News: In the ads, as a War Of The Worlds Shout Out.
• Death By Cameo: Volker Engel, who was head of the FX unit
• Deflector Shields
• Delayed Explosion
• Deux ex Nukina
• Disappeared Dad
• Disaster Movie
• Does This Remind You Of Anything
• Do Not Go Gentle Into That Good Night: "We will not go quietly into the night. We will not vanish, without a fight. We're going to live on. We're going to survive. Today... we celebrate... our Independence Day!"
• Dueling Movies: Against Mars Attacks! and the almost-unknown The Arrival
  • The Arrival was in more of a movie duel against Contact. It wasn't as good as that movie either.
• Earth Is A Battlefield
• Earth Is the Center of the Universe: Not completely straight, but somehow the Earthlings managed to stop the alien advance when they've stripped God knows how many planets before them.
  • That was because Humans Are Warriors .
• ET Gave Us Wi Fi: we've evidently gotten quite a lot of use out of that one crashed spaceship. Especially since they couldn't any of it's tech to work.
• The Eternal Churchill
• Eureka Moment (David's final solution)
• Everyone Knows Morse
• Eye Open
• Facing The Bullets One-Liner
• Fanfare
• Fatal Family Photo
• Finger Twitching Revival
• Five Rounds Rapid.
• Flying Saucers
• Fridge Logic
• Genre Savvy
• Hemisphere Bias
• Heroic Sacrifice
• Hey, It's That Guy!: I didn't know Jayne Cobb worked for the US military.
  • And did you know that, before she was President, Laura Roslin was married to one too?
  • And Dr. Okun is Data from Star Trek The Next Generation!
  • And Harry Connick Jr. from Will And Grace and The Iron Giant as Captain Steve's best friend Jimmy!
    • He's too well known for this, but, technically The Fresh Prince Of Bel Air saved the world!
  • Mae Whitman is the First Daughter.
    • Her?
• Historical In-Joke
• Hollywood Science
• Hollywood Tactics
• Horde of Alien Locusts
• I Come In Peace: Used straight and subverted. The military sends a chopper to one of the huge spaceships with a lit sign displaying greetings in all the languages of the world, and civilians in every major city hold up signs of greetings to said ships. The chopper gets blown out of the sky, and the cities (and associated welcoming parties) get cratered, with very little discussion.
• I Got You Covered
• Inferred Holocaust
• In Working Order
• Israelis with Infrared Missiles
• It Has Been An Honor
• It's Going Down
• Just Before the End
• The Jor-El
• Just Plane Wrong
• Lampshade Hanging
• Landmark Of Lore: Area 51
• Magic Countdown
• Missing Mom
• Mobile Suit Human (The Aliens)
• Monumental Damage
• The Mothership: The big ship, obviously.
• The Mountains of Illinois
• No Endor Holocaust
• Nuke Em
• One Buwwet Weft
• Our Presidents Are Different: Our presidents are ace jet fighter pilots.
• Outrun the Fireball
• Patriotic Fervor
• Planar Shockwave
• Planet Looters
• Plausible Deniability
• Plug 'n' Play Technology
• Power Armor: Bio-Mechanical in nature, and offers little protection from a punch to the face (which doesn't actually line up with the real head), but with several built-in weapons and decent protection from bullets.
• Product Placement
• Ramming Always Works
• Red Sky, Take Warning
• Rock Beats Laser
• Rousing Speech
• Rule Of Cool
• Rule Of Perception (Steven and later Jasmine don't notice the alien ship hovering over Los Angeles until the camera shows it. This is when they have a to-die-for view of LA from their front lawn.)
• Scenery Gorn: This film revels in the wholesale destruction of the populated centres of the world.
  • Love of this trope must be the reason that a movie which features the destruction of the White House is shown on American television every year on the Fourth of July.
• See the Whites of Their Eyes
• Shout Out: To Jurassic Park; Jeff Goldblum's character says, "Must go faster. Must go faster. Go, go, go, go, go, go, go, go!" in the exact same way as he does in one scene in Jurassic Park.
  • Only one of many. There are shout outs and Easter Eggs to classic sci-fi shows and films dating all the way back to the 1940s.
  • The strategy to defeat the aliens mirrors the defeat of the aliens in War Of The Worlds, with just a different meaning of a term.
• Single Mom Stripper (Jasmine)
• Snark Bait
• Someone Has To Die
• Sorting Algorithm Of Mortality: The characters who got killed were the stereotypically gay boss, the dumb stripper (a case of Too Dumb To Live), the First Lady who didn't get out in time (a sympathetic character to give the impression that Anyone Can Die), and the alcoholic father (seems like the alcoholic made a heroic sacrifice of redemption so...).
• Soul Brotha
• Stuff Blowing Up
• Sucking In Lines
• Taking You With Me
• Television Geography
• Throw Away Country
• Too Fast To Stop: The alien dogfighters, inexplicably, towards the end of the movie, even though they are stated to be extremely manueverable.
• Tropes Are Not Bad: There's a reason this movie spawned the Big Willy Weekend tradition.
• Toy Ship: The President's daughter and Hiller's stepson
• Universal Driver's License
• We Come in Peace, Shoot to Kill
• The Worf Barrage
• Wronski Feint
• You Don't Want To Die A Virgin, Do You?: Trope Namer.
• You Just Had to Say It

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