Five Ways 1996’s ‘Independence Day’ Created The Modern Blockbuster

To celebrate the release of Independence Day: Resurgence we teamed up with 20th Century Fox to look back on how the original helped create what we’ve come to know as the cinema blockbuster. 

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There have been big action movies before Independence Day, and even more since, but when Roland Emmerich’s sci-fi action spectacle premiered in 1996, it quickly became the biggest movie in the world and defined many of the things we’ve come to signify as the great standard of Hollywood blockbusters. It broke records, defined an era, and introduced the phrase “Welcome to Earth” into the lexicon of teens everywhere.

As a nod to the release of the second instalment out this week, let’s look back on the original and all the ways it changed movies as we knew them.

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The End Of The World As We Know It

It wasn’t uncommon for science fiction films to deal with aliens invading Earth, but those films were mostly small-scale pulp fiction. It was rare for the makers of Hollywood’s big budget blockbusters to have the nerve to well and truly end the world (cue R.E.M’s famous song in the opening scene). Instead, movies relied more on natural disasters (Twister), animals (Jaws), and evil technology (Terminator 2: Judgment Day). Independence Day took disaster global and brought in the trend of destroying the world’s biggest cities and monuments as a means of giving audiences a visceral cinematic thrill.

Nowadays it feels like not a month goes by that Hollywood attempts to destroy the planet, much to the increased chagrin of critics and yawning audiences. Most of these movies haven’t given us characters anywhere as fun as ID‘s Will Smith’s Captain Steven Hiller, relationships as resonant as that of the President (Bill Pullman) and the First Lady (Mary McDonnell), or as celebrated for their intelligence and wit as Jeff Goldblum’s David Levinson.

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Media Blitz

Because of Independence Day, movies can no longer afford to follow the standard release blueprint. 20th Century Fox spent a whopping $1.3 million to premiere the first, classic teaser trailer during the Super Bowl, and it quickly became a marketing trend for studios to do the same with their big summer season releases. Some of the uber-successful titles to have wow moments at America’s biggest sporting event include The Matrix, Gladiator, Bruce Almighty, War of the Worlds, and Batman Begins.

This need to find new marketing hooks has only grown since and nowadays a film’s opening weekend gross is far more aligned with how well it was sold to audiences. Back in 1996, Roger Ebert lay most of the film’s Earth-shattering success on a “high-tech and truly brilliant advertising and promotional campaign” that favoured eye-popping shots of aliens blowing up the White House, which certainly got viewers’ attention.

It’s hard for an original film not based on a comic or a sequel to become an event, but that’s exactly what the studio did — so much so that news crews were on hand to interview patrons on opening night. Thanks to its new take on advertising, Independence Day became the water cooler movie of the season. You had to see it.

Not content to stop there, Independence Day made the cover of Time, it had a novelty toy line, an extensive product placement marketing campaign, and was even screened for then-President Bill Clinton and his family in advance of its release date.

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A Global Phenomenon

Independence Day came at a time where the movie industry had finally realised that there was a world outside of America that enjoyed going to the movies. Despite Emmerich’s film being so clearly tied to a very American public holiday, his movie went on to make 60 percent of its income from overseas. A rarity at the time, it’s now common for America to make up as little as 25 percent of a film’s total gross as international audiences flock to Hollywood blockbusters that they now have greater and faster access to. It’s estimated that China’s yearly box office alone will overtake that of America’s for the first time in 2017.

Not only that, but Independence Day marked the moment in time when box office takings became more than just a gauge of a film’s success, but rather a competitive sport. When Independence Day broke the opening weekend record of Jurassic Park from three years earlier, this game of one-upmanship became big business. Every year now has several films jostling for box office bragging rights of having stolen records from what came before, now with billions of dollars as the reward.

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Will Smith: Movie Star

Hollywood movie stars aren’t what they used to be. In 1996, the top ten box office hits of the year included a Sandra Bullock legal drama (A Time to Kill), an Eddie Murphy fat-suit comedy (The Nutty Professor), a Mel Gibson thriller (Ransom), and a Tom Cruise romantic comedy (Jerry Maguire). You won’t find that today — the charts are dominated by visual effects spectacles from cinematic universes and big-ticket reboots.

Will Smith, however, is one of the last big name stars to emerge out of his generation. His brand of uber-charismatic and relatable charm made him world famous. After leaving his hit TV series, The Fresh Prince of Bel-Air, he was picky about what titles he would take on and only starred in one a year, guaranteeing their success. Even Wild Wild West!

These days he’s a two-time Oscar nominee who appearance still excites and intrigues. He was able to turn the zombie movie I Am Legend into an unlikely box office phenomenon and while he’s sadly absent from Resurgence, the upcoming Suicide Squad will no doubt be a big hit thanks in part to his return to the type of action spectacle he helped create.

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ALL OF THE EASTER EGGS

Today it’s not strange for big action blockbusters to give nods to their predecessors like E.T.: The Extra Terrestrial, Close Encounters of the Third Kind, The War of the Worlds, Star Wars, Jurassic Park, but this definitely wasn’t the case in 1996. With blatant references to all of the above, Independence Day helped this go mainstream and a new generation of filmmakers who had grown up devouring an endless supply of movies on VHS and TV pop culture went on to champion the cause.

This new trend of winking at audiences’ knowledge of film tropes would be popularised later in 1996 thanks to the self-referential slasher flick Scream, but co-writer Dean Devlin was clearly having fun bringing his knowledge of sci-fi cinema to the masses. Independence Day had its fair share of fun playing with the pulpy sci-fi cinema of yore.

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Independence Day: Resurgence hits cinemas this Thursday June 23.