Amph What blockbusters can learn from Independence Day

I had an idea for an ID4 continuation where one of the city destroyer ships survives, rearms itself for battle, and develops some kind of anti-virus protection in its systems, so it can't be brought down by that old trick again, so WHAT DOES HUMANITY DO?

Also, another one I thought would be interesting would be a group of soldiers are sent inside one of the downed alien ships to recover technology and stuff, and meet up with the ships' survivors, who are not that happy, to say the least.

 

I didn't know that there was a sequel novel. I did read the prequel novel, Silent Zone, which was actually a pretty good conspiracy book.

 

There isn't...

 

I'm just going with what the film gives, okay

Edit: my other gripe, besides the no-flattened-cities thing, is the how they attack the city destroyers....those fighters are lobbing missiles with (at best) fifty-pound warheads aboard, not to mention they have precisely zero penetrative capability; they airburst at close range to target. The logical thing would have been carpet-bombing the thing with heavy bombers while the fighters keep their little attack ships occupied-not sure if that'd be any more effective, but at least you'd have explosions inside the enemy vessel, instead of tossing sharp bits of confetti at a gigantic hull.

 

The first rule of movies like ID4 is "Don't make movies like ID4."

 

We're not exactly doing all that great against malware and viruses today, so I'm sure there's a way to beat the aliens' antivirus software. Plus, this means China can save the world for a change!

 

Espy -- you can go back further in critiques like this.

For example, one of the commentaries about Raiders of the Lost Ark basically says one of the reasons the movie is so good and so popular is that for basically two hours the movie sets-up that "if you open the Ark, you're going to see the wrath of G-d" -- and at the end, they deliver on this. Everything builds to that and there's no disappointment.

I'm sure you can go back even further and find other examples, but Independence Day just follows on that theory (and yes it's awesome, no reason to hem and haw about it...)