Rambling About Silly Sci-Fi Flicks

If various channels hadn't been showing it practically every day this month already, I'd find it funny I came across Independence Day on TV the same day I mentioned it in my unfavorable review of 2012. As it is, I was maybe more surprised it was only showing on one channel. The only part that still holds up for me is when Goldbloom and Smith decide to launch the nuke, and since it'll blow them up too, they go ahead and show themselves to the alien in the control booth, waving jauntily while they prepare to blow up its ship. It's silly enough that no part of my mind wastes time on its absurdity, it's obvious.

Watching the movie, I couldn't understand the Secretary of Defense. He didn't tell the President one of this species of alien's ships had crashed on Earth decades ago, but that could be interpreted different ways, so it isn't a big deal. But why is he so resistant to Goldbloom's cockamamie plan? Yes, it's ridiculous that they're going to fly this ship that crashed decades ago up to the mothership, and upload a virus into the ship from an Apple laptop that will disable all shields for a few minutes, and armed forces worldwide will take down all the ships in that minimal amount of time. But what have they got to lose? The aliens (and in addition to everything else, did they need to be telepathic?) already made it clear they plan to exterminate humanity, so the worst that happens if it fails is everybody dies. Which was going to happen anyway.

Later, Predator 2 came on, and it occurred to me just how overkill the self-destruct thing is. It's actually kind of cowardly, or at least a fine example of a sore loser. The Predators are big game hunters, but I'm not aware of many human hunters who, when the Cape Buffalo has gored them and they're about to die, pull out a grenade to try and take their prey with them. Given the level of destruction from that wrist device, it might be more accurate to say humans don't call in an air strike when the buffalo gets them. If it was a smaller explosion, I could buy that the Predators were trying to cover their tracks, but the bombs take out ten square blocks, so that explanation doesn't work for me.