Review Detail

There is another, newer edit of Independence Day available (the "No-Family Edition") but it's about 30 minutes shorter than this. "Where did those 30 minutes go??" you may ask. I mean, this edit already cuts Vivica Fox's bimbo stripper co-worker/friend who goes to the top of the tower to welcome the aliens. It cuts all stripping. It cuts a lot of Randy Quaid and some of his family, too (his kid has an "adrenal-cortex issue" out of nowhere now). These people and events are still in the film, but it's bare bones, no jokes or 'adding color' to the script, so to speak.

So that other film pretty much cuts Fox completely, cut Quaid and family almost completely, cuts friends and co-workers, scientists and military dudes, one-liners and character building. It is a lean, mean, Independence machine. And I like it a lot, but if you miss some of that stuff and want the film to feel a bit more "epic", this longer cut might be for you. It still gets rid of the biggest offenders in terms of lame humor and bad scripting, but it keeps all the major supporting cast and still has lots of those cheesy emotional moments that comprise these disaster flicks. People get married, people die, people almost die but then turn out to have lived. It's all very emotional.

Big downside: the video quality is ass. I mean, it's really pretty poor. I tried running it through Handbrake a couple different ways, but there's just no way this looks good on a big TV. And it's an ISO file, too?! That's going to be a major drawback for people, despite the professionalism of the edit. There is one moment at 1h55m where the music swells and dies twice in a very unbalanced way compared to the rest of the edit, too. All other cuts are smooth.

In the end, if you're looking for a big, dumb, cheesy 4th of July disaster flick, this is your huckleberry. I think the version I watched is already a newer, smoother cut than the one originally reviewed by some people here, but it's too bad there's not an even higher quality version of it.