Like a popular toothpaste advertised in the hey-day of this genre, the alien craft are protected by “an invisible protective shield.” It’s up to the techie-wonk David to crack their intelligence code, so what’s left of the world’s air forces can launch an attack against the alien mother ship. The aliens’ fortress-like spacecraft are impregnable, even to nuclear missiles. Like the best action films, our heroes here are decidedly over-matched. It’s this triumvirate that ultimately must combine their skills and summon all their bravery to save the world. In Emmerich’s and Devlin’s well-honed screenplay, they include, most prominently in addition to the president, a brilliant, underachieving computer whiz David (Jeff Goldblum) and breezily gung-ho Marine Corps aviator Capt. Like the ‘70s disaster films, an odd and unlikely assortment of individuals rally together to take on the overwhelming natural force, in this instance, invading aliens.
In short, it’s the world against the aliens and there’s a ticking clock in this War of the Worlds-ish saga. That we’re not alone in the universe is not exactly a comforting realization - the monstrous alien presence is, by all indications, an invasionary force. Evidently, these aliens know when to catch us off-guard, including the president (Bill Pullman), a Clintonesque leader who realizes that he might have to act decisively in this instance. In the United States, this weekend is the Fourth of July weekend. In this canny scenario, there is, contrary to “Ecclesiastes,” something new under the sun: Massive, saucer-like spacecraft hover over the world’s big cities one weekend, blocking the sunlight and casting terrifying shadows over human creation.
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