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- Acceptable Professional Targets: "Oh, my God. I gotta call my brother, my housekeeper, my lawyer. Nah, forget my lawyer."
- Complete Monster : The aliens. The President manages to see into their minds, and realizes that they have beem traveling across the universe, conquering and strip-mining all the planets in their path. It's at this point that he concludes that peace is impossible and declares that they should "nuke the bastards".
- Crowning Moment of Awesome: The movie has several--
- Whitmore's Rousing Speech. "WE WILL NOT GO QUIETLY INTO THE NIGHT!" Not universally accepted as one; Empire Magazine as the cheesiest movie line of all time (a sentiment shared by many of the movie's critics). Still others find it awesome in spite of the Narm.
- The one that everyone agrees about, though? "HELLO, BOYS! I'M BAAAAAAACK!"
- Even better in the novel - he flew his old bi-plane into the ship with a gigantic bomb tied to the back.
- This was also a deleted scene as shown on the DVD.
- It was deleted so they could show him choosing to make a Heroic Sacrifice after the missile jammed.
- Also, because test audiences reacted poorly to that resolution. Probably because it's very stupid.
- This was also a deleted scene as shown on the DVD.
- Even better in the novel - he flew his old bi-plane into the ship with a gigantic bomb tied to the back.
- Will Smith's "WELCOME TO
EARTHEARF!" line deserves mention as well. - The President firing the Secretary of Defense.
- Will Smith's character again, when he flashes "V" Sign and shouts "peace!" and rams the nuke into the alien mothership's hangar control room.
- "Is that glass bulletproof?" "No sir!" BANGBANGBANGBANGBANG almost dead alien. Then a few moments later BANGBANGBANG dead alien.
- Julius telling Nimziki off for chewing David out, reminding him that his son's the only reason they're still breathing.
- Crowning Moment of Funny: Do you even have to ask what scene?
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Hiller: You know, this was supposed to be my weekend off. But nooooo... Instead, you got me out here dragging yo' heavy ass through the burnin' desert... wit' yo' dreadlocks stickin' out the back of my parachute... You had to come down here with an attitude, packin' all big and bad...(pauses) and WHAT THE HELL IS THAT SMELL? (repeatedly kicks unconscious alien while screaming in frustration) I COULDA' BEEN AT A BARBECUE! (grabs parachute, continues dragging) But I ain't mad. |
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- Not to mention Hiller and David's banter during the escape flight:
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David: We're hit! We took a hit! |
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- The laughing skull and crossbones right before nuking the mothership still cracks this troper up every time.
- A Los Angeles news broadcast warns the viewers not to shoot at the spaceship: "You may inadvertently trigger an interstellar war."
- Harsher in Hindsight: Thanks to the now disturbing images of the destruction of the Empire State Building and the White House, this movie wasn't aired for a long time after 9/11.
- Particular the image of the shadow crossing over the Twin Towers.
- Memetic Mutation: "Welcome to Earf!"
- Money Making Shot: The alien ship blasting The White House is the emblematic shot of the movie. After that, it's the shadows falling over major landmarks, and their destruction that was the basis of the trailers.
- Moral Event Horizon: The aliens' blowing up several cities at once is terrible, but what truly cements the aliens' status as unforgivable, especially in-universe, is when the captive alien reveals that they want to annihilate humanity, and they have done this to countless other worlds.
- MST3K Mantra: Try not to think too much about the Contrived Coincidences, or anything else, in the movie.
- Narm Charm: As previously mentioned, the Rousing Speech.
- The Problem with Licensed Games: The movie received a disappointing combat flight action game for the PS1, Sega Saturn, and PC. The PS1 version is considered the worst version, as it suffered from a crippled framerate, poor draw distance, and overall terrible controls.
- Retroactive Recognition: A young Mae Whitman plays the President's daughter; she's better known as being both Foe and Yay to Michael Cera.
- Snark Bait: Despite how much of a financial success this film was (with a worldwide gross of $816,969,268, the second-highest gross for a movie of all time back when it was released), the film attracts plenty of snarkers - especially non-American snarkers, who typically don't take kindly to America Saving The Day.
- So Bad It's Good: You can't not laugh at this movie, not to mention all the corny lines (the President's speech takes the cake in that department).
- Straw Man Has a Point: Nimziki gets two. We're supposed to be against his suggestion of using nuclear weapons but considering what we've seen so far that would be closest thing to a reasonable chance of success. Later he's supposed to be showing incompetence and cowardice for being against the plan to infect the mothership but the plan relies on a lot of luck, a human pilot managing to use an alien vessel, the aliens not getting suspicious and if it failed it would probably mean the end of all organized human resistance.
- Tear Jerker:
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Patricia: Mommy's sleeping now ? |
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- The look on Hiller's face when he finds out that the air base where his fiancee and stepson were headed has been destroyed. They're alive, but he doesn't know that, and they have a similar reaction when they think he's been killed.
- Toy Ship: The President's daughter and Hiller's stepson
- Visual Effects of Awesome: It still holds up well and the scope of the movie is awe inspiring. The sense of size and scale has not been matched by any movie since.
- Woolseyism: Will Smith's "Elvis has left the building!" was changed to "Last train to Mikkeli has just left!" in the Finnish DVD.