Corrected entry: The whole premise of the ending was based around giving the mothership a virus to take out the shields. However, given that the "electrics" had only very recently come on in the Area 51 spacecraft, there would have been no time for anybody to have reverse engineered the computer system and alien programming language, let alone for David to come in at the last minute, manage to guess off the top of his head what part of the mothership's system controlled all the shields, find a vulnerability in their code that could be exploited to switch them off, and then create the virus to do so.
Tailkinker
4th Apr 2009
Independence Day (1996)
27th Dec 2008
Independence Day (1996)
Corrected entry: In the opening scene, the alien craft slowly flies over the Apollo 11 placard on the moon, and there are footprints in the soil. The spacecraft causes vibrations that disturbs the soil around the placard and the footprints. There is no sound in space (or on the moon), and the moon's atmosphere is almost a vacuum, so the soil should not have been disturbed in such an extreme manner. This is deliberately done for the dramatic effect.
Correction: The propulsion field that the ship uses is what's disturbing the soil.
29th Jul 2006
Independence Day (1996)
Corrected entry: That alien suit is rather odd: it needs to be cut open with a razor sharp knife, then the alien is covered in a fleshy mass, however the suit is so weak an alien gets knocked out when it gets punched.
Correction: There doesn't appear to be any sort of movie mistake here, just an opinion.
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Correction: This is based entirely on an opinion, which are not valid grounds for a mistake. David is portrayed in the film as an off-the-scale genius, who's already deciphered the alien countdown code using nothing more than his own laptop and the interference in the satellite system. Area 51 is populated by the top scientific minds available, all of whom would be focused completely on the systems in question. It is simply your opinion that this would be impossible and that doesn't count.
Tailkinker ★