Independence Durr

MOISHE
I think you better sleep this off.
Go back inside before you catch a
cold.

Slowly David looks up towards Moishe, an idea.

DAVID
Pops, you're a genius!

MOISHE
What'd I say?

DAVID
A cold? Of course.

. . . and that's how we saved humanity from the evil aliens. This guy's dad chattering on, and he happened to say something that, when taken in a different context, gave his son the idea for a ridiculous plot device.

But I don't mean to pick on "Independence Day". This little "you're a genius" riff is used in just about any movie where the heroes have to figure something out. Yet "ID4" will always be the prime example of scriptwriting's "dumb luck" because the fly's "give the alien's a computer virus" idea makes so little sense:

1. The super-advanced aliens who have mastered interstellar travel probably got their computer networking down a long time ago. That virus wouldn't get very far, unless one of them was running Outlook Express.

2. The fly wouldn't be able to program a virus for a completely foreign system using a computer language he knows nothing about in just a few hours.

3. On the chance that he was a skilled enough programmer to accomplish #2, he wouldn't be using a Mac.


Do the writers of these movies not understand how insulting this "immaculate solution"* trope is? Even with all the human race has accomplished and all the bright minds working in science and technology fields, our only hope for salvation is that Ian Malcolm will have some inane, drunken chat with his father. That's the extent of our problem-solving ability.

And I understand that "ID4" isn't "Apollo 13." It's not supposed to be a serious, intelligent look at how smart people solve problems in desperate times. "Independence Day" is a movie where Bagger Vance kills the aliens. Period. But if the problem-solving is so unimportant, why not just handle it like this:

DAVID
Pops, you're a genius!

MOISHE
What'd I say?

DAVID
A cold? Of course.

A soldier runs into the room excitedly.

SOLDIER

Hey, we stopped the alien invasion!

DAVID

What? How?

SOLDIER

Larry figured it out. Did you meet Larry? Really
smart guy, Ph.D. in Physics I think. He studied
the shield on the alien ship we captured, then
through trail-and-error he came up with a missile
payload that would disable it. We took the designs
over to Greg, the military R&D guy, he's been
designing missiles for, like, 40 years or something.
He equipped some ICBMs with Larry's device and
brought down the mother ship a few minutes
ago. Now we're just waiting for Agent J to get in his
little airplane and mop up the rest.

DAVID

Wow, I guess . . . I guess those guys have it
covered, then.

SOLDIER

Yep . . . wait, did you have an idea too?

DAVID

Oh, uh, yeah, kinda. But don't worry about it,
seems kinda stupid now.

*The only time in recorded history when this has actually happened was when Vance and I were playing "The Curse of Monkey Island" in high school. He solved one of the most obscure puzzles in that game because he had the cursor over a particular inventory item while singing a particular "Barenaked Ladies" song. It was incredible.