Alien invasions of planet Earth
have been a campy plot subject on film and TV media for quite the number of
decades in the 20th Century. That was at least until the 1996 20th
Century Fox film “Independence Day” by the creative duo of Dean Devlin and
Roland Emmerich made the image of flying saucers attacking famous landmarks
shift from hokey to frighteningly awesome. While the two-decades delayed sequel
“Independence Day: Resurgence” failed to recapture the hype, there is still a
vivid public memory of the franchise that one of its main cast was able to
connect the recent July 4 celebration with a reminder for a health safety
reminder.
As Entertainment Weekly tells it, actor Bill Pullman channeled his
“Independence Day” character of (fictional) US President Thomas J. Whitmore in
a brief public service announcement reminding Americans to wear facemasks when
going out, especially during the recent Fourth of July weekend. Pullman’s PSA,
produced by the Alamo Drafthouse Cinema chain, comes in the wake of continued
alarming highs in the infection rate of the novel coronavirus, or COVID-19, in
the United States. This was punctuated by the July 4 confirmed-new case record
of 48,631 which trumped the US record from last week by 11,740.
“I may not be your president right
now, but I’ve got to tell you that the Fourth of July is still my favorite
holiday, and it always will be," says Pullman, making reference to his
Presidential character’s speech shortly before the climactic air battle against
the “Harvester” aliens from the original film. He then spoke of celebrating
freedom during the July 4 weekend by making sure to wear a facemask, which he
calls “freedom masks,” when going to public places.
In Pullman’s words, if Americans
will make sure to put masks on whenever they go out, “we’d be a little closer
to being free to safely go back to places like bars and restaurants and schools
and, most importantly, movie theaters." The last part raised a few
eyebrows in accompanying commentary as a reminder that it was a movie-house
chain that put out the PSA
Bill Pullman co-starred with Jeff
Goldblum and Will Smith in Devlin and Emmerich’s “ Day,” which depicted a devastating alien
invasion of Earth over a Fourth of July weekend. Pullman’s Whitmore, a 1991
Gulf-War US Air Force veteran, was notable among fictional American Presidents
for personally leading a retaliatory air strike on the alien city-destroying
UFOs in the movie’s climactic act. He would reprise the role in “Independence
Day: Resurgence” four years ago, depicting a new and more powerful wave of
harvester aliens attacking a significantly changed Earth two decades after the “War
of 1996.”
0 comments:
Post a Comment