Independence Day Scenes 1-5 Summary

Scene 1

  • It's July 2. We're looking at the moon and a plaque commemorating the moon landing in 1969.
  • We see footprints on the moon that for some reason are getting disturbed as an unseen something-or-other flies over, headed directly toward earth.
  • The "something" comes into the shot, and it appears to be an alien spaceship.
  • Yikes.

Scene 2

  • Now we're at the SETI institute in New Mexico, where people seem to be pretty bored—the guy manning the controls is playing golf.
  • You'd have to be bored if you're resorting to golf, we suppose.
  • An alarm goes off, and the guy turns on a radio to listen to some kind of signal.
  • He makes a phone call to a sleeping guy and makes him listen to the sound.
  • …and then sleeping guy freaks out, bumping his head as he leaps out of bed.
  • Hmm, wonder what that's about?

Scene 3

  • The previously sleeping guy heads into the office, icepack pressed to his head. Whatever is going on must be pretty serious—he didn't even bother to change out of his PJs.
  • Previously sleeping dude learns that the thing making the sound is pretty close to earth, and on its way from the moon.
  • Double yikes.

Scene 4

  • Now we're at Space Command at the Pentagon, and military commanders are discussing what this thing could be. It's not a meteor, because it's slowing down. Capable of slowing down=not just some random option floating around.
  • They decide to get the Secretary of Defense on the phone…which seems like a pretty good idea.

Scene 5

  • A husband gets a call from his wife. He puts the wife on with his daughter and exits the bedroom. Just a typical family scene.
  • Whoa, maybe not—turns out, this dude's the president, and this bedroom is in the White House.
  • He and one of his staffers, Connie, discuss public and press perception of his work—apparently, even without the aliens, he's got some issues going on as far as running the country.
  • Suddenly, he's got the Secretary of Defense on the phone…and then back in space, we see a shot of a satellite crashing into the ship.
  • Things are starting to pretty interesting, pretty quickly.