r/MovieDetails • u/Small_Economics1648 • Jul 22 '25
🕵️ Accuracy In Independence Day (1996), elements from the iconic 'Explosion of the Empire State Building' scene was reused in the film’s climax.
Credits to Corridor Crew for discovering this detail.
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u/Flickadachris Jul 22 '25
I remember BTS footage from the movie and thought it was cool how they made miniature’s of the city and flipped them on their side to get the shots of fire flowing through the streets because fire goes up and not sideways
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u/caligaris_cabinet Jul 23 '25
I know The Thing gets a lot of praise for practical effects and rightfully so. But ID4 has an astounding amount of practical effects we mostly assume is CGI. Most of the ships were models, buildings were miniatures, explosions were pyrotechnics, and aliens were puppets. And it looked damned good. A shame it almost never gets mentioned.
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u/Flickadachris Jul 23 '25
Absolutely! It may have been my first introduction to practical FX because it was the first time I had watched BTS footage from any movie and went “damn thats all real???”. I also remember going to MGM Studios as a kid and demanding to ride the backlot tour ride. I might be getting it mixed up with the Flight of the Navigator spaceship but I swear they had the crashed ship from ID4 on display too.
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u/albino_moench Jul 22 '25
Ah a fellow Corridor Reacts watcher.
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u/woutomatic Jul 22 '25
Them finding this out was such a cool moment.
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u/Killergryphyn Jul 24 '25
Stopped watching them after they sold out hard for AI and lost all artistic integrity. Such a shame.
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u/EngineeringOne1812 Jul 22 '25
Also: The Empire State Building isn’t in the middle of the street in real life. Midtown Manhattan is arranged in a very specific grid pattern, so the building would line up with the other buildings
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u/Nuke_Gunstar Jul 22 '25
I could be way off, but i think the building in the pic was the one where the ppl were partying on the top, which was not the empire state building.
Guess ill have to go rewatch it. … Again.
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u/kevinatfms Jul 22 '25 edited Jul 22 '25
Its the First Interstate Bank World Center(now the US Bank Tower) in Los Angeles in the movie.
FWIW, the first picture has the NYC cabs right in it.
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u/Balc0ra Jul 22 '25
Images here don't reflect it that well. But they did compare both explosions, and noticed the lower right corner on the last image, inc the trail going out. Was the exact same as on the ESB on the initial wideshot
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u/sprufus Jul 22 '25
I mean the spaceships laser donger was pretty much just an upside down sky scraper.
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u/ezikial2517 Jul 22 '25
My uncle was a pyrotechnician on ID4 and a slew of other movies you'd recognize from the 80s & 90s. He did practical effects with huge miniature models/cityscapes. He won an Oscar for his work, and deservedly so. Then in 2000s work dried up and he moved back to his hometown.
Fuck the CGI takeover of Hollywood.
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u/under-secretary4war Jul 22 '25
Can I ask- did he do ok for himself? Like- was it lucrative?
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u/Mazon_Del Jul 22 '25
To an extent practical effects are coming back. Partly it's because for A list movies, they HAVE to go max quality, which makes the CGI insanely expensive. But miniatures and such can achieve similar visual results in some cases for a fifth as much money.
Sometimes not even minis. Tenet, for example, famously crashed a real 747 because it was cheaper than doing it CGI.
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u/johnnyutah30 Jul 22 '25
I think it’s the main reason movies suck now.
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u/arealhumannotabot Jul 22 '25 edited Jul 22 '25
It’s not. No one cared about ‘bad’ vfx back in the day, they enjoyed movies because of good stories and acting. Practical effects don’t always look better, often times they used to look mediocre, but people forget that and only remember that they like or hated
CGI has its place and it’s not an analog to practical effects (pardon the pun). In fact they’re so often used together to achieve amazing shots that wouldn’t look the same if it was only one or the other
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u/we_are_sex_bobomb Jul 22 '25
It’s a symptom of the problem, the problem is using technology to be lazy - to be indecisive and not plan ahead.
To get that explosion right in ID4 it took a ton of careful thought and planning and then once they shot it, what you get is what you get and that’s what goes in the movie.
Nowadays they would just not decide on what they want until the very last minute and some poor VFX artist would have a long weekend to turn out the finished result.
It’s the general lack of care and planning which has made modern Hollywood movies look like shit.
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u/ezikial2517 Jul 22 '25
It's definitely a big part of why they feel so flat so often. To be fair, I was going to complain about giant beams in the sky at the end of every movie these days, but ID4 is filled with giant sky beams, so it felt pretty hypocritical lol
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u/res30stupid Jul 22 '25
The space ship launch from Apollo 13 was reused for Austin Powers, I seem to recall.
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u/Your_Kindly_Despot Jul 22 '25
I'm sure the discussion was: "Of course we are reusing the graphics! You don't manage the CGI budget Larry!"
/it's always a Larry.
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u/TacticusThrowaway Jul 23 '25
As I recall, the ESB practical effect was done with a model turned upside down. Which means the one in the climax is actually right side up.
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u/PeachyButPetty Jul 23 '25
Lol, so basically they just ctrl+c and ctrl+v’ed their own scenes into the finale. Hollywood recycling its own stuff, nothing new there! Honestly though, still love the movie, they could’ve cut and pasted the entire thing and I'd probs still watch. 🍿👀💥💯💯
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u/True-Pumpkin-9871 Jul 23 '25
LOL, so the budget was basically 'just ctrl+C and ctrl+V this explosion.' Recycle culture at its peak, Hollywood style. 😂🎬
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u/garethjones2312 Jul 22 '25
"You don't really think they spend $20,000 on a hammer, $10,000 on a toilet seat, do you?"