As anyone who has seen any of his films can attest, director Roland Emmerich really loves blowing up famous landmarks. Over the course of his career, he has not only blown up locations like The Hollywood Sign, the U.S. Capitol Building and the Statue of Liberty, but he has even gone as far as to destroy The White House and other famous places multiple times. Audiences will be able to see more of this blockbuster fun in the upcoming Independence Day: Resurgence, but what the movie also happens to come with is a great bit of improvised dialogue from Jeff Goldblum, mocking his director’s tendency to annihilate well-known monuments.
Today, 20th Century Fox brought a special reel from Independence Day: Resurgence to their presentation at CinemaCon – the annual convention held in Las Vegas for theater owners – and during one particular scene of epic destruction, the line that brought the house down was Jeff Goldblum’s David Levinson looking out the window of a futuristic ship and saying, "They love to get the landmarks!" Following the event, I had the wonderful opportunity to sit down with Goldblum and co-star Brent Spiner, and it was during our talk that the Jurassic Park star revealed that the great line was actually his own invention. Said Goldblum,
I did ad-lib that! They took us through, me and Liam [Hemsworth], we’re in a two-shot there, and in a Tug, and there was blue screen. And they said, ‘Here’s what they’re going to be doing,’ As you know now, it’s going to be one of the spectacles of this movie, because of the gravity, they’re sending rays down and the gravity lifts cities up off their foundations and then they fall on other cities. London falls on Dubai. So we’re making our way though, and somebody was going, ‘You’re now passing the London Eye! It’s falling down!’ And they said, ‘Just keep ad-libbing stuff!’
In case you’re unfamiliar with just how much Roland Emmerich loves to destroy famous landmarks, you may want to watch the super-cut below – because it will certainly help you appreciate Jeff Goldblum’s bit of Independence Day: Resurgence improv a bit more:
The original Independence Day certainly featured a whole lot of major destruction, but from what Jeff Goldblum described, the upcoming sequel should really take all of that to a whole new level. And it does make sense when you consider the fact that the aliens who were defeated in the first movie have brought serious reinforcements to planet Earth for round two. It’s hard to say exactly how the world will survive the attack, as a gravity beam that can pick up and drop cities sounds like too much weapon for humanity to handle, but we have to believe that our heroes will find some way to win the day.
Independence Day: Resurgence will be in theaters on June 24th.
