10 Huge Movie Deaths That Totally Fell Flat

U.S. President Whitmore's (Bill Pullman) iconic rallying speech in the original Independence Day is well-known even to those who've never seen the movie, so if he was to receive a sacrificial death in the belated sequel, it sure as hell needed to mean something.

Uh, about that.

Near the end of the movie, Whitmore decides to lay down his life, performing a kamikaze attack on the alien Harvester Queen by flying a ship towards her and detonating a bomb.

Even with Pullman's mildly kick-ass one-liner send-off - "On behalf of the people of Earth, happy Fourth of July!" - this was a hugely underwhelming death for such an awesome character, all the more so given that it didn't actually kill the Queen but simply force her out into the open.

Whitmore dying a hero's death wasn't a terrible idea in isolation, but it ended up feeling like a totally unnecessary afterthought devoid of almost all emotion and excitement.

Hell, even Whitmore's pre-death speech couldn't hold a candle to his monologue from the original.