10 Movie "Plot Holes" You're Getting Completely Wrong

8. Independence Day - How Did David Defeat The Aliens Using A Laptop?

Independence Day
20th Century Fox

Another cheesy '90s blockbuster about the end of the world, Independence Day also has a lot of complaints lobbed its way due to how it incorporates science and technology into its plot.

More specifically, the way that humanity defeats the aliens has been brought up time and time again as a major problem with the story. David Levinson uploading a virus to the alien mothership using nothing more than a laptop is, admittedly, a little ridiculous, but it's far from being a plot hole, and while the movie largely skims over how he pulls this off, the issue is addressed in a deleted scene.

In a short sequence that was cut from the film, David has a look around the inside of the alien ship that had previously been recovered, mentioning that its communication systems are running with the exact same frequency as their countdown signal - the countdown signal that he deciphered earlier in the movie.

Simply put, David had already figured out how to hack into the aliens' communications when he decoded their countdown signal. This gave him the know-how to plug into the mothership's systems near the end of the film, and upload the virus.

Contributor
Contributor

Danny has been with WhatCulture for over ten years, and is currently Doctor Who Editor and WhoCulture Channel Manager, overseeing all of WhatCulture's Whoniverse coverage. In 2022, he took charge of WhoCulture and has grown it into the biggest Doctor Who channel on YouTube, and one of the biggest Doctor Who communities on the web full-stop. He has been writing and video editing since his early teens, and first got a taste for content creation after making his own Doctor Who trailers, off the back of a burning obsession with the Matt Smith era of the show. Like many his age, he first got into Doctor Who with the 2005 revival, but has since gone back and fallen in love with the classic years too. If you need someone to recite every Doctor Who episode in order, or to give you a random factoid about the making of Gridlock, Danny is the person to ask!