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

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

Gandalf and the eagles
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.

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Contributor

Danny has been with WhatCulture for almost nine years, and is currently Doctor Who Editor and WhoCulture Channel Manager, overseeing all of WhatCulture's Whoniverse coverage. He has been writing and video editing for 10+ years, and first got a taste for content creation after making his own Doctor Who trailers and uploading them to YouTube (they're admittedly a bit rusty by today's standards). If you need someone to recite every Doctor Who episode in order or to tell you about the making of 1988's Remembrance of the Daleks, Danny is the person to ask.