Why David Levinson Could Hack Aliens Using a PowerBook 5300 in Independence Day (1996) | decodingvibes.com

Disclaimer: Major spoilers for Independence Day (1996) in case the title doesn’t imply it strongly enough.

In the movie Independence Day (1996), Earth is invaded by technologically advanced aliens that just want to destroy everything in their path. They are like an invasive species, but on a cosmic level, with the singular goal of stripping the resources of any civilizations in their path. They have no desire to negotiate with lowly humans and would prefer eradication to any form of negotiation, setting up the film’s main conflict as humans gear up for war.

The first scene introduces us to the saucer-shaped spaceships slowly making their way towards our planet. These ships would then strategically position themselves across the planet. They plan to blast really powerful laser-type beams capable of destroying an entire city, and they intend to coordinate their attack using our satellites.

We follow the story from many points of view (in fact, they introduce almost too many characters in the first act), but the main protagonists of the movie are Capt. Steven Miller, a USAF pilot played by Will Smith, and David Levinson, a Jeff Goldblum-type character played by Jeff Goldblum.

Levinson is a TV satellite technician who happens to be one of the first people in the world to figure out that the alien signal is essentially a timer for all those ships to coordinate their attack.

For this article, we’re going to hyper-focus on David’s point of view and one particular scene near the end of the movie. This scene is one of the most important, and perhaps most discussed, in the movie.

The setup is simple: our main heroes are aboard a refurbished alien aircraft that crashed on Earth long ago, and they fly it into space, managing to sneak aboard the mothership, with the aliens none the wiser.

Then they dock with the central command of the mothership, and David uses his freaking Apple PowerBook 5300 to deliver a computer virus to the ship’s system, which disables its shields and sends an OTA update to all the spaceships, bricking their shields as well. This enables humans to attack the aliens with conventional weapons and a lot of cheesy one-liners, culminating in a cigar-smoking celebration of the world being saved.

But for now, let’s go back to that particular scene. Depending on how much you know about computer science, you could have different interpretations of the scene.

If you don’t care about computers at all, what happened on screen seems kind of feasible (it’s all computers, right). If you know a little bit about computer science, you might think it’s just plain stupid because how could a human laptop interact with an alien spaceship’s firmware, which is totally valid.

But if you also happen to be a movie nerd who spends too much time reading about things, you’ll realize that not only is the scene kind of feasible, but that it absolutely is, and the filmmakers actually thought about it!

The Issue with Hacking Alien Technology with an Apple Laptop

The main problem with the scene is that it looks ridiculous on its own.

Given the ubiquity of technology today, one might reasonably assume that it shouldn’t be possible for an Apple device to communicate with alien technology - like they’ll probably have different operating systems, or something, right?

And yes, this is largely true.

There is no way the aliens were running Macintosh in their evil spaceships, so it is fair to ask, how could this scene ever happen in real life?

However, if you know more than a wee bit about technology, you might even point out how difficult inoperability is in modern software, and the idea of a Mac-to-alien-stuff driver seems like a ridiculous notion.

However, this is where your engineering mind is stalling you.

Independence Day is a ridiculous movie: Will Smith punches an alien in the face at one point, the US president delivers the best Independence Day speech, then gets into a fighter jet himself to attack one of the big alien laser-beam-shooting ships, and Area 51 is real.

Of course, someone hacking an alien mothership is not crazy within the confines of this already-ridiculous universe.

But what’s really interesting is that the movie actually has an elaborate backstory that explicitly explains why that particular scene works perfectly and is 100% logical.

And this is why you’ll have a different view of the scene if you’re not just a computer nerd but also a movie nerd.

Alien Lore in the Independence Day Universe

As (more casually than deserved) stated before in this article, Area 51 is real in the movie. And the Roswell crash actually happened. An actual alien craft crashed on our planet, and the US government recovered the craft and has been studying it for decades.

And this top-secret research, which would reverse-engineer the spaceship’s technology, would directly lead to the inventions that we take for...