Roger Ebert - Host: If you watch our program regularly, you know how Gene and I feel about the weekly announcements of the so-called box office "winners". We think it's a mistake to treat the movies as if they're some kind of sport, with the top-grossing picture as the week's "champion". But, the lists march on, and this week, we all heard about how "Independence Day" beat the record set three years ago by "Jurassic Park", by grossing more than $100 million in just six days. What made it so special? "Independence Day" was essentially a retreat of "War of the Worlds", an H.G. Wells science fiction story that was made into a famous radio broadcast by Orson Welles. In that story, as in this one, Earth is attacked by hostile aliens, and fights back with a virus they're not familiar with.
