Independence Day Scenes 16-20 Summary

Scene 16

Back in California, Russ is in a diner drinking something from a coffee cup (coffee, we can hope?).
Some other guys come in and start teasing him about his general befuddlement—and for thinking that he'd been kidnapped by aliens a few years back.
As the men are laughing and Russ starts to leave, the whole place starts shaking. One of the alien ships is moving over the area.
Suddenly, Russ's whole alien story might not seem so stupid.
Russ's family watches the ships appearing from outside their trailer.

Now we're elsewhere again, and we see another new character—a young boy running into his mother's bedroom to tell her about the ships appearing in the sky.
He finds her and another dude asleep. They feel the rumbling the ships are making, but they think it's just an earthquake. Ah, California.
Since they don't think anything is really wrong, they go back to sleep, and the kid disappears.
Around the world, the ships are appearing over major cities, and people watch amazed…and start to panic.
In New York, David finally realizes something about the signal and rushes back inside his building from his lookout on the roof.
On TV, the President gets ready to address the nation. The action is definitely starting to pick up.

We're back with the California family, the dude who was sleeping—who turns out to be Steve Hiller—is finally getting out of bed.
As he uses the bathroom, he sees the neighbors rushing to move out of their house. He assumes it's about the "quake."
Steve goes out to get the paper. He suddenly realizes all of the neighbors are moving out. He looks up at a passing helicopter and follows it toward…the alien spaceship in the sky.

Back in New York City, David's talking to Marty. He tells Marty that the aliens are about to strike.
He explains his big discovering about the signal: it's all about synchronizing the aliens' movements as the ships move into position, and when they are, he says, it'll be "Checkmate."
That does not sound like the good kind of checkmate to us. Ugh, now that nice scene with his father in the park takes on all kinds of foreshadow-y meaning.
David calls the White House. Apparently his ex-wife is the President's communications director—so, that's handy.
He tries to warn her to leave Washington, but she doesn't want to hear it and hangs up on him.
On the TV, the President asks people to leave cities in an "orderly" fashion if they want to flee. Yeah, because that's going to happen.
David seems interested in the fact that the President says he and the staff are going to remain in the White House.
We then cut to shots of chaos in the streets of New York (see, we knew "orderly" wasn't in the cards), as David rides through on his bike.

Steve's getting ready to leave for the El Toro military base, since he's a Marine pilot, and his holiday leave has just been cancelled because of, you know, the aliens.
His girlfriend Jasmine isn't pleased that he's heading into danger, as opposed to away from it, so they argue…but they make up before he heads out.
These two just can't stay mad at each other.
Steve tells Jasmine to get some stuff together and join him on the base. She seems pretty relieved by the idea of being with him in a safe place.