It's been 20 years since the last Independence Day hit theaters. In that time, visual effects have evolved to the point where making huge real-looking aliens is a lot more plausible than it was back in 1996, when all we got was one half-visible alien at the controls of the mothership—and that extraterrestrial Will Smith punched in the face. So for Independence Day: Resurgence, director Roland Emmerich called on the team at Weta Digital to make a bigger, badder alien. The Weta team ended up doing more than 230 VFX shots just for the final battle scene alone. Find out how they did it in the Design FX video above.
Design FX: The FX Wizardry Behind *Independence Day'*s Wild Final Battle
Making the mother alien and the destruction she caused took a lot of processing power.
