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'Independence Day' at 25: How Jeff Goldblum plagiarized his own famous 'Jurassic Park' line for sci-fi blockbuster

Movies frequently pay homage to their influences by quoting them. Some lines are practically public domain at this point — just look at how many films have employed the in-joke “we’ve got company!” when our heroes realize the baddies are behind them.

But for the same actor to use the same line in two unrelated mega-blockbusters that were each the number-one movie of their respective years? That’s as unique as, well, Jeff Goldblum himself.

The actor famously recycled his own version of “we’ve got company,” the semi-panicky plea “must go faster,” from 1993’s Jurassic Park three years later in Independence Day, the alien-invasion thriller that opened 25 years ago, on July 2, 1996.

But as Goldblum told Yahoo Entertainment during a 2018 Role Recall interview, neither usage was scripted nor was it his ad lib. (Watch the full video interview above, with discussion of the line starting at 4:37.)

In Jurassic Park, Goldblum’s brainy-cool scientist Dr. Ian Malcolm first gasps the line as he, Laura Dern’s Dr. Ellie Sattler and Bob Peck’s Robert Muldoon race away from a T-rex in one of the park’s signature Jeep Wranglers.

That was a “a Steven Spielberg-suggested line on the set,” Goldblum explained.

“‘Hey, Jeff, maybe this time,’ as I remember vaguely, ‘say pedantically, as is your academic way’ — there was always a cerebral element to this character, I was always trying to make it a little more, you know, cool and gizzard centered, and you know, steamy. But he said, ‘I want you to say, “Must go faster,”’ something like that. So that’s what came about then.”

It became one of the film’s most iconic lines (not to mention a classic Goldblum-ism), right up there with “life finds a way.” So no wonder Independence Day director Roland Emmerich asked Goldblum to repeat the quip during an ADR session (automated dialogue replacement, when actors re-record or record new dialogue in post-production) for a scene in which the actor’s MIT engineer David Levinson and Will Smith’s Marine pilot Capt. Steven Hiller speed away from attacking aliens in their aircraft.

“He was like, ‘I know what you can say. How about one of those ‘must go faster’ from other movie,’” Golblum re-enacted in his best German accent. (Goldblum actually repeated the line three times in the final film.) “‘Really? OK. Come on, Will Smith, must go faster. Get out of here before the alien creatures trap us in here and kill us.’” (Not actual Independence Day dialogue.)

“I hope that Mr. Steven Spielberg looked kindly upon that. We appropriated it with the most affection,” Goldblum told us. “It was an homage, that’s a French word. It means, some kind of glazed donut, I believe.”

Speaking of classic Goldblum.

Stream Independence Day on Amazon Prime.

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