Because Independence Day is patriotic and rah rah America and pro-military and all that, but it's also progressive. The lead is a black man and Emmerich had to fight for that because the studio didn't think Will Smith had star power overseas (during an era where overseas was much less important than now) (and also they absolutely meant that they thought racism would hurt the box office). Smith's love interest is a stripper and the movie is very judgemental towards anyone looking down on her for that. Smith is a stepfather to her son. And there's another stepfather storyline, but that got cut from the movie and is mostly just implied unless you watch the extended edition, which I haven't. Also, although the president is a veteran and is a pilot in the final fight, he's regarded as a wimp by the general public and is very reluctant to fight the aliens or even view them as a threat before they actually start killing people.

And one of the heroes is an environmentalist. He's obnoxious about it, but he gets to have his cool moments as well. His environmentalism also meant that we got to underline the seriousness of nuking the aliens. And he puts his money where his mouth is by volunteering for potentially a suicide mission.

Plus there's a lot of queer coding. The director is gay, so I'm sure it's intentional.

And on the other side, Air Force One is...almost fascistic? It's about the president being a tough guy. It starts with him kidnapping the leader of another country and then rather than celebrating that he declares war on basically every nation with an oppressive regime. Who cares that his allies won't like it, who cares what the voters say, it's the right thing to do! (And also it's so sexy and presidential! Or so says his wife.) And then Air Force One is hijacked and he stays on board to play action hero, because who cares that he's the president and has terrible, crushing responsibilities that he actively chose, and who cares that he's been a politician not a soldier for decades and he's going up against people who are currently soldiers and who planned and trained for this. He has to save his family!

And that's not even getting into how the neo-communists who are willing to kill a child in front of her mother just have pretty basic anti-war talking points that you'd hear from a fairly milquetoast liberal.

The presidency in Independence Day is hard. There's no good choice. Everything is a risk and the president is fully aware of how badly things could go. (I mean, before the climactic fight, but I can forgive them for throwing logic out the window at that point. They earned their big moment.) Like yeah, it's life and death in a way that Air Force One isn't, but Harrison Ford's president never considers how his actions will effect Americans or the Kazakh people he just "saved" by kidnapping their head of state. And the movie cosigns it, by making not temporarily removing him from the presidency a triumphant choice.

Anyways. What kicked off the whole thing was Bricks and Minifigs corporate taking over the franchise in Keizer, Oregon. The owner Chrystal notified them that she wanted to sell, since they were moving overseas, and the next day and without any notice they showed up saying that they're taking the store from her and if she doesn't leave immediately, they're calling the cops. And because they didn't hold up their end of the contract and give her the lease on the building (among other things! they blame her for violating the contract but they didn't do a lot of the things they were required to do and that caused many of the issues they say they had with her), they could do that. They could say she was trespassing.

As she lays it out, she missed payments on the lease because the lease wasn't in her name AND corporate didn't hand over the bank account like they were supposed to so the bank froze it, so payments that were supposed to be made failed. And that's what corporate used to justify taking the store over, even though it was all their fault and Chrystal was working with them to rectify it.

Oh, also, Bricks and Minifigs corporate admitted that a month before they took the store over, they were investigating specifically the inventory. So they knew the store had at least $100,000 in inventory. Likely they knew about the consignment deal and that much of the inventory hadn't been paid for. It's hard to just say outright that they were planning to steal it, because that's such an insane thing, but that's absolutely what it looks like. And they knew that she was moving overseas so her ability to fight them would be greatly hindered.

This is pretty egregious behavior if you have just one example. Except that another store owner has gone public on YouTube with his story about how the exact same thing happened to him. And a lawsuit has been located with another example. And like, three examples is a trend, especially for such a small franchise. But in an interview yesterday Chrystal said she's in contact with four other ex-store owners in the same situation, two of which may be going public soon (and two of which are staying quiet because they basically had their lives destroyed by Bricks and Minifigs corporate).