Independence Day Resurgence Review

WARNING THIS REVIEW CONTAINS SPOILERS

I don't know if there's a 90's movie I love more than the original Independence Day. I remember like it was yesterday the first time I saw it in theaters. I was very young at the time but have always been a sci-fi junkie, but I wasn't at the age where I was really following movies enough to know it even existed. My mother saw it ahead of time with some friends and came home raving about this alien movie. She took me and my best friend to see it one afternoon and sat and watched us soak it in with a smile. She told me she especially enjoyed watching the whole theater jump at the operation scene that she knew was coming. Needless to say I was immediately hooked. I bought all of the toys I could, which game with computer games that I would play every day, when the VHS came out I binged watched it on the regular. I was an ID4 fan! I always yearned for a sequel because one thing I am a sucker for, especially with alien invasion concepts, is how a world changed once an even like that occurs. There were always rumblings of a sequel and occasionally you'd hear some whispers of story details, but as years passed I kind of gave up hope. Alas, twenty years later, Independence Day Resurgence happens. I was ecstatic. How could anything mess this up for me? The first movie had amazing characters, and some of the best sci-fi designs I've ever seen. At the time they did some amazing things technologically, with 2016 tech they should be able to do something even crazier. Then we start to hear production talk, and the only thing really put out there to cause concern was that Will Smith was not returning. I'll be honest that this didn't bother me at all. Yeah it's unfortunate that one of the biggest stars didn't return, even more unfortunate that they killed off his character in kind of a lame way, but what are you going to do when the savior of Earth isn't present. I was all for killing off his character to let the movie happen, but just give him a more spectacular death. So how was a film twenty years in the making? Well this is probably the only time that Independence Day will be compared with Star Wars, but the anticipation and payoff for this film for me was the equivalent of The Phantom Menace.

Keeping on the Star Wars comparison shortly before writing this review I read a quote that said an executive at Fox was hoping that this movie could become their new sci-fi franchise to replace Star Wars, which everyone knows they lost to Disney. I feel like that explains a lot about this film. Things feel crammed into the plot for sequel and world building sake, and these things drastically alter the tone of the series. I would love to see the original draft of this script and compare it to the shooting draft because I bet there are a lot of additions. While Roland Emmerich is the king of excessive, this movie suffers from an excess of a different kind. An excess of story, which I know is a very odd thing to complain about. Simply said Roland Emmerich is known for disaster movies where everything blows up in a super awesome way. Well IDR is at it's best when things are blowing up. The action scenes are great and the scenes from the trailer live up to their spectacle. The problem is they don't really do much beyond those scenes. There's really only one worldwide destruction scene, where they are picking up and dropping down the cities which is awesome, and the rest of the action is reserved for dog fighting and (laser)gun fights. These scenes are really fun but honestly can be kind of a jumbled mess. You wonder how anyone could actually not just shoot all of their allies out of the air with how many lasers are flying around. All of the action culminates in what is a ridiculous battle with a five story tall queen alien that is just, for lack of a better word, bonkers.

Now while the action is fine the story that it is serving is less so. It might not be so much the actual story beats that are the problem but rather the way everything is written. Honestly what happens in the story is fine. Aliens return stronger than before, pushes humanity to it's last stand, humanity pushes back, fights giant alien queen. It's pretty standard stuff. It's the way we get to all of these scenes that bother me. First of all let's talk about the reappearance of the aliens. The War of 1996 as it's called in the movie was the most fantastical, and terrifying thing to ever happen to the whole planet Earth. The humans then spent 20 years dissecting the technology of the aliens and rebuilding, preparing for their eventual return. When they finally do show up again you would think it would be an almost traumatic experience. It's played off way more calm and collected than you would ever think. Especially after seeing their returning arsenal which involves a ship large enough to cover the entire Atlantic ocean. A major problem I have with all of the characters in this movie (of which there are many but we will get there) is that there seems to be little emotion of the situation coming from any of them. The movie doesn't let you dwell on any one situation because the story is moving too quickly and somehow this makes a two hour movie feel way longer because it's hard to invest in any one scene because you are quickly onto the next. A large part of this falls onto the large volume of characters and the feeling that they all need their own story. 

This movie has so many characters that it's almost impossible to care about anyone who isn't returning from the previous movie. Jeff Goldblum, Bill Pullman, and Brent Spiner are the returning actors who get the best screen time and really steal the show. The only new character I cared about was Liam Hemsworth's character and it wasn't because of the actual written character, but because I felt like he was one of the better performers in the movie. Among the new characters we get a President that we are given no reason to care about, a general who becomes President that doesn't show a lot of leadership skill, the children of the original heroes, and a plethora of children that really serve no purpose to the plot. A good part of the plot is dedicated to the Legacy Squad which is a fighter squadron made of the offspring of the previous war heroes from all around the world, the leader of which is Will Smith's kid in the first film. Being treated like royalty and having to live up to his father's legacy could have been an interesting character path for Jessie Usher's character but they don't do enough with it. Again you aren't given any time to really dwell on how any character feels. They don't care so why should we? This also applies to the deaths of some characters. We watch Dylan Hiller fail at saving his mom and I felt nothing as we watched her fall to her death from the top of a collapsing building. Now I like to think that's because the movie did a poor job of making me care and not because I'm a heartless bastard but maybe that 's on me. Honestly I cared more when I thought Julius Levinson died on his boat, but alas he survived to only team with a team of children and he treks them across the country to Area 51 because he needed something to do. This story thread does nothing but add some needless stakes to the final battle when they show up in the wrong place at the wrong time. I would rather have seen this entire storyline ripped from the movie and either find a way to tie Julius into what's going on at Area 51 or just follow through on his death which to me actually would have been a sad moment. There's just no intimacy to any moment of this film. Remember in the first film when the President had to go to the hospital and say goodbye to his dying wife. You won't find a soul crushing moment like that anywhere in this film. Just a lot of characters saying their parents (who we've never seen) are probably dead and they are really really sad about it.

So as I said before I felt the original film had some the best and most inspired alien designs I had ever seen. They way they expand on that feels cheapened in this film. The ships and fighters are all still really cool, but what was an awesome alien creature in the first film now looks like a bad CG monster. The CG in this film is not particularly great. The movement and appearance of the aliens makes them not scary at all. I still love the design and how they have their bio-organic suits but they lose a lot of appeal when they are digitally rendered. Once you see them walking down hallways shooting laser guns they kind of lose any serious feelings you might have about them.I think the aliens also suffer from just over exposure. In the first movie you can count on one hand how many aliens you actually see. Otherwise you only see faceless space ships and fighters that feel menacing. This film aliens are crawling out of the woodwork to mow down humans with extreme prejudice and any fear they might carries is flattened when on numerous occasions killing them is a scene of comic relief. Jumping back to our plethora of characters again we have an accountant and a warlord from the Congo who get teamed up to kill aliens with accountant as the comic relief against the straight laced warlord and hijinks ensue. There's also another storyline that I almost forgot to mention. As if there weren't enough stories happening in this movie. The aliens are trying to drill to the planet core because that's how they power their ships so out in the ocean we have some treasure hunters that are tasked with tracking the aliens progress. However at this point in the movie there was already so much going on that when they cut back to these guys, which was only a couple times, I actually forgot who they were or what they were doing. This script needed about twenty minutes cut out of it. there is just too much going on.

Okay so I think it's time to talk about the third act because it is, as I said before, bonkers. So we are introduced to a deus ex-machina of a ridiculous nature. The attempts to expand the world of this movie is fascinating to say the least. So all of the humans that have come in contact with the aliens are all experiencing visions of a circle that they can't stop drawing. Everyone believes these to be drawings of a an alien ship, signaling their return, until we actually learn that it's another alien race that is a living digital spheroid and the last of it's kind. This thing actually shows up floating in front of the moon before the aliens return and the humans respond in the only way they know how. By blowing it out of the sky and celebrating. Oops. So turns out these spheroid aliens have been battling the locust like aliens for centuries and recruiting other alien survivors from their war campaigns and hiding them all on a secret planet to develop weapons to finally fight back. This movie ends on the biggest set up for a sequel that I'm not convinced is going to happen. Oh don't be wrong if they make a third one I will gladly go see it and hope that this one was only a bump in the road but all of this set up just interrupts the story telling of this film. This is something I've believed that's been happening to a lot of movies since the Marvel machine became so successful. Even Marvel properties owned by other companies fell into this same trap. Looking at you Amazing Spider-Man 2. Well when this all knowing sphere shows up that triggers the queen to come after it and leading us to another final battle over Area 51, only this time instead of trying to take down a big ship they are shooting at a 50 foot tall alien ravager queen as it chases a school bus full of kids. This happens in a big Hollywood blockbuster. 

Independence Day Resurgence leans too heavily into the wrong parts of the original. How the original played up how great America is, this film tries to do with the whole human race. While moments of the first movie are cheesy they are done in complete earnest and that's something the sequel totally loses. No part of this movie takes itself serious and you shouldn't either. I would recommend that if you're interested you should still see the movie as there are parts to enjoy, but this would be better served as a rental or a Netflix watch. It's a muddled mess of story and characters that do little to try to justify a purpose in the movie. As much as I wanted to love this movie I can only give a two out of five. I was hoping for an experience of a lifetime but it turned out to be pretty forgettable. I'd still like to see them course correct for a third movie but given the current box office (143 million worldwide at the time of this writing) I don't think they will make a third film.