Independence Day: Resurgence - movie review
Independence Day: Resurgence
Plot: Two decades after the first Independence Day invasion, Earth is faced with a new extra-Solar threat. But will mankind's new space defenses be enough?
Cast: Liam Hemsworth, Jeff Goldblum, Bill Pullman
Director: Roland Emmerich
Rating: 12A (moderate threat, action violence, moderate bad language)
Runtime: 2hrs
Release Date: Thursday 23rd June 2016
"We will not go quietly into the night. We will not vanish without a fight. We're going to live on. We're going to survive. Today we celebrate our independence day." Whether or not you've seen Independence Day, the likelihood would be that you have heard of this empowering speech. It was 1996 and this film took the world by storm. It marked a major appearance for Will Smith and Jeff Goldblum continued his success from Jurassic Park. When I was old enough to understand the movie a little more, I really enjoyed Independence Day. It by no means is a good film but it's heaps of fun. 20 years later, fun was one of the many things missing from it's sequel.
The cast of actors is split into two categories. One half of the actors are returning characters and the other half consist of an extensive list of new characters. Leading the pack of newbies is Liam Hemsworth. No, not Thor, the other one. I do think that he gets a bad rep most of the time because he doesn't really get given the best of films to star in. The most positive thing I can say about Liam Hemsworth in Independence Day: Resurgence is that he isn't terrible. He just floats about being as mediocre as possible. His character has a potential to be witty in the face of danger, much like Will Smith (who is dearly missed in this film) but Hemsworth struggles to make it work. Everything about him screams bland and that isn't helped by the poor story that never helps him along. A hope that I had for this film was Jeff Goldblum. Even if this film had been utter rubbish, Goldblum would have surely been the saving grace. It is with regret that i admit that Goldblum was disappointing in this film. I never saw him reprising his role as David Levinson from the first film. Instead, he was just Jeff Goldblum having the various Goldblum-isms that he's become synonymous for. I wasn't sure if it was a case that he had forgotten his character or not a single bone in his body cared but something felt off about him. That, and he hardly features in the film. I mean, he's present but I struggled to grasp the need for his character apart from a couple of instances. Another returning character is Bill Pullman as (Ex) President Whitmore, who actually has a cool story arc as it seems he has a form of connection between the alien queen. That ultimately is pointless as nothing really comes from it and the way his arc concludes leads you to believe it will be badass but it's just inconsequential. Pullman is fine in the film but he does go overboard on the grizzled nature of his character. We get it, he has a beard and a walking stick. You don't need to growl everything you say. Also, do not expect any speech along the lines of the previous film because there isn't any. Some could say there is an attempt at one but I didn't see it. Like I said, that speech in the first movie was fun and uplifting but the absence of it here just emphasises the boredom. Joining Hemsworth #2 with the new additions is Maika Monroe, an actress that I have grown to respect after her roles in It Follows and The Guest. Those were small indie hits so it's clear that she's looking for a way to break through but this probably isn't the best way to do it. Much like Pullman, Monroe is doing what she can but her character is tragically underwritten giving her the opportunity of caring for her ill father or flying in a jet. There's no personality to her and that was really needed.
Seeing as Will Smith declined to return for this sequel, the writers decided that his character's son would take his place, this time played by Jessie T. Usher. I have to eat some humble pie here; I was convinced that from the trailers, this actor was going to be awful and could potentially ruin the movie. After seeing the film, he isn't all that bad. There are parts about him that I like such as his rapport with Hemsworth and Monroe but he really can't deliver some of the incredibly cheesy dialogue. We also have Judd Hirsch coming back for some unknown reason but the less said about his side story, the better. The two best characters in the film are Brent Spiner as Dr. Okun and Deobia Oparei as an African warlord. We all thought that Dr. Okun had died in the first film but it turns out that he had just been placed in a coma. You heard that right. The excuse for his return was a coma. Overlooking the laziest of storytelling tactics, Spiner actually knew what this film should have been; pointless, dumb fun. His character is even more ludicrous than before but I can see people being put off by it. As for the African Warlord, this dude was so badass. Early in the film, there was a mention of how he and his army fought aliens on the ground. That would have been a much better idea for the sequel. Honestly, he starts wasting aliens with machetes. No matter how much Independence Day: Resurgence may luck sense and fun, watching that was entertaining as hell.
Bigger does not always equal better. That might have been important information to tell Roland Emmerich when making this film. This time round, the mothership now spans 3000 miles. Instead of blowing up the White House, they drop Dubai on London. He's basically just tried to remake his own film but increase everything. As I've continuously said, I would have accepted this if the movie was fun. And it isn't. It's bland. It's void of anything. I'm sorry to say but Independence Day: Resurgence is twenty years too late. It was a cool idea soon after the release of the first film but people weren't screaming for a sequel. It would have been awesome if one was made and it was good but it was never like a Star Wars scenario where people practice it as a religion. The thing that I never understood from this film was where the first and second acts disappeared to? The entirety of these two hours felt like an elongated third act. There was never a start or beginning. Everything just happened and the audience had to put the pieces together. What made the original Independence Day so successful was that it combined a disaster movie with an alien invasion film. Since then, Roland Emmerich hasn't stopped making big budget destruction films. Heck, in 2012, we saw him destroy the world. In his newest film, he repeats stuff that we've already seen. Nothing felt fresh or inventive. The city wide disaster has been shown in so many big budget films. The look of the aliens have been slightly updated but look strangely similar to the Xenomorphs from the Alien series. Even the dogfights have been done time and time again with numerous sci-fi films. It was like Roland Emmerich was given permission to do what he liked because his films make money and the producers sat back like lackadaisical parents. To top it all off though, Independence Day: Resurgence has to have one of the worst actual endings to a film I've seen this year. I'm not talking about a final act but the final scene. A twist is revealed two-thirds into the film that was so weird and obscure but I let it slide. Then, in the final scene, a revelation was made teasing a sequel. This tease was so obvious and on-the-nose, you may as well have had the actors turn to the camera and say "Haha, you're gonna have to sit through another one of these. See you in a few years suckers."
Much like the bigger isn't better theory, Emmerich didn't know the idea that 'you can never have too much of a good thing' isn't always correct. Independence Day: Resurgence is full to the brim of special effects, as was the first one. However, the first Independence Day also had some pretty sweet practical effects for the aliens and ships. Now, I do think that at least 90% of the effects this time round are good (seeing the mothership crash land on the Atlantic was a highlight) but there was so much of it that the movie just became fake and a mess. Another missing link for this film was the score particularly the main theme. It doesn't play until the very end but by that point, it was too little too late.
It might have been the fact that Will Smith was missing, or that we had five writers trying wrangle a story out, but I was sorely disappointed. I knew that this wasn't going to be a cinematic masterpiece, far from it, but I was hoping it would retain the fun of the original and I could shove popcorn in my face and have a good time. Unfortunately, the story was incoherent, unfunny and monotonous. Perhaps the aliens should have just won this time.
My Verdict: 4.5/10
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