Independence Day: Resurgence

Independence Day: Resurgence

With its bland and weak premise, ID4:R is not a fun movie to sit through. Despite being filmed recently, it looks and sounds like a movie from the 90s than a natural progression to the 90s action movie style. The script is clearly pieced together from of different ID4 sequel scripts over the years with some meddling from the studio to make the movie an even more of a shit show. The movie feels uneven and unfocused unlike the first movie.

Almost nothing works in favor of this movie. Nothing emotionally compares to the sight of our cities getting flattened by those giant ships. Instead, we get one giant ship looming over the entire planet. It doesn't have that same feeling. Where is the build up like the first half of the the original movie?

Let's go bigger, but forget about the character moments from the first movie. The movie amounts to nothing but putting some fresh faces in front of us.

-Director Roland Emmerich has gotten worst: He is the left-leaning Michael Bay of disaster movies. Somehow, he went from being a fairly good action/sci-fi director into a hacked director that makes poorly made disaster movies. This movie has more in common with Bay's lazy Transformers movies than Roland's older works like Stargate and ID4.

-The Kids in a subplot is the worst: Someone decided to add a group of annoying kids on a bus into the plot of this already bloated movie. Why? Judd Hirsch is also part of this plot. And, he is even more annoying and useless than his part in the first movie. None of this is important to the movie at all. Then, they shoehorned in the bus of kids into the final act of the movie for no other purpose but to put the kids in jeopardy. They had nothing else to put Hirsch in but having to drive kids across the country? What was the point?

-Let's make sure to shove aside all the older characters: Yeah, let us then focus in on the far less interesting cast of younger characters. This focus to the young cast reveals the bigger problem with the movie. The young actors playing the new character are boring. Sure, they look good, but they are only a step above a CW cast. Who are these people?

-Cheaper than the first one: Despite the upgrades in CGI technology, the movie looks fairly bad from a CGI level. The first movie looked a lot of better. The space battles don't have the same frantic feel and look as the first movie and that's a shame.

-Will Smith is missed: Smith, at his prime, was a charming type of leading man. He brought a lot of coolness and charm to the role. And, I would have loved to have seen a seasoned Will Smith Character leading the armed forces. However, they couldn't afford Smith's price tag and I don't think he was that interested in showing up in the sequel.

-Dr. Brakish Okun : Brent Spiner returns? Yep. Okay, he died in the first movie, but this sequel retconned his death into a coma. He was asleep for 20 years. Whatever, movie. He wakes up when the aliens returning to Earth. I really like Brent Spiner in his greatly expanded role and he is the best thing about this crazy mess. He is having a lot of fun with the role.

-Vivica A. Fox blink and you'll miss her: Why not have a bigger part for her? She is starring in Cool Cat videos, so she has some time on her hands to show up fully in the movie. Her character is a stripper turned doctor thus giving all strippers hope. Spoiler Alert: She dies within the second act after only having minutes on screen. Her death seems cheap.

-Retconned the Alien motive: The reason they came to Earth was to tap our core. What? Aren't there other planets without living creatures that could fight back with cores? That was an issue in the first movie that they tried to patch up that plot hole with this new reveal. It is a cheap reason for the aliens to attack our planet.

For a movie that has a bunch of action scenes, the movie is very boring. It has a boring collection of actors and characters while the more interesting ones are pushed aside. The special effects are that well constructed and the pacing is painful to get through. Just skip this movie and watch the first ID4 movie.

Grade: D-