Independence Day - Resurgence

[Mr Light]

That reminds me. The biggest revelation for me in the movie was that there was a ground war in Africa fought with the aliens for TEN YEARS. That was really interesting. I love the fact that there were survivors stuck on the planet holding out like that.

And yet, at the end of THIS movie, the big massive invincible mothership immediately leaves the planet the second the Queen dies even though it was seconds away from cracking open the planetary core :-p I know they already explained that would happen but jeeeeeez.

Also, they said in this movie, gee there must have been a Queen on the first invasion we killed.... but then why did the aliens in Africa keep fighting for ten years?

 

[Trekker4747]

Independence Day: Resurgence

My Grade: C+
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This movie is tepid. Very, very, very tepid.

Like, imagine if you were getting ready for bed and you made yourself a nice glass of cold water. A good-sized glass, filled it with ice and then filled it with water. It's sitting there on your nightstand, you take some sips of it, ahhh. Cool and refreshing as it sits there sweating in the cool air of your home in the summer night making a lovely cup-ring on the surface of the table.

You fall asleep, not finishing it, then the next morning you wake up and go about your day. You've got a big business trip to go on! In the overnight the glass is all water now, the ice having melted over night, but it's still a nice, fairly cool, glass of water.

While you're away there's a big storm and power is knocked out on your block and there's record temperatures. The home is bottled up, no A/C and it gets warmer and warmer inside. You return a day or two later, still a serious blackout, your home is sweltering and here's this glass of water. It's been sitting there for two days in above normal temps in a bottled up home. The water inside is practically warm, not refreshing to drink at all.

That's this movie.

This movie is like Starship Troopers and not the Verhoeven parody cult-"classic" but one of the DTV sequels.

Look, the first Independence was somewhat enjoyable. It was a decent popcorn-in-the-lap movie you sat there and had fun with and had a pretty decent cast. This movie? I'm not sure what it's going for and it tries introducing us to new, young, characters who fight the bigger battles, almost meaninglessly, and save the day with the intent to carry on this new franchise.

Twenty years have passed since the events of the first movie and this one and humanity has made considerable progress by mostly uniting as a species and reverse engineering the alien technology into improving our own society as well as advancing our defenses in case another attack should ever occur. Except it seems we didn't duplicate their anti-gravity craft so our fighters still have to have wings and people on the planet still drive 30-year-old cars that run on gasoline. The surviving aliens from the attack are held in captivity in Area 51.

In Africa one of the alien Destroyers managed to land before crashing out of the sky like the others at the end of the previous movie and seemed to be drilling through the Earth's crust before being shutdown. The ship has been dormant and recently has reactivated, at the same time the captive aliens have become more active in their behavior and Dr. Okin (Brent Spiner) has awoken from a 20-year long coma which seems to have not impacted his weight or muscle movements since he looks pretty well fed for a man being fed from an IV for 20 years and he pretty much gets right up and walks around even though his leg muscles haven't been used for 20 years.

A defense station on the moon blasts at a alien ship that arrives but doesn't seem to pose any threat, later a device from another alien species is found inside; this alien species one of many that's been at war with the ID4 aliens for eons and has intentions on salvaging some of mankind before Earth is destroyed, soon after a massive alien ship comes upon the moon, this one with an enormous mass, that generates its own gravity to the point it disrupts the moon's surface and the oceans on Earth.

(It also pulls one of the Earth spaceships "caught in its gravity" with it and the ship cannot escape.... Even though the alien ship can't be generating more gravity than either Earth or The Moon does which the human ship can escape from so.....)

Anyway, the various leaders on Earth aren't sure how they're going to overcome this much larger vessel as their reverse-engineered alien technology doesn't seem to be a match and this group of aliens are more aggressive.

Some of our "kid fighters" end-up inside the alien ship and do things.

Jeff Goldblum comes up with a plan and goes around and does things.

Judd Hirsch goes around being a Jewish stereotype and does things.

Bill Pullman goes around acting sort of crazy and makes inspirational speeches while doing things.

Brent Spiner acts goofy and crazy while doing things.

William Fitchner is our military leader but somehow avoids the usual Evil Military Leader tropes.

Nothing in this movie makes much sense and it's all just so.... Tepid.

The music is bland, there's a lot of shots where it feels like a DTV movie with characters standing in front of a green-screen and the cast just feels.... Meh. The actor playing Will Smith's adopted son is obviously trying to do a Will Smith impression even by using some of Smith's "catch phrase" lines from the original movie and it just feels... Meh. There's a new young loose-canon-like pilot who's sort of cliche'd; his best friend sort of the geeky cliche; Whitmore's Daughter is there as an adult and she's.... okay. Every one in this movie is. Okay.

Except, maybe, Jeff Goldblum who's usually a treat to watch and maybe to some degree Pullman who honestly does seem to be trying. Maybe we can toss Spiner in there but there's a big dramatic moment for him in the movie that's treated powerfully but is unearned.

Is this movie good? Eh. It's maybe worth seeing but certainly not in theaters because it really does feel like a DTV movie. There's just so much of it that's bland which is too bad because it does have some interesting proposed ideas in it showing this version of humanity in "present day" but much more advanced due to reverse-engineering some of the alien technology. And, naturally, the movie ends with a sting of sequel bait.

So, I dunno. Maybe watch it on video or on Netflix or something. It's a meh movie.

The excitement isn't quite there like the original there are maybe a couple lines to chuckle at but there's just a feeling of this movie is trying its hardest and the best it can do is a SyFy movie-of-the-week. None of the new characters are given much for us to care about them. Romances are suggested and set-up, rivalries and friendships are set-up and it just feels empty.

And.... Did we need part of this movie dedicated to Hirsch speaking with some refugee children?

In the original movie it's a pretty big scene when the Destroyers fire and level several cites all at once, it looks good and has an impact. When an equivalent scene happens here? It's... Well, it's that damn glass of water.

 

[publiusr]

To my mind, if there had ever been a Star Trek vs Star Wars movie--it could have been done as a sueperhero team up. You get two known parties to fight--then team up to fight a third foe.

The Aliens here should have been that foe. The scale is right

 

[RAMA]

I'm mulling over seeing this because I find it hard to resist space based movies, but I have no real excitement for it.

 

[Trekker4747]

It's hardly "space based" there's more scenes in space (in particular on the moon) since humans have a base there and it presents some interesting ideas and a logical follow-through on the technology gained in the first movie but it also partly feels like "Starship Troopers."

The movie is a rental. Wait for Netflix/Red Box. There's really no reason I can think of to see it in theaters.

 

[The Nth Doctor]

It's hardly "space based" there's more scenes in space (in particular on the moon) since humans have a base there and it presents some interesting ideas and a logical follow-through on the technology gained in the first movie but it also partly feels like "Starship Troopers."

The movie is a rental. Wait for Netflix/Red Box. There's really no reason I can think of to see it in theaters.

Unless you're a CGI junky, I sadly have to agree with this.

 

[The Wormhole]

If anything this movie really reminds me of the Stargate TV continuity from the later years of SG-1/Atlantis/SGU: contemporary humans backwards engineering advanced alien technology and turning themselves into space opera heroes. Granted, in ID4 world it's kind of a bit more realistic in the sense that they're not making all these advancements in secret. The clandestine nature of the Stargate program really does work against it as the series progresses.

 

[Trekker4747]

Yeah, that's one aspect I really liked them backwards engineering the alien technology though apparently not the shield or anti-gravity technology (their planes still had standard airframes/wings). The cold fusion though was a big factor and I'm guessing the Destroyers didn't have the FTL drives or they simply couldn't duplicate it/hadn't reverse engineered it yet.

But the movie is just very, very, as I said tepid.

The rushed sequel bait at the end was also hammy and, again, very DTV movie.

 

[The Wormhole]

Oh yeah the final scene definitely serves no real purpose other than to set the stage for a sequel. Hell, you could have the actors step out of character and directly state "and so in the next movie this happens" and it would basically be the same scene.

 

[JarodRussell]

It was okay, but the first one was way better.

I did like the scenes showing how alien technology was fused with human technology, and the remnants of the alien ships lying around. What I didn't like is that they rebuilt most of the cities, AND landmarks, in 20 years. 1 WTC alone took 13 years to decide, design and build. I also didn't like that they changed the alien's goals. In the first movie, they clearly sent millions of invasion troops. Why would they do that if they only wanted to drill to the core?

Clearly, the characters of Liam Hemsworth & Jesse Usher were meant to be Steven Hiller and Dylan Hiller. Dylan is together with the president's daughter. Steve flies Levinson to the moon to investigate the sphere, and they barely escape the mothership. The Aliens kill Steve's wife, then Dylan makes that "you have to lead us" speech, then later Steven pisses on the floor in the mothership.

The movie was pretty unstructured, and it felt like they cut out 10-20 minutes. There is one thing I remember where the accountant guy asks "What are those blue lights?" on the mothership and it leads to nowhere. I think they caused the gravity to turn around, but that's only a guess.

There was not a single original scene in this film. I get the feeling that VFX Studios pitch stories now, saying "show crumbling buildings here, crumbling earth there, and waves flooding everything, we did that already, it's cheaper for you." I also wished they had come up with a better idea than to borrow the alien queen/bee hive idea yet again.

Levinson's father Julius, as well as the Kids, were completely pointless in this film. Which is ironic since he even claims in this film how his idea saved the world in the first film. In the first movie, every character had a valid purpose. Some where introduced as likable, to cause an emotional Impact when they're killed off. Some move the plot forward, like Julius when he brings up Area 51 or triggers the virus idea.

I didn't feel any emotional impact in this film. When the cities were destroyed in ID4, and the short sequence of silence followed, I had a lump in my throat, as well as the characters. In this movie, probably another half a billion people die in 20 minutes and no one cares.

To top the emotional impact of the destruction in the first film, as well as the feeling of devastation, I would have destroyed Earth in the first 30 minutes, and let the refugees, led by Levinson and Presiden Lonestar, find the sphere aliens and prepare the resistance/vengeance.

And a BIG issue: David Arnold not scoring this film. Seriously, how can you follow his amazing original soundtrack with such a bland, generic one? Why did they only quote one single theme and not re-use all of them, even though the setting and characters are the same? When the end credits play all the themes that are not even used in the film itself, it's really getting ridiculous. I wonder why the importance of film music has been so completely ignored in this one.

Some minor stylistic issues. I would have kept the flashes that appear in the first act of ID4, as well as the intro credits. That was part of what made ID4 different.

The sound design was extremely bland compared to the first one, especially the alien fighters and alien laser blasts.

 

[Grendelsbayne]

It was okay, but the first one was way better.

I did like the scenes showing how alien technology was fused with human technology, and the remnants of the alien ships lying around. What I didn't like is that they rebuilt most of the cities, AND landmarks, in 20 years. 1 WTC alone took 13 years to decide, design and build. I also didn't like that they changed the alien's goals.

WTC really isn't much of a comparison. That whole process was politically insane - actually building a skyscraper normally only takes a few years, and it could theoretically be done faster with more money/crews. With the kind of political unity and alien technology portrayed in these movies (as the result of alien attacks), rebuilding is a much easier process. Also, I don't think you were supposed to assume that every city destroyed has already been rebuilt, just some of them. I also don't think the aliens were supposed to have destroyed every city and landmark in the first attack - some of the ones you saw this time probably weren't destroyed in the first place.[/QUOTE]

 

[The Wormhole]

WTC really isn't much of a comparison. That whole process was politically insane - actually building a skyscraper normally only takes a few years, and it could theoretically be done faster with more money/crews. With the kind of political unity and alien technology portrayed in these movies (as the result of alien attacks), rebuilding is a much easier process. Also, I don't think you were supposed to assume that every city destroyed has already been rebuilt, just some of them. I also don't think the aliens were supposed to have destroyed every city and landmark in the first attack - some of the ones you saw this time probably weren't destroyed in the first place.

Thing is, London was destroyed in the first one, or should have been given it was one of the cities the first wave of ships were hovering over. Yet, unlike Washington which does look slightly different in this one, London seems to have been rebuilt to exactly the same as it was prior to the attack even to the point that the older buildings still look properly aged.

 

[BillJ]

That reminds me. The biggest revelation for me in the movie was that there was a ground war in Africa fought with the aliens for TEN YEARS. That was really interesting. I love the fact that there were survivors stuck on the planet holding out like that.

We should've gotten some flashbacks.

 

[Trekker4747]

That's kind of a big thing too, in the first movie there was a LOT of build up to the destruction of the cities and then it happens in a big, dramatic, way where you see the weapon firing and the cities ripped apart and the fire consumes them. Then the ridiculous scene with the dog in the tunnel and the fire-explosion not turning a corner into the maintenance room.

This movie the destruction of the cities just sort of happens, largely off camera and with sort of a shrug.

We should've gotten some flashbacks.

Yes, that's what this movie needed, flashbacks!

 

[JD]

I thought maybe the destruction of the cities was given so little attention this time because it was such a big part of the first, and they didn't want to repeat themselves.

 

[Mr Light]

Also, this is a post-9/11 world, unlike the first flick.

 

[Trekker4747]

Eh, we seem to have gotten over the 9/11 thing. Seems like cities being destroyed in movies is fairly "common" again.

 

[Snaploud]

Maybe, following the first invasion the Constitution was amended and general officers were placed in line of succession in the event of a follow-on ET attack. If you can buy the rest, this certainly is no stretch.

It wouldn't take a constitutional amendment to change the line of succession. Article 2, Section 1, Clause 6 of the U.S. Constitution grants Congress the power to determine the line of succession for situations in which neither the President nor the Vice President are able to discharge the powers and duties of the office.

 

[Grendelsbayne]

I thought maybe the destruction of the cities was given so little attention this time because it was such a big part of the first, and they didn't want to repeat themselves.

That sort of would make sense, except that almost every story beat in this movie came straight out of the first one.