Independence Day: Resurgence

Roland Emmerich’s Independence Day: Resurgence is the sequel to his memorable 1996 science fiction film Independence Day, released and taking place twenty years after said movie and its events. Humankind, united in their common interests, pools their resources to combine human and alien technology in preparation for possible future invasions – but the aliens have advanced also. This seems like a logical concept for a sequel. Most of the main cast reprises their roles, save unfortunately for Will Smith, one of the coolest acting personalities of the time and one of the best parts of the first film, while more characters are added as part of this 20-years-later scenario.

The first thing one might notice (besides the futuristic setting) is the painfully on-the-nose dialogue. The establishment of the new characters is far too obvious and unnatural, joking one-liners are inserted in scenes that would otherwise be devastating, and the new characters themselves are lazily created. Liam Hemsworth plays a clichéd reckless rebel who realistically would not be employed in international planetary defense. Jessie T. Usher plays the now grown-up son of Will Smith’s character from the first film, an accomplished pilot following in the footsteps of his late father – and that’s it. The film gives a brief backstory on Hemsworth and Usher’s characters as an excuse as to why the two don’t like each other, but the audience learns nothing about him because there’s nothing else to know! One would think that Jeff Goldblum and the son of Will Smith from the first film would be the protagonists together, but young Hiller is played like a side character at best. In typical contemporary fashion, the film has Usher quote some of Smith’s lines from the first film, but in such a bland and serious way – what can one say but ‘Will Smith he ain’t’? And then there are the roles of Travis Tope and Angelababy, which only exist to insert a romance subplot into the film with no development whatsoever between the two.

The worst character that keeps popping up is Nicolas Wright as Floyd. This character is persistently annoying and contributes nothing to the plot to the point where even the characters tell him he’s useless. And the kicker? Wright is also credited as one of five screenwriters on this project, including the director and James Vanderbilt, who wrote the much better Emmerich film White House Down (2013), but is unfortunately also credited among the screenwriters of the betrayal that is Marc Webb’s The Amazing Spider-Man films. The only characters through which the audience can have any enjoyment are those of actors reprising their roles – Jeff Goldblum, Bill Pullman, Judd Hirsch and Brent Spiner – mostly because they are memorable from the first film, and at least this film presents them as consistent continuations. However, the sheer multitude of characters can leave the audience confused and the lack of focus on these characters, especially the ones who are supposed to be important, begs the argument that the film would have benefitted from a smaller cast.

As a sequel to a disaster movie, the action and effects are a central convention to the genre. While the destruction of buildings used practical effects and alien ships used CGI, the destruction of places like London is entirely computer-generated. Now, one could argue that these are simply updated effects for a new decade, and that’s a fair argument. However, while CGI was relatively new and popular at the time, CGI like this has become common, although one can appreciate the attention to detail. It is an inventive scene where the alien ship, so large that it covers a fraction of the Earth and has its own gravity, rips the city from its foundations and lets it fall to the ground in a fiery cataclysm, raising the level of threat from its predecessor, as a sequel should do. The action scenes have some form of tension, and it’s nice to see the heroes fight the aliens on the ground as well as in the air, even if the aliens aren’t made through practical effects or costumes. The problem is when the characters start making light of disaster situations, like with Goldblum’s line “They like to get the landmarks” when London is being destroyed; this is extremely out of place when the audience is made aware of how many millions of people are dying all over the world in that scene. They also make somewhat of a joke during this part in reference to the nearly iconic destruction of the White House in the first film; the alien ship looks like it’s going to bulldoze the building, but all it does is knock Old Glory off the roof. The tone is imbalanced.

The story has elements and even potential plot holes that weaken it. For example, America has many aliens imprisoned from the last ship; why would they not remove their biomechanical armour that enhances their strength, durability and gives them mind control tentacles? Why does the alien queen have a mouth and vocal chords with which she roars, when the species is established to have neither of those things? Oh yes, there are alien queens now, because the aliens’ telepathy is now made to mean a hive mind, which this film translates to comparability to ants and bees like in James Cameron’s Aliens (1986). The queen even resembles that of the Xenomorphs underneath her armour, at least in the shadows. Not only that, but they establish that killing the queen will win the day Phantom Menace-style. At least in the first film hacking the mothership released a virus into all the other ships as to lead to their downfall. One would think the aliens would have a chain of command to continue their invasion in the event that their queen died. And then there’s the introduction of another alien species that just seems out of place in a film like this, becoming a deus ex machina by the end of the film. And of course, if the studio can exploit the nostalgia of ‘90s children to get them to see this film, surely they can hint at another sequel despite the lack of demand for this one after so much time.

On the surface, the initial premise of Independence Day: Resurgence is not a bad one. However, even if the first film had its flaws, overall the sequel jumps the shark. The editing is really no better than any other movie, though one might notice some incoherencies in the cut from time to time. Its character creation is weak and horribly clichéd, and considering the main characters of the first film were basically a collection of stereotypes, that’s saying a lot. The new characters that the audiences are supposed to care about have no development, too much focus is given to useless side characters or inconsequential subplots, and the new things revealed about the aliens make them uninspired. Independence Day was not a great film, but at least its characters, performances and creativity made it memorable enough to leave an impact. Yes it looks familiar, but this film is badly written, unoriginal, unfocused, and exhibits the laziness of contemporary films that exploit and prey on the nostalgia of their audiences. Disappointing.