Clichés and theft are nothing new in Hollywood, but they don’t typically build “original” summer blockbusters around them for good reasons. Apparently, Hollywood threw caution to the wind when creating Independence Day: Resurgence, the sequel to the 1996 mega hit.
As the citizens of Earth destroyed the alien menace on American Independence Day in 1996, a distress call went out from the alien invaders. Due to the space-time continuum, it took the aliens 20-earth years to come to the rescue. Earth knew they were coming and took unprecedented steps to prepare for them. We figured out their propulsion systems. We figured out their weaponry. We began translating their primitive writing of pictograms and hieroglyphics. We just totally forgot to figure out their defensive shields. Three out of four ain’t bad. In fact, it is a lot better than our current Congress could achieve. Still, it’s a pretty big plot hole from a film full of so many plot holes that it ultimately more closely resembles a landscaping lava rock than a movie.
Dead characters are alive, again. Earthlings have completely given up on thinking and strategy. The planet, once down to only 10% of its population is again teaming with people, as all of the cities have been rebuilt just as they were 20 years earlier…only now infused with the alien technology. Every cliché character type has been poorly deployed, and every major sci-fi plot line and twist of the past 125 years has been repurposed. Ender’s Game is heavily “sampled,” as they would say in the music industry. Starship Troopers appears to be the sequel this film is building toward. But really, you’ll see nods to War of the Worlds, The Empire Strikes Back, I, Robot, 2001: A Space Odyssey, The Day the Earth Stood Still, etc. Oh, hell, you win more points for spotting the original elements of this film, which are few and far between.
If their World-War-II-fighting great grandparents will go down as the “greatest generation,” millennials will be forever remembered as the “softest generation”… if the alternate universe of Independence Day: Regeneration were a true story.
Either half-witted or overly emotional, the young new cast of the sequel doesn’t look or act ready to do battle with ants in their kitchen, let alone angry aliens. Hunky Liam Hemsworth looks capable enough, but he’s the only one, and he hasn’t much with which to work.
Of course, the real blame for this dog of a movie rests on the shoulders of director/screenwriter Roland Emmerich and the FOUR other writers credited. Typically, five screenwriters is a good sign that a film is in trouble.
Original cast members make ample cameos and fresh starring returns. Jeff Goldblum has become the world’s leading alien expert. He capably reprises his original role, although his character is once again divorced and now semi-involved with a French alien expert, in a romantic subplot that never gets off the ground. Bill Pullman, the retired president who saved planet Earth, seems to be suffering some horrible PTSD that makes him a bit of a hermit…even though he never really suffered much or more traumatic stress than anybody else in the original flick. Judd Hirsch, Jeff Goldblum’s father in the original flick, is back and completely wasted in the new film. Speaking of wasted, Vivica A. Fox returns just in time to be killed.
Among the new—or newly reprised—characters: The character of Bill Pullman’s daughter is now a central player, though played by a different actress. She’s an overly emotional wreck who is supposed to be a top advisor to the current president, her father’s custodian (as he is too mentally unstable to be out in public) and a veteran ex-fighter pilot…even though at around age 26, she’d barely have earned her wings a few years earlier by current military standards. Perhaps pulled in so many directions, it is understandable that she’s overwhelmed for much of the film and seemingly on a suicidal course of action that completely lacks any forethought. Notably absent is Will Smith, who wisely avoided making this turkey. His character, Capt. Steven Hiller, is written off as killed in a test piloting accident, but his stepson Dylan is now the world’s top fighter pilot…in as clunky a stock performance as imaginable.
And last, but by no means least, there is Dr. Okun, the geeky awkward head of Area 51, who was killed by an alien while performing an operation on one in 1996. Confirmed dead in 1996, he was only in a coma in 2016. Now awake and ready for action, Dr. Okun has ample secret weapons locked away and a full knowledge of everything to take over alien research after 20 years in a coma. This dead-man-resurrected is by far the most egregious waste of time in the film. No, wait, Strike that. Liam Hemsworth’s sidekick who can’t even play the “stupid, annoying sidekick” cliché well is the most egregious waste of time in the film.
Yet, time wasting is important in this film, as we’re given ample backstories for characters who don’t need them and 20 years of catching up on characters who we missed from the 1996 flick.
The special effects are amazing, but by the time we get to them, we’re generally so sick of the characters and disengaged from the “plot” that they seem to be wasted on the film.
Perhaps, I anticipated this film too much. While it wasn’t a disappointment as big as the Star Wars prequels, it was still a let down. Given how the box office receipts tanked, it is unlikely the Starship Troopers-inspired follow-up will take place at this point.
Nathaniel Cerf is holding out for sequels to Twister, Evita, The English Patient, Don’t Be a Menace to South Central While You’re Drinking Your Juice in the Hood, and more from 1996. You can reach him at Nathaniel.Cerf@aent.com.