Review: ‘Independence Day: Resurgence’
It has been 20 years since the original Independence Day radically changed what we thought about a summer blockbuster. When the first trailer was released for the movie, Will Smith was only that guy from The Fresh Prince of Bel-Air, Jeff Goldblum was an established actor who is was coming off the major hit Jurassic Park, and Bill Pullman was destined to be quoted for his speech in the movie up until now.
The trailer for the movie was and probably still is one of the best trailers to a film ever to be cut. The alien ship coming through the atmosphere hover over NYC is still jaw-dropping when you watch the movie again. I’d know since I bought the Director’s Cut of the film and have watched it over and over because having that movie on in the background is a legit movie to have on. You never get bored of it. It’s the essential summer film, which means it’s entertaining, but not very good. I won’t even go into how I wrote Will Smith a fan letter when I was 11 because of the film. Let’s never speak of that again.
20 years later, the original team behind the first film is back to deliver a sequel about what is going on in that universe we haven’t seen in a while. Will Smith isn’t making a return to the franchise because the producers don’t want to spend 1/4 of the budget on catering to his needs. It’s a growing trend that a film doesn’t need a super A-list star to become a hit, it just needs the appeal of the movie itself. Take a look at After Earth… he couldn’t save that mess and it practically hindered his career.
Was this film good? It has its enjoyable parts, but overall it felt forced with the producers trying to recreate the original movie. At times, it felt like a Syfy channel movie with a huge budget. That seems like a oversimplification of the movie, but once you sit in the theaters and go through the motions, it’s pretty much a paint-by-numbers sci-fi film. Ever scene that has come you could practically say the dialogue before it happens. Every seemingly surprise that they give you is predictable. The end of the movie ends the way the first one didn’t by setting up a sequel. The original ended with humans winning and the aliens using. The explosion of the mother ship coming through the atmosphere and looking like fireworks on July 4th was stupid, but they knew it was stupid.
Jeff Goldblum is the head of the Earth Space Defense because 20 years ago, he tapped into the alien signal and then uploaded a virus from 1996 into a ship capable of flying faster than light. Again, that was stupid, but whatever. One of the reasons the film fails is that it’s too self aware. “They like to get the landmarks,” Goldblum says as the Burj Khalifa crashes through the London’s Tower Bridge. The 11-year-old me would be cheering at all the destruction, but the 31-year-old me has become accustomed to seeing a city blown up from afar. Maybe I’m desensitized since every action movie seems to show a city get destroyed, but never showing people actually dying. When a film doesn’t attach the human toll to the catastrophe, you end up not really caring about anyone. When the main character in the movie says a dumb line like the aliens love getting the landmarks, you sit back and wish you could browse the internet on your phone until it’s over.
I understand that this is the type of movie where a theater goer would urge you to “shut your brain off” when going into, but there is just too much idiotic stuff happening throughout the film that defies any sort of logic. The was even a part where someone said, “Can you believe it? You’ve been in a coma for 7,300 days!” This was said to a person that was actually in a coma. If you saw any of the previews, you know who that is being said to.
The first movie really showed off the abilities of CGI in 1996. The first movie still looks pretty damn good, but as I pointed out in a feature about special effects getting worse, this movie is no different. The special effects in this movie are heavy, but they look so fake that I wondered again how this type of thing keeps happening. How do special effects 20 years later look worse? When Jurassic Park hit, that movie made me think that the T-Rex was real it was done so well. The new Jurassic Park looked like bad CGI. It’s the same with this film. The overuse of special effects makes it no longer special. Since so much time is dedicated to all the effects, it’s no wonder why everything looks so incomplete. Just watch the trailer again. You can see the whole damn thing is computer generated, but if you go back to the original, you see they used miniatures and blew up models. It looked real because it was. The brain can tell when something looks like a cut scene from a Playstation 1 RPG. If you’re going to reboot something, at least try to match the original.
The last 2 years or more have brought reboots of remakes of past box office hits, it makes sense that this movie is coming out now. It’s basically a soft reboot/remake like Star Wars: The Force Awakens, but badly done. This is almost the exact same movie as Independence Day, but done half-assed. They brought back the old characters and introduced new characters to take the reigns. Unlike Star Wars, I’m afraid no one really cares enough about this franchise to dedicate much emotion to it.
Grade: 5/10
Independence Day: Resurgence is in theaters everywhere June 24th.
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Jeff Sorensen is an author, writer and occasional comedian living in Detroit, Michigan. You can look for more of his work on The Huffington Post, UPROXX, BGR and by just looking up his name.
Contact: jeff@socialunderground.com