Independence Day: Resurgence

I recently re-watched the first film and was surprised at how robust its shelf life is. Again, it is undeniably cheesy and jingoistic, but done suitably well, I can have a ball with any material. In "Independence Day: Resurgence", set and finally released 20 years after the events of the first film, the aliens get medieval on us with an even bigger mothership.

There's a lot of heroics here by many a character who do their equal part to stop this new alien menace, having already made a stuffed calzone of the Earth's crust comprising from London all the way to Singapore. There's also a refreshingly silly undertone which sets it apart from the grim and serious blockbusters of today, and with added Jeff Goldblum and Judd Hirsch who return as the Levinsons, and "Star Trek" alumnus Brent Spiner as the eccentric Dr. Okun, Emmerich and his co-writers, including returning scribe Dean Devlin, certainly did not skimp out on the comic silliness.

Unfortunately, that is where the similarities end. The sins of sequelitis has been bestowed upon this sequel to his 1996 smash hit, and Emmerich is to blame, either for his laziness to phone it in out of frustration to fulfill the fans; or bucking in to studio demand to condense the film into a mere 2 hours. Sure, lots of things happen in the film, including stuff and cities going kablooey in high style, and high-tech aerial dogfights to give "Star Wars" a run for its money. Even Liam Hemsworth as the new hero Jake Morrison did not annoy me as much as I expected, though Hemsworth is still a far cry from Will Smith's "Elvis has left the building!" persona.

However, as slick as the modern CGI is, giving a sleeker look to the tech shown in the original film, it never quite gels together as a cohesive film - no momentum, no suspense, no catharsis when it does end. Bill Pullman's returning ex-President Thomas Whitmore is utterly wasted, as per his daughter Patricia (Maika Monroe, not doing her rep from "It Follows" any favours). It is not their fault; I feel that there is a lot of footage Emmerich was forced to excise by the Fox bigwigs to get more butts into cinema seats. Perhaps an extra half- hour of more cataclysmic destruction and character motives, but I may be asking for a bit too much at this point.

Things are very rushed indeed, with no payoff even when there's lots of characters doing their fair share to save the day. Goldblum and Hirsch, however, are still naturals, and they steal every scene they're in, and lift the movie up from near tediousness. Nevertheless, the special effects are fantastic, and are most certainly worth the price of admission alone.

It's kind of sad. This new one promotes global equality, with a female U.S. President (Sela Ward) celebrating world peace, and with everyone from across the globe giving it their all to kick E.T.'s ass. The action is fine and dandy without any of those annoying shaky-cam and quick-cut edits. And yet, the film suffers from awkward pacing, rushed dynamics, and especially a lack of cities exploding into fireballs. It even has sequel-teasing in the laziest manner possible in its final moments.

To quote Marvin the Martian, "Where's the kaboom? There's supposed to be an Earth-Shattering Kaboom!"

I think I know why so many didn't like the latest Independence Day-movie. As most of us know, our feelings and opinions about a movie weighs mostly on how it ends. If it's a great movie with a bad ending, you'll leave the cinema or sit in your sofa feeling disappointed and then you'll attribute that feeling to the entire movie.

I enjoyed the movie, it captured the tone of the first one very well - very cheesy, action packed and humorous. The two biggest problems however was the duration and ending. Without giving anything away, it ends too abruptly. I get the idea, but ending a movie like that almost never works, especially not when the original movie ended the way it did: with a spectacular burning debris rain. This just... ends.

The other problem I had with it was that they tried to cram in too much in just two hours. The first one had a perfect pacing, almost just as much sh*t happening as it was in this one. But the fact that it was a whole 30-minutes shorter made half the movie seem rushed, especially the second half. Which is too bad because it had potential to be just as good as the original. Other than that, it was pretty spot on. I especially enjoy the fact that it doesn't hold off any cheese, like the trend we've seen in most of our latest sci-fi epics. Everything's so dark and gritty nowadays and it's nice to see this movie take a step backwards towards what made the original movie so special.

I give it a 6/10. Good, enjoyable popcorn flick. Could be better, but could've been a hell of a lot worse.

I don't like fireworks. Never did. I didn't want to waste my time watching them, so instead I decided to go and see "Independence Day: Resurgence." I've never regretted a decision more in my life.

Wow. You ever sit in a class room, and while the teacher is talking you just kind of zone out, and then about ten minutes later you jump back to reality and realize you're supposed to be paying attention? This happened to me multiple times during this movie. There were points where I actually forgot I was watching a film, and I'm not joking.

The tag line is "We had twenty years to prepare. So did they." But did they? Because after watching this movie I really couldn't tell. In fact, the aliens seemed weaker. Sure, they had a few force fields, a few clever bait and switches, but is that really all they came up with after twenty years? No wonder no one in the movie seemed afraid of them. People actually seemed pretty calm, even though the aliens wiped out London and China immediately after entering the Earth's atmosphere, just by flying over them. But that doesn't seem to bother anyone. The Earth is going to end in a few minutes? Didn't seem to matter to anybody in this film, because no one showed any emotion, and anger, any sadness, any grief, any hysteria, or any fear relating to this, and because of this, there was no sense of tension or fear for the viewer either. And this throws the tone off, also. I understand that these movies are supposed to be guilty pleasure fun, but at least have the tone be a little darker and a little more serious. This film was so lighthearted that it was actually off-putting.

This movie never really felt like it got started either. I mean, you get your giant CGI explosion fest when the alien ship first enters the Earth's atmosphere, with cities literally being torn out of the ground, but then the action never gets any bigger or better than that. My jaw literally dropped while watching the destruction during this scene, and I was ready for the action to intensify and grow. But it didn't. It got slower. They put the climax in the first 45 minutes of the movie, and then just spend the rest of the running time focusing on the falling action.

The action was also incoherent, with a million things happening on the screen at one time. It was hard to follow and looked very generic, and while it wasn't necessarily boring, it wasn't exciting in the slightest. And the CGI wasn't even that good either; there were points where watching this movie was like watching gameplay of an off-brand science fiction video game that was released in the middle of winter to appeal to the parents of small children who have no idea that the game they're buying is a cheap knockoff of a triple A title.

And speaking of CGI, the universe that was built in the film didn't seem believable at all. I didn't see an improved and more protected Earth that used futuristic alien technology to their advantage. I saw a paint bucket of CGI vomit thrown on the screen, with Roland Emmerich stuffing it down our throats while saying "Believe it! This is reality!"

I should've watched the fireworks instead.

I was looking very much forward to it, since I'm a fan of the original (nostalgia based). 15 minutes into the movie I just knew it was going to be bad.

Made by the same director that made the movie 2012, it has the same terrible drama and completely transparent storyline. I'm not even sure if there even is a storyline to this movie.

The worst part, aside from all the crying scenes based upon long distance relationships, unresolved father issues and what not, was in fact that the aliens are more primitive than us.

You would think that a race with such insane technology have evolved beyond petty and shortsighted impulse driven emotions. It's when you realize that the Queen of the aliens suddenly gets a personal vendetta against a yellow school bus while fighter planes are bombarding her, that the manuscript was written in half an hour in a coffee shop.

I really went into this with open eyes and was completely set for loving it, but no. The movie is just pure garbage. I'm sorry...

This movie has an amazing cast. Boy did I miss seeing Jeff Goldblum, Bill Pullman, Sela Ward, and so on! It begun okay. The script could have been better Kinda lost some interest towards the end. If you like the genre, like myself, it is worth watching. It has its classical lines, funny moments, the excitement (not the best but there). Just don't expect a masterpiece.