INDEPENDENCE DAY : RESURGENCE (2016)
Okay so this is the long awaited follow up to INDEPENDENCE DAY. When I say “long awaited”, it has the idea that 20 years have gone by in real life, and in this universe 20 years have passed since the last alien attack. The world is having a giant love fest with itself over its last victory and has built all kinds of “SPACE FORCE” type defense mechanism’s against anything alien that might attack again. Unfortunately I guess something was up with Will Smith so he didn’t return to his role, but his son is taking up the mantle in the form of actor Jessie T Usher as Dylan Hiller. We also get a fly by the seat of your pants jock type named Jake Morrison (played by Liam Hemsworth) and he’s gonna need a house because he’s dating the former Presidents daughter. Yes, Bill Pullman who delivered that fantastic “Independence Day” speech in the first movie.
What is great about this movie, is that unlike the first one, most people are on the same page when it comes to how to deal with alien attacks. Now it takes like seconds to make world changing decisions. So we don’t have a situation where man is getting in its own way…we just have a pissed off alien and skyrocketing insurance premiums situation on our hands. The acting is lighthearted and overall the film has very few moments where there is enough time given, to really emotionally ingest what is going on. I do wish we would have gotten more scenes with David Levinon (Jeff Goldblum and Julius Levinson (Judd Hirsh) interacting. Those scenes really added a lot to the original. However, for a popcorn action flick that is pretty much par for the course (shorter or limited emotional scenes). No problems there unless you came to see E.T. or ARRIVAL.
Where we do have a few issues is the fact that even though we are told “alien tech” has advanced everything, we are not given a plausible “fusion” explanation for the reason it seems to only take minutes to get from the freakin moon to earth. For me, this isn’t a huge deal, because they do give some background to the tech sitch in this movie, but I can see where some might take issue with it. I was kind of waiting for President Skroob to come out and say, “the reason everything takes two minutes is because if we showed it taking longer, the movie would be over”. I mean everything else in this movie is totally plausible. Like the fact that Dylan would even have to radio to Area 51 that they had the target in “sight”. The target they are looking at in the movie is a 3,000 + mile wide spaceship, that no one on the planet wouldn’t see. Just a side note, the Pentagon re-activated its UFO Group “officially” on 8/14/2020. Another issue with the movie is that they take time to introduce a new alien species that insults humans and ends up being almost useless. Unless of course we get a sequel in 2036 in which case that thing might come in handy.
Some of the more rad things about this movie are the cool alien designs and how those were expanded from the original movie. The mechanical designs on the all the new ships and space fighter jets they introduce. This movie has just enough humor and “softer” moments to keep it going even if you are not just a full blown action movie fan.
In spite of its issues this movie is a solid 5 out of 6 for me. I have seen it 3 times now and thoroughly loved it every time. Yet, I do understand the issues some viewers might have with it, especially those who haven’t heard the opening song to Mystery Science Theater 3000. One thing I can say for sure is that this movie isn’t even remotely close to as bad as some of the reviews you read. Even if it’s just to see Jeff Goldblum again, that alone would have made it worth it for me to buy this movie. So I did.
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