One of the most polarizing movies of the 1990s is Independence Day. People either love it with religious fervor or want to burn every copy at the stake. Twenty years ago, the soon-to-be summer box-office king Will Smith teamed up with ’90s schlock icon Jeff Goldblum to fight an army of intergalactic aliens hell-bent on stripping Earth of its resources by blowing everything to hell. It was loud, dumb, patriotic, and somehow perfect for its moment. Independence Day: Resurgence brings back almost the entire original cast… with one glaring exception: the Fresh Prince of Scientology himself.
The story goes that Will Smith demanded $50 million to return. After the critical “triumphs” of After Earth and Winter’s Tale, 20th Century Fox decided that money would be better spent on more productive ventures—like hookers, blow, and Facebook stock. So Smith’s legendary one-liner machine is killed off-screen before the opening credits, and that brings us to this 2016 cash-grab sequel. Twenty years have passed since Earth beat the aliens by split decision. In that short span the world has completely rebuilt itself into a shiny global utopia. World peace has been achieved, the nations have united under a single banner, and humanity now bands together with reverse-engineered alien tech to prepare for round two. Surprisingly, Liam Hemsworth (a.k.a. “No, I’m not Thor”) serves as the main character. He plays hotshot fighter pilot Jake Morrison, engaged to Patricia Whitmore (Maika Monroe), daughter of the former president. Jessie T. Usher plays Dylan Hiller, the stepson of the deceased Will Smith character. Dylan barely has any dialogue; every time he appears you almost have to remind yourself he’s even in the movie.
There are way too many subplots, too many side characters, and too many story threads that never pay off. Bill Pullman returns as former President Whitmore, once the delivery system for one of the greatest speeches in blockbuster history. Here he has been reduced to the town’s residential crazy man—having visions, screaming that the aliens are coming, while nobody believes him until it’s far too late. Jeff Goldblum is back as David Levinson, now running Area 51 research (a considerable step up from DirectTV repairman). His entire character arc consists of realizing how screwed Earth is and reacting to that realization with a string of hilarious one-liners. Charlotte Gainsbourg drifts in and out as a scientist, Brent Spiner’s Dr. Okun wakes up from a 20-year coma just long enough to be weird, and an African warlord (Deobia Oparei) somehow becomes one of the most memorable people on screen simply because he has actual personality.
If you are walking into this movie expecting any form of realism, leave the theater immediately. Spider-Man fighting a 50-foot giant is more grounded than anything you’ll see here. You have to accept from the jump that the film is going to fly completely off the rails. Maybe it’s the moment an alien mothership the size of the entire continental United States parks over the Atlantic and starts drilling a space laser into the ocean floor. Maybe it’s the giant white Poké Ball that drops from the sky and wants to teach humanity the art of interstellar kung fu. Or maybe it’s the sequence where a 70-foot Godzilla-looking alien queen chases Jeff Goldblum and a bus full of schoolchildren while someone shoots at it with a giant laser gun. As ridiculous as all of that sounds, there is something strangely charming about the pure, unfiltered absurdity.If I had caught this on a lazy Saturday afternoon with zero expectations, I probably would have had a blast.
But for a movie budgeted at roughly $165–200 million, you expect a little more effort in the arenas of writing, acting, suspense, and basic time management. Visually the film is frequently impressive—Roland Emmerich turns the destruction and dogfights up to a level the 1996 original never quite reached. The scale is bigger, the CGI (for 2016) holds up better than it has any right to, and the action set pieces keep coming. The praise, unfortunately, ends there.Would Will Smith have made this movie better? Possibly. Maybe the focus would have stayed on the Smith/Goldblum bromance instead of an overcrowded ensemble of characters who never really stand out except for that African warlord. Instead we get a film that feels like it was written by a committee that couldn’t decide which new young faces to push. The result is a two-hour ride that is never boring but rarely coherent.Independence Day: Resurgence is an enjoyable enough way to kill two hours if all you want is loud explosions and pure spectacle. Like its predecessor, you are either going to love this movie or hate its guts. I didn’t hate it.
I just have zero interest in ever sitting through it again, and it is definitely not worth the premium IMAX 3D ticket price just to see Gale Hawthorne (or whoever the new kids are) in slightly sharper resolution.
2/5
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