Josh Reviews Independence Day: Resurgence

I distinctly remember the experience of seeing Independence Day in a movie theatre, twenty years ago.  That film was a triumph of marketing, and I was super-pumped to see what had been hyped as a big-budget sci-fi epic.  I was somewhat disappointed by the finished product, particularly the egregiously stupid “let’s just plug our laptop into alien technology to defeat them all” ending, but I also really enjoyed the experience of seeing that film in a packed theatre.  I had a heck of a fun time watching the movie, laughing and cheering along with the crowd, even as I was very well aware that the actual film wasn’t living up to my expectations.

A sequel seemed like a foregone conclusion, but to my surprise one never arrived.  As the years passed, I assumed one never would.  But since 2016 seems to be the year of sequels to movies made more than a decade ago (from Star Wars: The Force Awakens to Finding Dory), I guess I shouldn’t be surprised that this was the year than a second Independence Day film finally arrived.

I didnt have high hopes for Independence Day: Resurgence (and by the way, what a bland, almost meaningless title that is), and the film met those expectations.  The film is very, very flat.  There are almost no surprises in the story, and not a lot of humor or excitement.  Quite a lot of stuff happens in the film, but none of it really engaged me in any way as a viewer.  This is somewhat surprising, because while the first film had a pretty stupid story and rather one-dimensional characters, what it succeeded at tremendously was in grabbing the audience and being a fun, popcorn-eating rollercoaster ride.  This sequel lacks any of that energy.

The film has a strong cast, but no one is given anything approaching a character to play.  While I can easily list the film’s many characters, I would be hard pressed to describe to you any sort of drama or arc or development that any character goes through.  Jeff Goldblum’s David and his father, Judd Hirsch’s Julius, have sort of drifted apart and sort of make up by the end?  Liam Hemsworth’s Jake and Jessie Usher’s Dylan had a fight years ago because Jake was reckless in training, but make up by the end?  Is there anything else?  I wasn’t walking into an Independence Day movie expecting serious adult drama or any sort of realistically interesting sci-fi story.  But it’s as if director Roland Emmerich (who was also one of a host of credited writers on the film) totally forgot how to create characters that would be in any way interesting and so capable of hooking an audience into the film.

No one is embarrassingly bad in the film.  As I wrote above, the film — like the first one — boasts a strong ensemble of actors.  Everyone is fine.  (Any movie that includes William Fichtner as the President of the United States has got to have something going for it!) It’s just that no one is any better than fine.  It’s all very flat.

The shame of this all is that, actually, by virtue of the fact that it took twenty years to get this sequel put together, the passage of time could have added an intersting wrinkle onto the expected beats of a big-budget sequel.  Buried deep within Independence Day: Resurgence is what could have been a fascinating story about a generation who, against all odds, saved the planet and then convinced the younger generation that they were now secure.  (There is a line that expresses that notion that is spoken by Bill Pullman’s ex-President Whitmore in the film.  The line played in the trailer as an ironic, regretful comment in the face of a second alien invasion, but in the film is disappointingly played straight.)  That the younger generation would then have to step to the fore to save the planet from a new wave of alien invaders, and try to compensate for the ways in which that heroic older generation had, in the end, let them and the planet down, could have been a fascinating story.  When we get the hero shot, at the end of the film, of the new young heroes all lined up in the desert, I could almost see that alternate version of this film playing out in my head.

But the movie we actually got isn’t that interesting.  Rather than taking us to unexpected places by checking in on these characters and this world twenty years after the first film, this sequel is mostly just a retread of that first film.  The story arc of this sequel follows almost the exact pattern of the first film, hitting a lot of the same beats.  It certainly is fun to see the older versions of many of the characters from the first film.  It’s great getting to see Bill Pullman in a movie again, playing a maybe crazy version of the formerly heroic President Whitmore.  Brent Spiner remains game for anything as Dr. Okun.  (I loved that they revealed that he has a husband in this film, though as with every other character, the film totally fails to mine any emotion or weight from the idea that Milton Isaacs has been caring for a comatose Okun for TWENTY YEARS, nor from what happens to the two men at the end.)  It’s great seeing Jeff Goldblum back leading another big budget spectacle, even though the script allows his character to coast on audience goodwill (for Mr. Goldblum and for the character from the original film) without really giving him much of anything to do.  (He has one good line, “they always go for the landmarks,” though the choppy editing of that sequence unfortunately removes much of the potency from that wry comment.)  We get a brief glimpse of a very elderly General Grey, played by the late Robert Loggia (I’m glad they included him in the film; it’s especially poignant because Mr. Loggia passed away last year), and Vivica A. Fox pops up briefly before getting dispatched in the new alien attack.

All the new characters are played by fine actors, but no one makes much of an impression.  Liam Hemsworth (The Hunger Games) tries mightily to create a Han Solo type character, but the script lets him down.  Jessie Usher, playing the son of Will Smith’s character from the first film, also tries his best but the film doesn’t allow him to have anything approaching a character to play.  If you’ve watched the film, tell me anything about his character other than the fact that he gets sad when his mom dies?

Will Smith declined to participate in this sequel, and his presence and energy are sorely missed.  Since Mr. Smith isn’t in the movie, I wish the film had managed to make more of a meal out of his absence.  We get a quick comment at the beginning that Mr. Smith’s character was killed in some kind of training exercise, and that’s it.  For a moment I thought that the film was suggesting that Liam Hemsworth’s character had killed him, and so that’s what drove a wedge between Jake and Dylan, but I don’t believe that is what the film means us to think.

I wish we knew what happened to Jeff Goldblum’s ex-wife from the first film (played by Margaret Colin), or why he and his father had drifted apart again.  Why has Okun been in a coma for twenty years?  How is it that all the aliens have been comatose for twenty years, and yet are somehow still alive and able to spring back to life when the second wave of alien attack approaches earth? For all the plot and circumstance in the film, the story leaves a ton of holes.

The film makes a big point of suggesting that anyone who had contact with the aliens was still somehow psychically connected to them.  But why then did all those people draw a picture of that sphere, which was from a second, entirely separate alien race?  That doesn’t make any sense at all!  Also: Jeff Goldblum’s David is surprised that the Congolese warlord Umbutu was able to get the lights turned on in the crashed alien ship (which he wasn’t, they just reactivated when the aliens returned), which implies that David and his fellow researchers still haven’t been able to crack the alien tech.  But the whole beginning of the film emphasizes how life on Earth has changed because of the incorporation of alien tech into their daily lives.  So which is it?  Has humanity cracked the alien tech or not?

I liked seeing Sela Ward as a strong female President of the United States.  I wish she had been more of a character in the film, and I wish we actually got to see her having a heroic death.  (The way we cut away from that scene, I kept waiting for her character to reappear later in the film.)

The film’s ending clearly suggests that they want to make a third film to complete the story.  Based on the tepid reaction to this second film, though, I don’t see that happening.  Which is a shame, because now this story is left incomplete, and that sort of thing always bugs me.  I’d love to actually see another fun, rip-roaring Independence Day adventure, and the suggestion that the third film would feature our heroes traveling into space to take the fight to the alien bad guys certainly sounds like fun.  But the low quality of Resurgence leaves me little hope that, should a third film ever get made, it would be any good.  I wish I had better news to report!