INDEPENDENCE DAY: RESURGENCE

“We don’t stand a chance.”

“We didn’t last time, either.”

Just…Just why?!

It’s both great and terrible when a movie is exactly what you thought it was going to be. It’s great if the movie’s great. If the movie is Independence Day: Resurgence, then it’s terrible. And by terrible, I mean…You get the picture.

It’s twenty years after the first movie, and Humanity has harnessed Alien technology to create super-fast jets, a super-laser on the moon and other useless CGI-built stuff. But guess what? Those same Aliens that humanity so brilliantly destroyed in the first movie are back. And this time it’s personal. Lol. Only joking. They’re after some Eve from Wall-E looking space ball that holds the key to mankind’s survival or some bullshit along those lines.

Ok, so in a minute I’m going to move on to the ridiculously long list of things wrong with this movie, but for now I’m going to stick to the good stuff. Jeff Goldblum once again portrays David Levinson really well, as does Brent Spiner with Dr. Okun and Bill Pullman with former President Whitmore. Whether or not it’s actually because they’re great in this movie or because every other actor in it is about as good as a pile of shit, I’ve yet to decide. Unfortunately, it’s probably that latter.

That’s uh…About it. Oh, and there was one funny Star Trek joke from Brent Spiner that not many people will get or even notice. Apart from that, I don’t remember laughing once.

So then, the bad stuff. If you’ve read my review for the first film, (It’s the link under this one on the home page) then you’ll remember I praised it for it’s use of pratical effects over CGI. You can forget any practical effects here. I’m not saying the CGI is necessarily bad, in fact in some places it borders on mildly good, I’m saying when CGI out-weighs the number of real things in the movie, people included, that’s not good.

One of the movie’s worst qualities is that it’s so damn predictable. Anything from the over-all arc of the story to the major death, which I guessed shortly after watching the first trailer, you know what’s going to happen. Especially when it comes to the third act, where you know that people are going to turn up just in the nick of time to save the day. So predictable is it, that any form of suspense is thrown out the window. The only surprising thing in the movie was the whole set up for the next movie, which didn’t have any place in the plot what-so-ever. It’s an add-on. A side line. It’s un-needed.

Most disaster movies end on a happy note. People are left alive and the world rebuilds. While this movie does try to end on a happy note, everyone is quick to forget that about an hour earlier, China was literally dropped on top of London, and that the Aliens drilled to about three inches away from the Earth’s core. If the oceans filling up that hole wouldn’t cause enough problems, which I’m sure would at least have some major global issues arise from it, then I’m guessing drilling that close to the core would, Y’Know, pretty much destroy the planet. But don’t worry, you’ll forget about that because there’s about to be another CGI battle.

It’ll be fine. What could go wrong?

While the plot of the movie is average in the fact that you know what it’s going to deliver, the pacing is…fractured. While the first movie got the ball rolling straight away, this movie takes way too long to get going. The first half hour or more is set up of people saying stuff has been happening over the past couple of days for no reason, and that all of that stuff has something to do with the Aliens. Yes, setting up a plot is good. It’s important. But when shit does hit the fan, everything is moving too fast and switching between too many characters for the audience to get any sort of idea of what’s going on. I know I definitely lost my place a couple of times. One second Jeff Goldblum’s on the Moon and the next he’s flying over London and under China.

Speaking of moving too fast between too many characters, this movie is full of characters. Not in the good way of having several well thought through characters, but in the way of having almost twenty characters that have next to no development. Seriously, there's way too many people to keep track of.

Look, I’m not saying this movie wouldn’t be fun if you were only watching it to see some explosions. It probably would be. But whether it was the stupid set up for the next movie which I hope never comes, or the fact that Liam Hemsworth shouts his way through the movie, or the fact that all the new cast couldn’t act for shit in this film, or that the best characters from the first one either don’t appear or are pushed aside, I just couldn’t enjoy this film. Not even in the ‘not taking it seriously’ way. When you can’t even enjoy something when you’re not taking it seriously, what’s the point? While my love for the first movie isn’t completely eroded by this crap fest, it certainly feels slightly scratched away at.

Seriously, this guy never stops shouting. This is his facial expression for 90% of the movie.