Independence Day Resurgence

            The world wasn’t exactly crying out for a sequel to Independence Day—the 1996 global disaster movie. Sure we all enjoyed it. It was fun. There was Bill (don’t call me Paxton) Pullman delivering that campy speech. There was destruction on a large scale. Will Smith, then in the height of his movie stardom, stole the movie with his wisecracking one liners. Jeff Goldblum brought down an alien civilization using a Mac Powerbook. The film, directed by Roland Emmerich and produced by Dean Delvin, came to define a new generation of summer blockbusters. Emmerich himself has specialized in this disaster porn with diminishing returns with films like Godzilla, The Day After Tomorrow, and White House Down. Perhaps this was an effort to recapture some lost glory? No matter what the reason for its existence, Independence Day Resurgence fails to replicate the success of its predecessor.

            Resurgence starts out promisingly enough as Emmerich immerses the audience in an Earth twenty years removed from the events of the first film. Here the film tends towards straight science fiction. There’s a moon base with a moody but talented pilot. There’s an African warlord who fought the ground war against the aliens for ten years. There’s President Whitmore (Pullman) battling the psychological demons from his own encounter with the aliens. There’s a unified and militarized Earth that celebrates its wartime heroes and venerates the new generation of soldiers who are eager to fight once again. And in the middle of it is all is Earth Space Defense director David Levinson (Goldblum going full Goldblum) trying to unravel the mystery of a recurring image that appears across the Earth. As long as the movie plays like a sci-fi detective story, Resurgence hums along just nicely. The problems begin when the aliens show up.

            The arrival of the aliens sends the film spiraling into a mishmash of convoluted plotting and too many characters with too little to do. Vivica A. Fox reprises her role from the first movie, having taken a new job as a hospital administrator, only to die saving a pregnant woman. Her death serves little purpose other than to provide motivation to her son, the planet’s best pilot. As if watching the destruction of the entire eastern seaboard wasn’t enough? There’s a bus full of children who somehow wind up in the middle of the film’s climatic battle requiring Levinson to save them. They have no role in the plot other than to artificially raise the stakes—as if the stakes weren’t high enough already. Then, as all action movies have to do now, there’s the obvious play towards the Chinese market. So we have a stern and competent Chinese general in charge of the moon base who dies trying to save his men. Then there’s his niece, one of Earth’s finest pilots, who mourns her uncle and resists the pathetic efforts of an American to hit on her. Not to mention the new American president (Sela Ward) who manages to say some presidential things and then get blown up.

            The plot of film veers directly into setting up an unnecessary sequel. After the 3,000 mile wide spaceship lands over the Atlantic and starts drilling for the Earth’s crust—ostensibly to steal all the resources from the molten core and kill all of mankind—Earth mobilizes its best and brightest, who mostly get killed. Then Levinson comes up with another clever plan triggering another big battle over the Bonneville Salt Flats (this is where the school bus full of children come into play). This plan involves using the arrival of another alien species—one that looks suspiciously like EVE from WALL-E—to lure the alien queen into a trap. After the Earthlings victory, EVE offers the promise of even greater alien technology and the opportunity to take the fight across the galaxy against the alien invaders (naming the aliens would be useful). The beats of the second half of the movie play like a poor imitation of the first movie and something that’s totally derivative. There’s another alien species with even better technology! The humans only have 10 minutes before the aliens puncture the crust! And let’s take the fight to the aliens! The only winner out of the whole film is Will Smith, who famously refused to reprise his role, for the sequel. At least he’s spared the embarrassment of Resurgence.