FILM REVIEW – Independence Day: Resurgence
Some 20 years on the from the initial Independence Day movie, its director Roland Emmerich is still looking for a similar crossover hit.
The original Independence Day was the highest grossing move in the world in 1996, and is credited with starting the current trend for CGI city-bashing movies. But as well as the famous CGI shots of New York, Washington and Los Angeles being flattened by psychics-ignoring alien saucers, it had a high quality cast, some decent – if silly – lines, and above all a great sense of fun. It may well be of its era, but it still weirdly holds up well.
Since then, Emmerich hasn’t really hit the same heights. 1998’s Godzilla has been disowned, 2004’s The Day After Tomorrow was bogged down by its preachiness, 2009’s 2012 was appalling, and White House Down failed to make its cash back, despite being more fun than the more monotonous Olympus Has Fallen.
Resurgence is an attempt at a sequel, and does come with interesting ideas in the preamble about mimicking the relationship with how the world responded to World War Two, and the fallout of an apocalyptic event that essentially changes human nature. In the hands of a different film maker it could’ve made a more interesting lo-fi film, or at least something not too dissimilar to HBO’s The Leftovers.
Instead, the film begins with a half-hour jet-setting vibe, taking in the new-look DC, a orbiting moon base, and an abandoned ship that landed in Central Africa – a rather general location rather than anywhere specific. It also tries to sell a vision that, after the events of the first Independence Day, the world became a one nation state without war and with cool alien/human hybrid technology everywhere. But in truth, its handled with a strangely uninspiring exposition that struggles to inspire and is ultimately outshone by the viral marketing campaigns. In truth, it may well be that the film-makers are waiting to get to the big explosions.
That starts coming about 30 minutes in, with an enormous spaceship turning up, destroying the human’s security base on the moon, and then landing on Earth, where anti-gravity devices pick up Asian cities and essentially drop its biggest landmarks on Europe. You already know what to look out for – its the sequence where the aliens dump the Burj Khalifa, the Petronas Towers, the skyline of Singapore, and a wide variety of other buildings, planes, and ships on top of London, all with Jeff Goldblum dryly cutting “They like to get the landmarks” as skyscrapers dislodge the London Eye and land on Tower Bridge.
That is then followed up by the mothership touching down over the Atlantic – “all of it”, as cheekily put – destroying several places at once, including a little cheeky dig at the first one by destroying all of DC up to the White House then barely touch it. At which point, the aliens begin trying to harvest Earth’s core – either in retribution, or for their needs. Its not really explained for what reason.
For the most part of this endeavour, its the old guard that get the more interesting things to do. Goldblum’s expert David Levinson gets to play his usual wry yet almost distant role, and is the best thing in it. Bill Pullman’s mentally conflicted ex-President has developed a limp and a permanent connection with the aliens, and does surprisingly nicely with it, David Hirsch’s father now lives on a boat and brings with him a real throwback schtick, and Brett Spiner – assumed dead in the first one – gets to re-emerge from his coma and have a bit of kitschy sci-fi fun.
For the most part, its the old guard that keep things going. By contrast, the new guard are given more of the weightless action-y stuff. There’s a neat sequence when they infiltrate the new super-mothership, but for the most part, Liam Hemsworth’s Top Gun-esque fighter pilot lacks the panache of Will Smith in the original – albeit probably to a better financial value than the rumoured large-scale financial package Smith requested to do this one – while Jessie Usher is strangely anonymous as the grown-up son of Smith. Maika Monroe’s Presidential daughter gets something approaching character development – a luxury in this movie – albeit in a slightly cliche-driven fashion.
There’s plenty to criticise, and it is hard not to think this could’ve been done in a more interesting director with different people pulling the strings. But as an exercise in film-making, its not lamentable. The ride goes along in a fairly fun fashion similar to the original, if nothing like as good. In and amidst its big and at times beautiful colours, it provides big, goofy fun rather than the stodgy boredom it could’ve been, and certainly hinted at being after its opening. As for the big action sequences, its reasonably engaging stuff using top-notch CGI, and it is strange fun to watch when it actually does these things, even with some caveats over the designs.
Its not the best film of the year, or even the best of the genre, or even the best reliant on the cliches, but as reasonably fun entertainment, it works. Saying that, its probably not going to have the impact of its predecessor, and if the third film set-up by the exposition at the end occurs, then we have to hope for something a bit more memorable.
3/5