Review of Independence Day: Resurgence (2016) by Jesse O — 17 Nov 2016

I remember watching the original Independence Day twice in theaters when it came out. And I didn't do that often. I was 8 year old, it was a movie about aliens coming and taking over the world, before humanity joins together to fight back against them, of course I loved it when I was a kid.

If I were to see it now, though, it'd probably be a different story. I might still enjoy parts of it due to nostalgia, but I doubt it holds up that well, particularly in the face of everything we've seen since then.

It might be entertaining to go back and watch it, so I may do that one day, not today though. Anyway, this brings us Resurgence, which attempted to capture the nostalgia that's been going around lately in films.

With the fact that analysts considered the film a box office disappointment, I guess they didn't really do a great job at capturing the audience that was nostalgic for the 'good old days'.

I don't know, maybe it's just me, while Independence Day is a famous movie, for sure, I don't know if it's the type of movie that one eagerly awaits a sequel for. Maybe in the immediate aftermath of its release, but not 20 years later after the fact when Marvel and Disney have pretty much taken over everything.

Admittedly speaking, though, I found the earlier parts of the movie to be entertaining. I'm not necessarily saying I was feeling nostalgic, but it was cool to see characters, that I hadn't seen in 20 years, again.

But that wore off very, very quickly. I don't think the original could have been described as having strong character development, as it was a shameless summer blockbuster, but at least the characters they had were memorable in some way.

The new batch of characters, outside of maybe Charlotte Gainsbourg, literally add nothing whatsoever to the proceedings. They're just bodies that occasionally speak. No personalities, no memorable moments, nothing.

And I realize that you can't rely on the old guard to carry you, you need fresh meat to push the franchise forward. But I'm sure you can find a way to utilize them in interesting ways other than just being there to look good, because that's what they all boil down to.

It's like you're watching a sci-fi Sears catalogue. If you look at what The Force Awakens did, they introduced new characters, but they were also interesting and entertaining. They also knew how to mix and match the new characters with the established faces and they created a fresh story that had some of the old Star Wars elements that loyal fans knew and loved.

That's the blueprint you have to follow, honestly. And this franchise doesn't even have as deep of a mythology as Star Wars. There's literally so many new characters that don't really amount to much of anything.

Like there's a group of kids that Judd Hirsch meets up with that, I don't know, serve no purpose in the narrative whatsoever. They're there to give it that epic scale, I guess. And don't even get me started on the goddamn story.

Oh my god, I don't even know what the point of it all is. The same basic fight back against the aliens bullshit we've seen before. There's various story threads that just fail to come together in a coherent fashion, so they may as well not have even bothered.

I'm honestly not even gonna try to go over it. There's also some weirdness going on in that there's characters that just disappear without a trace. It's heavily implied that they died, like the bunker thing the president and her people were in.

The aliens come in and kill one guy and then they cut away. They then swear in this military guy as the president. You didn't actually see what happen to the president and her people, you didn't actually see them dying.

Maybe they were planting seeds for the future. But, realistically speaking, so much shit happens after that point that I doubt 85% of people, at the end of the movie, will even remember that they didn't actually see the president die, so it's pointless to plant seeds for, potential, sequels.

The action. Where do I even begin? I'm not saying that it was bad, because it actually wasn't, the film has some pretty crazy shit going on in terms of action. But none of it resonates because you don't care about any of the people in this universe.

That makes it somewhat hard to care about their plight and their fight against the aliens. The special effects are fairly good. Though having seen a movie like Mad Max: Fury Road, this movie doesn't even compare to that film's impressiveness as far as visuals go.

And jut cause I say there's a lot of crazy shit going on in terms of action, that doesn't actually mean that I thought it was good. This is an action movie from beginning to end, there's just way too much of it and you're not given any real time to breathe and process what you just actually saw.

So there's no impact on top of the fact that you don't care about anything the characters are going through. But, as far as everything goes, this movie isn't the worst summer blockbuster I've seen.

Terminator Genisys was one of the worst movies I've seen in a long time and that was a summer blockbuster. That's considerably worse than this. Not saying that this is a good movie, because it's not, but it's only below average.

Not recommendable in the slightest, even if you've been waiting a really fucking long time for this. It's gonna end up disappointing you greatly. Good special effects does not a good movie make.