Independence Day: Resurgence : Review
The long awaited, and some what anticipated, sequel to the original disaster smash that was 'Independence Day', comes 'Independence Day: Resurgence'. Does it live up to the hype? Is it as good as the original? Is it a good movie on its own? No. But is it a mindless standard summer blockbuster flick? Yes.
But first;
The original is still to this day a great time. Plus, considering that it came out 20 years ago (god that makes me feel old) the special effects and action still hold up very well. Is a sequel needed? No, but I can see why they made one. As all the talk around a sequel started years back, showing a demand for it, it makes sense that this movie is now in cinemas, 20 years after the first one; but this movie has many many issues.
Pros
There are very few I should start off saying. The first one that I can recall is the action and special effects. Basically, when everything goes wrong and there are lasers flying around, with advanced alien and fighter jets shooting each other to hell, it is awesome. The alien queen was damn cool as well and was a definite formidable force and presence when she was on the screen and amongst the humans. The main alien ships arrival to Earth was very cool as well, and I have to give credit to the sound design as well, as it really did make the CGI scenes stand out more. The anti-gravity weapon the aliens apply once they arrive to Earth was a definite highlight, if you can call it that.
Jeff Goldblum. He was a huge plus point for this movie, and it was great to see his character, David, back on screen and helping sort out this enormous mess. Dr Okun was OK too, though he was there to provide much of the comic relief, most of it worked, and to also help advance the plot along thanks to a handy tool that he had made years ago. And that is it for Pros.
Cons.
Oh boy. The characters. I lost count of the amount of characters in this movie that I cheerfully hated and found that every time they were on the screen, I sighed with annoyance and found myself rolling my eyes at more or less everything they said. Apart from Goldblum, Okun and the now old President Whitmore, every other character sucked. I could not stand the young kids who just turned up halfway through, Hemsworth's character, Will Smith's son, every soldier so on and so forth. It was bearable on the first viewing, but I would no in hell choose to re-watch this movie, all due to the sheer amount of dull, annoying, crap characters that are everywhere in this movie.
The plot and story. Oh dear oh dear. To be honest, they did the best they could given the circumstances in creating a believable story and plot, but what really stuck with me is the amount of stupid and just needles scenes. One in which is the anti-gravity weapon the aliens use. That scene goes on for about a minute, and is fairly cool, they destroy some cities etc, standard Independence Day stuff, and then thats it. They use the weapon once, when they could apply it to everything and wipe out the humans defences and their weapons. But the worst by far, there are other points, like Davids dad being rescued by the vastly awful kids, the ending, the first 20 minutes or so etc, was David's dad driving the kids on the bus into the area 51 combat zone and also where the alien queen is. I don't even know why that happened, but I suppose they had to get David's dad to David somehow. When that scene happened, I turned to my father and we both had the same facial expression; what the hell is this?!
Then there was the ending. It is very abrupt and absolutely sets up for another movie, which I was thinking would probably happen, but the way in which they did it did they feel quite forced and out of place, and was an odd way in which to end the movie.
Conclusion
I am wrapping this one up quickly as re-calling everything that was not good is too painful to do as it brings back the memories of those god awful characters for a starter. Goldblum, Okun, Whitmore and the action sequences are all decent and enjoyable. But the continuous introduction of characters, each as dull and irritating as the last one really really does bring this movie down and awful lot. The story points, like David's dad driving a school bus in the combat zone, was just so poor, out of place and needless. 'Resurgence' is not a good movie, but it is probably the most sub-par blockbuster I have seen in a long time; a dumb and loud, special effects driven sequel to a frankly better movie.
