Independence Day: Resurgence (2016)
Twenty years later, it’s time for the aliens to put some boots on the ground.
I feel as though it’s unfair to start off a review of one film by talking about another, but it’s almost impossible when the film up for discussion is the 20-years-on sequel to a major cultural release. Independence Day was released in 1996, and it was one of those “shots heard ‘round the world” for blockbuster filmmaking, a hearty, full-throated song of a film that, while certainly not perfect, succeeded both as a rollicking action-adventure and a cultural touchstone. It’s the kind of runaway success that would have immediately gotten sequels greenlit and underway today, in a time when blockbusters weren’t quite so expensive as to demand pre-existing brands be tied to them in order to guarantee profitability. I certainly don’t like to romanticize the past, but it does feel as though new IPs don’t stand nearly as much of a chance of having dice rolled on them nowadays, particularly as blockbuster tentpoles (take something like Pacific Rim, which would have killed in the ‘90s; it was met with a giant box-office “meh” upon its release and only managed to eke out a sequel due to China’s favor).
That didn’t happen, though, for whatever reason. Director Roland Emmerich went on to make the ill-fated American Godzilla, then became synonymous with disaster porn, carving out his status as the King of Wrecking Shit Up in other high-concept trifles like The Day After Tomorrow, 2012, and White House Down, while mixing in head-scratchers like The Patriot, 10,000 B.C., and the Shakespeare-is-a-fraud film Anonymous. For whatever reason, however, two decades later Fox has decided to move forward with Independence Day: Resurgence (between this and The X-Files’ event series, it’s a good time to be a fan of Rupert Murdoch-owned alien invasions).
The world of the film itself hasn’t stood still; two decades have passed since “The War of 1996", in which humanity was blindsided by enormous spacecraft that emerged from the heavens to begin destroying major population centers. Armed only with a recovered alien craft, a MacBook, and the most honest president the United States has ever seen, humanity made a last-ditch effort and managed to topple the invaders in a dumb-yet-clever twist on HG Wells’ War of the Worlds. In the intervening years, humanity has appropriated the alien technology, using it to enhance travel, defense, and all sorts of other applications. The world rebuilt, despite losing almost an entire generation in the span of three days, and became a much more unified place (it’s unintentionally ironic that the film which depicts a more unified world was released on the day the UK voted to break away from the European Union, and countries within it began fracturing to remain, to say nothing of the Leave campaign’s victory speeches dubbing it “Independence Day”).
We catch up with most of the characters from that original film: David Levinson (Jeff Goldblum) is the head of the Earth Space Defense, charged with co-opting the alien tech and studying the menace, lest they return (spoilers: they do). His father Julian (Judd Hirsch) travels around hawking his book, How I Saved the World. Former President Whitmore (Bill Pullman) suffers from PTSD and bad dreams, while his daughter (Maika Monroe), once a fighter pilot like her father, now serves the current president as a scriptwriter. Former exotic dancer Jasmine Hiller (Vivica A. Fox) now serves as a hospital administrator, while her son Dylan (Jesse Usher) followed in his father’s footsteps as well as a fighter pilot. Steve Hiller (Will Smith), however, was tragically killed 11 years after the War of 1996 in a salary dispute.
The film is off to the races pretty quickly, as the elder Whitmore’s visions give way to the arrival of another alien spacecraft, this one a truly ridiculous 3,000 miles wide (the ships of the original film were a paltry 15 miles across). Its plan is to…steal the molten core of the Earth and…look, you try coming up with something you need from Earth, OK? It’s not as easy as you think. I’m pretty certain that the Independence Day aliens saw Signs and thought “Um, hey…we’re not allergic to 70%+ of their planet, right? Are we sure? Can we check on that, get a definitive? OK. Cool. Continue invasion.”
Side note: if this is going to be a franchise, we need something specific to call these critters (but not “Critters”). Xenomorph is taken. So are Things. “ID4 aliens” is specific, but lacks a certain je ne sais quois. Hop to it, Internet.
All of the actors show up to play (even Liam Hemsworth takes a break from his reliably charisma-free performances to play Top Gun), and more Jeff Goldblum is always a Good Thing™. There’s been some outcry from a heretofore-unknown Cult of Mae Whitman, apparently, because Patricia Whitmore was recast with Monroe (the lead actress of the superlative horror indie It Follows), and while I’m sympathetic, Monroe is perfectly fine. I should also note I haven’t seen the kind of vitriol spewed forth over the recasting of Dylan Hiller.
But is it any good? Ah, hell, I don’t really know. Nostalgia is a helluva drug. My wife and I rewatched the original last night in preparation (neither of us had seen it in over ten years), and it remains a joy. That film is, yes, kinda dumb, but it’s also full of heart and there remain moments that are fantastically affecting, including Randy Quaid’s final scene and the famous rallying speech. If you don’t feel anything while watching the film, you may in fact be dead inside, or at the very least a robot. But I’ll readily admit that part of my enjoyment of the film stems from the nostalgia it inspires and as such, I’m far kinder to it that I might be under other circumstances (still, at least it’s no Skyline). This one? I suppose the worst I can say about this film is that there’s no reason at all to watch it if you didn’t grow up with the original. On the other hand, if you did, you’ll likely find things in it to enjoy, even as it comes off somewhat dull. I think the strongest part of it is the climax, which does rouse the film out of its incessant world-building and get things moving. The best part is that while there’s a blatant set-up for another film, should that third film be made, it should prove suitably insane.
It’s not terrible, just mostly passable with a few moments that do inspire the frisson of seeing the original. It’s also gratifying to see a major action spectacle shot like it would have been in the ‘90s; Emmerich’s style remains rooted in his origins and there’s far less shakey-cam than you’d find in a typical 2010s blockbuster. It should have been so much better, but I don’t hate what we (finally) got.
