By Dylan Jones
RATING: *
Roland Emmerich’s 1996 sci-fi epic Independence Day, is possibly one of the best-loved action movies ever. There’s something very 90s and quintessentially American about it. It also sent Will Smith’s career into hyperdrive. We saw him for the first time not only as a movie star, but as a HOT movie star! He was well fit in it! And his grinning, go-getting charm was infectious, lending a joyful sense of silly gung-ho to proceedings.
It’s a shame therefore, that Independence Day: Resurgence is so earth-shatteringly dire. It makes me angry when movies are this bad. It didn’t HAVE to be this bad. How can you spend millions of dollars on award-winning scriptwriters, iconic Hollywood stars, and mind-blowing special effects and STILL end up with a shit movie?!
Its main issue, from the start, is it’s all just too BIG. When the level of destruction is so gargantuan that you can’t get your head around it, you stop caring. Also, it introduces way too many new characters. I don’t give a shit about whether Liam Hemsworth buys a house with his basic girlfriend. I want to see more Jeff Goldblum stuttering through sci-fi mumbo jumbo, it’s what I came to see! They don’t spend enough time on any one of the many completely unnecessary storylines so, again, you just stop caring.
The overall “plot” runs like a bad episode of Doctor Who. Like, if it’d been Doctor Who I’d have watched for maybe the first twenty minutes, then rolled my eyes and opened Pornhub in a new tab. It’s got every single sci-fi cliché going – an alien queen, a mysterious sphere…in fact, it’s not so much clichés as LAZILY STOLEN IDEAS. Other than that, it’s just a brain-curdling assault of whizzing spaceships, needless explosions and dialogue like “WHEW THAT WAS A CLOSE CALL, MAN!” and “SCREW YOU, ALIEN SCUM!”
Four-year-old boys with IQ’s under 50 will love this movie. It reminded me of inferior sci-fi pleb fodder, those nonsense movies that studios churn out to make soulless money, which get critically panned, then fall under the radar. The awful B-movie Battle: LA that came out a few years ago is a good example. The thing is, an Independence Day sequel shouldn’t have been of that ilk. It’s desecrated the original, and probably upset legions of its loyal fans.
Independence Day: Resurgence is a movie for stupid people. But, as we now know from recent events, the majority of the population is stupid, so it makes sense really. The only reason I’ve given it one star rather than zero, is because it had a gay love scene in it! Which was clumsy, incongruous and rushed. But then so was the rest of the movie, so it’s all relative.