Independence Day: Resurgence (2016)

[RyanSz 3140]

Ooof, this one was bad.

 

I really enjoyed the first ID4 despite its campiness and cheesiness, but this one really turned up the suck factor. Basically everyone in this movie outside of William Fichtner and Deobia Oparei is comic relief, and the CGI is so-so at the best of times. And while people complain about the collateral damage in Man of Steel, it doesn't hold a candle to this movie as basically everyone in Asia and London are killed in a five minute span, and no one really seems to care after about 10 minutes. There were so many times I almost walked out that I couldn't believe that after 20 years, this is the script that Dean Devlin thought was a worthy sequel to the first movie.

[Joven 373]

Was it the same race of aliens? Or did they maybe stretch their think muscles to come up with a new one?

 

Because it was established in the first movie that that was the entirety of that alien race's civilization which was destroyed.

[RyanSz 3140]

See I can't remember if it was explicitly said that they were the remaining part of that race, just that they went from planet to planet harvesting resources. In this movie

it is the same race of aliens who have finally received the distress call from their brethren from the first movie concerning the global assault at the end of the first movie. This uber ship that comes to Earth has one of the alien queens on it, but there are apparently dozens of these queens throughout the universe. It is explained that there must have been a queen on the mothership in the first movie, which when killed caused all of the remaining aliens to go into a coma state or crash their ships if they were flying in the final battle. There is another race of alien that is introduced in the movie as well, which are made of pure energy that goes from galaxy to galaxy warning people of the main evil aliens, but this isn't revealed until later in the movie after a big miscommunication between the humans and the energy aliens.

To be fair though there was a few things that were retconned or ignored from the previous movie or just added after the fact for this to make some sense.

[Joven 373]

From the IMDB quote page: "I saw... its thoughts. I saw what they're planning to do. They're like locusts. They're moving from planet to planet... their whole civilization. After they've consumed every natural resource they move on... and we're next. Nuke 'em. Let's nuke the bastards. "

 

Even if there were other aliens, that whole distress signal thing is pretty crappy, it would take eons for the signal to reach the other ships...remember, these are aliens who needed to hijack our crappy satellites to actually communicate with each other on the other side of the planet, communications technology is clearly not their strong suit.

 

I watched that movie way too damn many times, I take my ID4 lore very seriously, lol.

[RyanSz 3140]

Yeah they really didn't explain it too well, maybe hoping people wouldn't remember one way or another. If it had been said by Bill Pullman that he misinterpreted what he saw while mind-linked to the alien in the first movie, fine would have been enough dirt for me to fill the plot hole, or to say that the ships we saw in the first film were an older model that weren't as advanced as the one in this movie, which would save a whole lot of headaches because it clearly is a more technologically advanced ship this time around, would have been fine, yet they did none of that. It would have worked out too with what else was in this movie as the main characters are basically told that we are a primitive, backwoods world who haven't evolved enough to warrant assistance, so it could have been a joke that the first ship attacks were done by the low aliens on the totem pole since we were an easy target, but again, nothing like that.

[NathanGordon 1096]

remember, these are aliens who needed to hijack our crappy satellites to actually communicate with each other on the other side of the planet, communications technology is clearly not their strong suit.

These were also aliens that were apparently running DOS or a Win 3.1 compatible operating system on their computers which Jeff Goldblum was able to write software for... meaning it also used ASCII characters... implying the aliens knew how to use the alphabet... grumble grumble...

[Joven 373]

Umm, excuse me, but Jeff Goldblum used a Mac...

 

I take my ID4 lore VERY SERIOUSLY!

[NathanGordon 1096]

Umm, excuse me, but Jeff Goldblum used a Mac...

 

I take my ID4 lore VERY SERIOUSLY!

I haven't seen it in probably twenty years. Point still stands; aliens should not have 3.5 inch floppy drives.

[PlanBFromOuterSpace 3138]

There really isn't a single death that means anything in this movie, is there?

 

What there IS is a shit ton of "Ignore the smart guy that saved our asses last time" moments, as it doesn't really matter at all what Bill Pullman or Jeff Goldblum have to say, even though they're the ones that saved the fucking world the first time. What we're left with is a bunch of new, young leads that certainly are saying and doing things, with making us care NOT being one of them.

 

Oh, so that scene where the doctor says that Spiner's been in a coma for 7300 days? That WOULD equal 20 years...if it wasn't for the four leap years in between.

[RyanSz 3140]

There really isn't a single death that means anything in this movie, is there?

 

What there IS is a shit ton of "Ignore the smart guy that saved our asses last time" moments, as it doesn't really matter at all what Bill Pullman or Jeff Goldblum have to say, even though they're the ones that saved the fucking world the first time. What we're left with is a bunch of new, young leads that certainly are saying and doing things, with making us care NOT being one of them.

 

Oh, so that scene where the doctor says that Spiner's been in a coma for 7300 days? That WOULD equal 20 years...if it wasn't for the four leap years in between.

Yeah the deaths that occurred were like they were trying to pass the torch to the next generation but it doesn't make sense as this is only the first sequel, so there is no desire by fans for a torch to be passed. at one point I thought "holy shit are they going to kill everyone from the prior movie?" I don't need to see any Hemsworth on screen that isn't Thor and I did find that the woman from It Follows was pretty good as Pullman's daughter. Also, if I never see Spiner's ass again it would be too soon.

[PlanBFromOuterSpace 3138]

 

Yeah the deaths that occurred were like they were trying to pass the torch to the next generation but it doesn't make sense as this is only the first sequel, so there is no desire by fans for a torch to be passed. at one point I thought "holy shit are they going to kill everyone from the prior movie?" I don't need to see any Hemsworth on screen that isn't Thor and I did find that the woman from It Follows was pretty good as Pullman's daughter. Also, if I never see Spiner's ass again it would be too soon.

Yeah, after seeing HOW involved he got, I was wondering who, besides Brent Spiner and Brent Spiner's agent, really thought he needed to be such a big part of this thing? OH, and of course, because it's a Roland Emmerich disaster porn, someone has to stay behind to protect a baby or something, and they end up dying like a fucking dummy. So then we get about a second and a half of grieving from the hero(?) of our film, who then goes on to not really do anything particularly memorable. Pullman was fine in this before also getting a chump's fate, and Fichtner was a boss. How about Judd Hirsch and those shitty kids when things go all Cloverfield in the finale?

[RyanSz 3140]

Yeah, after seeing HOW involved he got, I was wondering who, besides Brent Spiner and Brent Spiner's agent, really thought he needed to be such a big part of this thing? OH, and of course, because it's a Roland Emmerich disaster porn, someone has to stay behind to protect a baby or something, and they end up dying like a fucking dummy. So then we get about a second and a half of grieving from the hero(?) of our film, who then goes on to not really do anything particularly memorable. Pullman was fine in this before also getting a chump's fate, and Fichtner was a boss. How about Judd Hirsch and those shitty kids when things go all Cloverfield in the finale?

I was waiting for Hirsch to bite it after the baby scene thinking that they were just going to knock characters off one by one until it was just new people. Pullman was chewing scenery hard in this movie and the point when he volunteers to help is about when I yelled "oh for fucks sake" and left. Honestly, I would have loved to have seen a movie about the in-between decades when humans were reverse engineering shit and fighting the remaining aliens on Earth, maybe from the point of the Congo soldiers as that General was fantastic. You talk about Spiner's agent being amazing, how bout the agent for the accountant character who somehow made a guy, who's only other real big role was a tour guide in Emmerich's White House Down, a focal character of the movie while at the same time being possible the most unlikable character on screen.

[PlanBFromOuterSpace 3138]

 

I was waiting for Hirsch to bite it after the baby scene thinking that they were just going to knock characters off one by one until it was just new people. Pullman was chewing scenery hard in this movie and the point when he volunteers to help is about when I yelled "oh for fucks sake" and left. Honestly, I would have loved to have seen a movie about the in-between decades when humans were reverse engineering shit and fighting the remaining aliens on Earth, maybe from the point of the Congo soldiers as that General was fantastic. You talk about Spiner's agent being amazing, how bout the agent for the accountant character who somehow made a guy, who's only other real big role was a tour guide in Emmerich's White House Down, a focal character of the movie while at the same time being possible the most unlikable character on screen.

The alternate future history was an interesting concept, and I like that the ground war continued for a bit, but unfortunately, we didn't see much more than how the technology has been used to make better weapons and vehicles. They then spend the rest of the movie playing Keep Away with that ball thing that was there to help them that they stupidly blew out of the sky, even after the people that know their shit said, "Hey, let's not do that".

 

Also, that nerd/lawyer/company guy/whatever only exists to be an uptight pain in the ass that finally gets to do something cool in the end that's in EVERY movie like this.