Independence Day: Resurgence (2016)

[announcergirl]

As the Fourth of July nears, satellite engineer David Levinson (Jeff Goldblum) investigates a 3,000-mile-wide mother ship that's approaching Earth. Fortunately, 20 years earlier, nations across the world started to use recovered extraterrestrial technology to develop an immense defenseprogram. When the alien invaders attack with unprecedented force, the U.S. president, teams of scientists and brave fighter pilots spring into action to save the planet from a seemingly invincible enemy. 

 

[announcergirl]

They could have, and should have, kept that!

So the original movie is my fiance's favorite movie of all time. He was so excited to see it, even though we've speculated on how it might be without Will Smith. He told me weeks ago that we were going to see the sequel. He found the movie times and showed up excited to go.

Just yesterday I'd read that it was being reported that Smith would not be in the film because of he had scheduling conflicts (taping Concussion and Suicide Squad) - red flag-and the producers decided to go in a "different" direction, a "younger" direction. Looking at the lead guys, I already knew it would be not so great. The young people just didn't do much for me. Not enough oomph, charisma, to get me excited to go. But we went.  It was bad y'all. 

If it were another sci'fi teen movie, you know like a Divergent, then ok, it could work. Not great but it could be cool. Lots of CGI, a grand music score, young leads that would attract someone way under my age, perhaps. But no. Give the movies another name and lose the affiliation with the first and it could have worked. As it stands, without the heart and emotion of the first, it sucked. 

I foresee a lot of original fans being disappointed. Let's start with it being set in the future. Huh? Really? 

Edited June 25, 2016 by announcergirl

[ZoqFotPik]

I didn't think it was horrible, not great mind you, but not horrible. I did think it was too much like the first one. Aliens attack, first counter attack fails, a second much riskier attack is planned using what forces can be cobbled together, main character sacrifices themselves to win, etc. Judd Hirsch's scenes were completely pointless, he should have died during the tsunami. Did they ever say what happened to Margaret Colin's character from the first one and I miss it?

[theredhead77]

I enjoyed the crap out of it. I don't go into a movie like Independence Day expecting Oscar worthy performances. The treasure hunters on the boat were great. "We're alive" "we're rich!". Disappointed President Whitmore's little speech in the hanger didn't turn into something more.  I don't recall Okun being in a relationship with Isaacs in the original and Okun was in a coma for all those years... I appreciate there was a gay couple and that they were given as much (nearly none) PDA as the other "older couples" in the movie but it felt randomly inserted.

Edited June 26, 2016 by theredhead77

[ZoqFotPik]

36 minutes ago, theredhead77 said:

The treasure hunters on the boat were great. "We're alive" "we're rich!".

I liked those guys too. I thought it was funny how they appeared to be stereotypical drunken sailors, but the moment the government agreed to their price, they became and remained super professional.

Edited June 26, 2016 by ZoqFotPik

[theredhead77]

7 minutes ago, ZoqFotPik said:

I liked those guys too. I thought funny how they appeared to be stereotypical drunken sailors, but the moment the government agreed to their price, they became and remained super professional.

Indeed! I'd be getting hammered too if I thought I was about to die by alien. "tell them we'll do it for 100 million dollars". Good thing sober guy was sober!

[Iguana]

20 years to make the sequel and that's the best they could come up with?  No heart, no suspense, no logic, no thrills, no originality, no one in the theatre...  

Why would the aliens in the prison still be in their protective bio-mechanic suit?  What happened to David's wife?  Why was the gravitational force of the queens ship strong enough to uproot cities but not raise the ocean water or the boats therein, or pull the moon out of orbit?  What  was Judd Hirsch and those inexplicably non-traumatized children and their dog even doing in this movie? If the queen lured the fighters and bombers inside the ship to trap them, why were the pilots able to move around without detection and so little opposition?  How can I get the last two hours of my life back?

Edited June 26, 2016 by Iguana

[Scarlett45]

18 hours ago, announcergirl said:

They could have, and should have, kept that!

So the original movie is my fiance's favorite movie of all time. He was so excited to see it, even though we've speculated on how it might be without Will Smith. He told me weeks ago that we were going to see the sequel. He found the movie times and showed up excited to go.

Just yesterday I'd read that it was being reported that Smith would not be in the film because of he had scheduling conflicts (taping Concussion and Suicide Squad) - red flag-and the producers decided to go in a "different" direction, a "younger" direction. Looking at the lead guys, I already knew it would be not so great. The young people just didn't do much for me. Not enough oomph, charisma, to get me excited to go. But we went.  It was bad y'all. 

If it were another sci'fi teen movie, you know like a Divergent, then ok, it could work. Not great but it could be cool. Lots of CGI, a grand music score, young leads that would attract someone way under my age, perhaps. But no. Give the movies another name and lose the affiliation with the first and it could have worked. As it stands, without the heart and emotion of the first, it sucked. 

I foresee a lot of original fans being disappointed. Let's start with it being set in the future. Huh? Really? 

It wasnt set in the future. It was set 20 years after the war of 1996, which would be 2016....this year. The technology looked "futuristic" because post war we meshed alien technology with our own.

I too thought it was missing some emotional beats. The African war-lord had few lines but we were able to understand the emotional complexity of his character. I wish we had gotten more regarding how encounters effected survivors.

[AimingforYoko]

Recasting Mae Whitman with Maika Monroe tells you all you need to know about how Hollywood operates.

(No knock against Maika, she was fine in It Follows.)

[announcergirl]

5 hours ago, Scarlett45 said:

It wasnt set in the future. It was set 20 years after the war of 1996, which would be 2016....this year. The technology looked "futuristic" because post war we meshed alien technology with our own.

I too thought it was missing some emotional beats. The African war-lord had few lines but we were able to understand the emotional complexity of his character. I wish we had gotten more regarding how encounters effected survivors.

 True. I misspoke. It was not the world as we know it to be in 2016. Yes, they used the knowledge from the alien invasion to build new technology. In this version, they had an inhabited defense outpost on the moon and etc. Essentially, people living on the moon and traveling back and forth. I think that what made the first one so good was that it happened during a time we knew, and showed it could happen to anyone at anytime. The "futuristic" spin took me out of the movie. I found it unbelievable. Similar to other sci-fi I've seen and go into the movie knowing I must suspend belief. 

The fiancé said they should have made a second movie where the friendly aliens came to teach and to have Earth join its fight against those stealing resources. This one would be the third. 

[JessePinkman]

The movie is shaping up to be a big budget bomb. They REALLY should have waited for Will Smith, I mean Independence Day basically cemented him as a movie star so to make the sequel without him is ridiculous.

Not that adding him would have automatically made a better movie but it would have gotten more butts in the theater no question.

[GHScorpiosRule]

And now I know why Will Smith wasn't in the movie and why, when I saw the trailer for it when I went to see Captain America: Civil War, they had a picture of Smith and talked about his character in the past tense.

I really LOVED the first one. But Goldblum and Pullman aren't enough to make me see this without Smith, who (whom?) I still love.

[nobodyyoucare]

Quote

Why would the aliens in the prison still be in their protective bio-mechanic suit?

Removing them from it kills them eventually according to the tie in material which spans the 20 years.  They aren't suited for Earth's environment so those not only allow them to be nasty in combat but also allow them to do physical work but survive environments hostile to the alien inside.

[nobodyyoucare]

18 hours ago, Iguana said:

What happened to David's wife?

Does it matter? he wasn't married to her anymore in the film. Obviously they didn't get back together hence the tension Floyd picked up between David and the doc.

Quote

 Why was the gravitational force of the queens ship strong enough to uproot cities but not raise the ocean water or the boats therein, or pull the moon out of orbit?

The moon is a 1/4 the size of the Earth to affect its pull would also do things to Earth. The  ship ain't that massive. It was in fact raising the water when it was passing. Cities aren't that massive compared to the water on the Earth or the mass of the moon. It also did raise up boats it passed over head.

Quote

If the queen lured the fighters and bombers inside the ship to trap them, why were the pilots able to move around without detection and so little opposition?

 Once the bombs were dealt with there was no reason to care about a bunch of damn ants. The humans were going to all die when the core was drilled so why would the aliens really concern themselves with hunting some annoying specs? Also the aliens were doing sweep patrols likely just for fun of killing some ants.

Quote

What  was Judd Hirsch and those inexplicably non-traumatized children and their dog even doing in this movie?

It was to answer people demanding what had happened to Randy Quaid's children.

[nobodyyoucare]

4 hours ago, JessePinkman said:

The movie is shaping up to be a big budget bomb. They REALLY should have waited for Will Smith, I mean Independence Day basically cemented him as a movie star so to make the sequel without him is ridiculous.

Not that adding him would have automatically made a better movie but it would have gotten more butts in the theater no question.

Will Smith picked some horrible films such as Wild Wild West and After Earth his star power has dimmed but his arrogance has not. He refused what they offered to pay him so they just offed him and had his character's step son fill the role.

[JessePinkman]

28 minutes ago, nobodyyoucare said:

Will Smith picked some horrible films such as Wild Wild West and After Earth his star power has dimmed but his arrogance has not. He refused what they offered to pay him so they just offed him and had his character's step son fill the role.

I'm sure he asked for what he thought his presence in the movie was worth (and judging from the box office returns it might have been worth a lot).

[Amethyst]

22 hours ago, Iguana said:

What happened to David's wife?  

Supposedly, Constance died some time before the events in the sequel, hence David hooking up with the old flame.  That really sucks because Margaret Colin and Goldblum had good chemistry.  No idea how or why they killed her off.

[Bruinsfan]

Terminal not-twentysomething-ness?

[nobodyyoucare]

13 hours ago, Amethyst said:

Supposedly, Constance died some time before the events in the sequel, hence David hooking up with the old flame.  That really sucks because Margaret Colin and Goldblum had good chemistry.  No idea how or why they killed her off.

Independence Day: Crucible the tie in novel details her death.

[thuganomics85]

The first Independence Day was one of my favorite action films "back in the day," and even now I still enjoy it, despite seeing some of the goofier flaws in it (Millions of humans dying in NYC?  Sucks, but oh well!  Will Smith's family's dog in peril?!  Noooooo!!!)  But this one?  Was a major disappointment.  It felt like they basically wanted to retread common ground, only with a younger cast in the leads, and the old guard either in the background or getting killed off; both off-screen and on-screen.)

The probably is though that none of the new folks really impressed me.  Surprisingly, Liam Hemsworth wasn't as bad as I feared, but he's still kind of dull, and as with most Liam roles, I just keep thinking how big brother Chris would have probably fared better.  Jessie T. Usher did what he could, but he clearly lacks the star-making power Will Smith had back in 95/96, and Dylan just made me miss Steve Hiller even more.  I know Maika Monroe got praise for that It Follows film, but she was almost a nonentity here.  To be fair, her main purpose seemed to be either freaking out over Liam being in peril or President Whitmore being in peril, so it's not like she had a lot to work with it.  She did look good in that tank-top at the end, at least.

It was nice seeing Jeff Goldblum as David again, even if I'm not sure why I should care about this former flame of his. Bill Pullman already seemed over it, so it's probably a good thing Whitmore is already gone for good.  Brent Spiner was entertaining as Okun.  Judd Hirsch was wasted and his entire storyline was pointless.  It almost felt like he signed on board at the last minute, and they had to scramble to get him something to do.

Not surprised it under-performed domestically, but they'll probably make some back overseas.  Especially with them snatching a few Chinese actors like Chin Han and Anglebaby for roles, and making sure China played a huge part in this.  I'm sure China will love that!

[Morrigan2575]

I have a free movie ticket to use this weekend and I'm debating between this and Finding Dory.  I usually go see Action/Sci-fi/Fantasy in theaters and save Cartoons/Comedys/etc for home viewing.  

For those of you who've seen the movie, is it that bad that it would be a waste of a free ticket?

[nobodyyoucare]

I wasn't bored and it actually is enjoyable. Fairly straightforward and easy to eat popcorn.

[Morrigan2575]

Cool, thanks. I've been wavering, Jeremy Jahns didn't give it the best review. 

[announcergirl]

On June 28, 2016 at 6:09 PM, Morrigan2575 said:

I have a free movie ticket to use this weekend and I'm debating between this and Finding Dory.  I usually go see Action/Sci-fi/Fantasy in theaters and save Cartoons/Comedys/etc for home viewing.  

For those of you who've seen the movie, is it that bad that it would be a waste of a free ticket?

See Dory

[BookWoman56]

On 6/29/2016 at 8:10 AM, nobodyyoucare said:

I wasn't bored and it actually is enjoyable. Fairly straightforward and easy to eat popcorn.

Agreed. I went into it after reading several meh to negative reviews and was pleasantly surprised that it was enjoyable. Sure, there were things that could have been done much better, but there were some positives as well. On the plus side, this was a sequel that made sense given the conclusion of the original. Earth had taken down an invading fleet of aliens, so it's logical to expect that the main base/home of the aliens would send a larger force to accomplish the original goal. The CGI effects were beautiful in a scary way. The acting for the most part was solid. Seeing some of the characters from the original felt good, and they fit well into an alt history of how earth would have changed following the large-scale invasion by aliens. Some of the attempts at humor fell flat, but at least when that happened, the scene immediately changed, and the audience did laugh at several of the comedic lines.

On the negative side, there was insufficient character development to make me care much about any of the new young characters, and their acting by and large was adequate but not truly engaging. OTOH, both Sela Ward and William Fichtner were very convincing in their roles, but neither of them was given enough screen time or adequate dialogue to take advantage of their acting skills. Way too much time spent on trivial stuff with the younger generation; the original was able to pull off getting invested in several characters but here it just didn't work. Also, there seemed little point in bringing back the characters of Jasmine Hiller and Julius Levinson. I would have been fine with Levinson senior just doing the book-signing scene without the other subplot, and Jasmine should either not have appeared or been given more to do. The one aspect that was a total WTF reaction was the reason for the aliens coming to earth. If all they needed to do was drill to the earth's core, why did they need all the air and ground troops that were depicted in the first movie as preparing for a full-scale invasion? Wouldn't it have been easier to just park the mothership over the ocean and start drilling, instead of destroying several cities of a planet they didn't intend to settle? It makes sense to wipe out humans if you are planning on taking over the planet and settling there yourself, but if you just need to extract fuel from the earth's core, which will leave the planet uninhabitable very quickly, there's no logical reason for troops to do a ground invasion. As a final nitpick, the voice used for the benign alien was just all kinds of wrong; I have no idea whose voice it was but there are numerous actors out there who would have brought enough gravitas to that dialogue. 

However, overall it was reasonably entertaining and at no point did I get bored enough to start checking the time. The ending was obviously a setup for a sequel but again, given the events of this installment, a sequel would be needed to finish the story.

[millennium]

For me, no Will Smith would normally be considered a plus.   I can't stand him.   But from reviews I've read this movie seems to have many other problems that even the absence of the Fresh Prince can't mitigate.

[Terrafamilia]

If anything, they underplayed the devastation the Harvester would have caused in plopping down on a planet. The disruption just to the atmosphere would have been far greater. And then again when it took off at the end. And if I were the Queen I'd have set off the EMP right after I touched down.

[nobodyyoucare]

Quote

If all they needed to do was drill to the earth's core, why did they need all the air and ground troops that were depicted in the first movie as preparing for a full-scale invasion? Wouldn't it have been easier to just park the mothership over the ocean and start drilling, instead of destroying several cities of a planet they didn't intend to settle?

Then the mothership would have been attacked while drilling. The city destroyers are meant to wipe out the defense forces so they don't interfere with the harvest operation. The harvest operation also gets them resources to build more ships which would take time possibly years. You send the amount of force you expect to accomplish the objective and for Earth's defenses they thought 36 city destroyers would be enough to wipe out most of the humans that would be able to interfere with the harvest even if it would just have been an annoyance. The mothership sent in 1996 had 83 city destroyers so it only sent the minimum amount needed to wipe out most of the Earth's population centers.

Edited July 3, 2016 by nobodyyoucare

[nobodyyoucare]

Jenna Purdy was the voice of the sphere.

[BookWoman56]

8 hours ago, nobodyyoucare said:

Then the mothership would have been attacked while drilling. The city destroyers are meant to wipe out the defense forces so they don't interfere with the harvest operation. The harvest operation also gets them resources to build more ships which would take time possibly years. You send the amount of force you expect to accomplish the objective and for Earth's defenses they thought 36 city destroyers would be enough to wipe out most of the humans that would be able to interfere with the harvest even if it would just have been an annoyance. The mothership sent in 1996 had 83 city destroyers so it only sent the minimum amount needed to wipe out most of the Earth's population centers.

I understand that line of reasoning, but the aliens could have simply stationed a few of the city destroyers around the harvester to protect against any attacks from earth's various military forces. Those attacks, as shown in the original, were pretty ineffective and would have been a minor nuisance for the most part. As for the idea that they would use earth's resources to build more ships, once they remove the earth's core, the planet will quickly become uninhabitable due to loss of atmosphere, etc., so they're not going to be hanging around on the planet itself to build more ships.  From my perspective, there's simply no good reason for them to have risked the loss of valuable ships and personnel to wipe out cities and people that would be destroyed very quickly by what they are doing to the planet. It's not a huge deal to me and I bought into the story overall, but this along with a few other things contributed to the movie having some problems. For example, having POTUS go to the nuclear shelter in the Cheyenne mountains (where NORAD is located) made no sense, given that in the original movie, the aliens knew where NORAD was and wiped that out, so that shelter shouldn't even have existed anymore, and even if it did, the military and the administration should have figured that the shelter would be a target and refrained from sending both POTUS and the other Cabinet members there. If the movie had been compelling enough with its characters, I probably wouldn't have even thought about these aspects, but I can see why the movie got some mediocre reviews. I can overlook some minor plot issues if the characters are engaging enough, but the next generation of fighters did not do much to make me interested in their fates.

[nobodyyoucare]

They have biomechanical suits and smaller ships. Pretty easy for them to take resources from a life less rock. Also the aliens seem to just do a routine for each world. The harvester coming with the queen was an unusual escalation.

Well they had reinforced NORAD and even today while NORAD can be destroyed by modern nukes its still where the President would go despite being a priority target in a nuclear attack.

Its also a hive species the attacker ships and city destroyers are just replaceable. Its the colony mothership and harvester ship that matter.

[Bruinsfan]

I thought the NORAD facility was buried deep enough in Cheyenne Mountain that it was thought to be proof against the sort of warheads that were likely to be delivered by ICBMs? Of course, its HQ has been moved to Peterson AFB in the real world, but if you were worried about the return of aliens with city-burning bombs keeping the command center under hundreds of meters of granite would make a lot more sense.

[Raja]

8 hours ago, nobodyyoucare said:

 

Well they had reinforced NORAD and even today while NORAD can be destroyed by modern nukes its still where the President would go despite being a priority target in a nuclear attack.

 

The President can hide or he can go to the best protected place. I guess only the highest in the Secret Service knows for sure which will happen.

[Traveller519]

This wasn't great by any stretch. But it was decent popcorn fare to laugh along with.

I agree with most that most of the "young" generation of the film (outside of Patricia, who's backstory we were already familiar with) left a lot to be desired. They seemed very tacked on for the sake of universe building. All the returning characters were great, in my opinion, including Julius, who added some of the only civilian perspective to this movie that was such a cornerstone of the first one. Dikembe the Warlord was probably my favourite of the new characters. I would watch the hell out of a short Netflix series about his people's land war with the Aliens, even if that didn't really make sense in the context of the films.

I do wish they had left President Whitmore flying the bombs into the ship as the death knell. You could have added the weight and gravitas to it. The queen emerging on her own kind of made for a dumb Cloverfield monster movie ending. But I get that ending with the sacrifice to win the fight would have too closely mirrored the first movie.

[snickers]

Quote

Surprisingly, Liam Hemsworth wasn't as bad as I feared, but he's still kind of dull, and as with most Liam roles, I just keep thinking how big brother Chris would have probably fared better.

I have seen this said sooo many times.  I disagree! Both Hemsworth brothers are exactly the same acting wise I think.  And beyond Thor, Chris's movies are not doing that great either, but it doesn't matter because he's Thor.  But yeah, I don't quite get the Liam hate but the Chris love.  And they look a lot a like as well so I don't get the whole....Chris is hotter though I prefer Liam to Chris but that is just me.

 

Quote

I agree with most that most of the "young" generation of the film (outside of Patricia, who's backstory we were already familiar with) left a lot to be desired.

mmhmmm....I especially did not care for the son of Will Smith's character....horrible acting!

 

I thought Bill Pullman was a waste, Goldblum is good, and the Dad....yeah pointless but I kind of liked his story line, sounds like i am on the only one ha!

 

Sela Ward-WASTE! and horrible acting!

Overall, I thought the movie could have been better....it was WAY different from the first one and I don't like how they set up the sequel.  It's too bad because Independence Day was a great movie.....I saw it in high school with high school friends on independence day.....we went to the movies, to dinner, then watched fireworks a big group of us....it was one of the best 4th of July celebration days I ever had.

Edited July 4, 2016 by snickers

[nobodyyoucare]

On ‎7‎/‎4‎/‎2016 at 9:06 AM, Bruinsfan said:

I thought the NORAD facility was buried deep enough in Cheyenne Mountain that it was thought to be proof against the sort of warheads that were likely to be delivered by ICBMs? Of course, its HQ has been moved to Peterson AFB in the real world, but if you were worried about the return of aliens with city-burning bombs keeping the command center under hundreds of meters of granite would make a lot more sense.

When it was built in the 1960s the ICBMs that could hit wouldn't have destroyed it however more accurate, more powerful bunker buster nukes came about. Neutron bombs would also wipe it out. Today its the NORAD alternate command site and its being renovated as part of a 700 million dollar operation to make NORAD operations not be affected by EMP affects from nukes or other means. Its more hardened against nukes then most gov't command centers that are  known to the public or military intel.

In Independence Day the aliens had destroyed the Cheyenne Mountain base and other nearby military bases. In Independence Day Resurgence it had been rebuilt and fortified hence why the aliens sent a breaching party to assault rather then just try to blast it apart like last time. When you fortify against one type of attack you unfortunately can weaken the base against some other types of attack.

Edited July 6, 2016 by nobodyyoucare

[Bruinsfan]

Wait, how can neutron bombs wipe out a facility embedded in hundreds of feet of rock? I thought neutron radiation was cut down to safe levels by shielding as basic as being in a basement near ground zero? (Though, that close you'd still get killed by the somewhat weakened blast wave and heat pulse.)

Edited July 7, 2016 by Bruinsfan

[nobodyyoucare]

15 hours ago, Bruinsfan said:

Wait, how can neutron bombs wipe out a facility embedded in hundreds of feet of rock? I thought neutron radiation was cut down to safe levels by shielding as basic as being in a basement near ground zero? (Though, that close you'd still get killed by the somewhat weakened blast wave and heat pulse.)

Neutron bombs were designed to kill tank crews and people in hardended bunkers. Reason they designed was that regular nukes wouldn't instantly kill tank crews and command staff in underground or otherwise hardended bunkers but instead give them enough radiation to put them into the walking ghost phase enabling them to fight on for several weeks before they would die to the radiation sickness. Since they knew they were doomed they would be quite fanatical. 

[BetterButter]

“You Can’t Actually Blow Up the White House”: An Oral History of ‘Independence Day’