Movie Review – Independence Day 2: Resurgence
Genre: Action, Adventure, Sci-Fi
Director: Roland Emmerich
Starring: Liam Hemsworth, Jeff Goldblum, Bill Pullman
Release Year: 2016
Opinion
Roland Emmerich while being quite active on the Hollywood scene albeit sticking to disaster genre, feels like he has been the one in coma since 1996 rather than Dr. Okun. ‘Too many cooks spoil a dish’ is a famous saying which fits like a glove to this spectacularly dumb and in- cohesive story-line that needed 4 story-writers and 5 for screenplay credits. Independence Day (1996) holds a special place for me as it was the first Hollywood movie I had seen in my hometown theater, the sheer spectacle and the rousing moments was enough for that age to register it in my mind as a classic. For the same technical and acting cast to come back and make a mess out of it was just unnecessary.
Synopsis
After the victory from an alien invasion in 1996 under the ‘heroic’ guidance of President Whitmore (Bill Pullman) and ‘genius’ of cable-man David Levinson (Jeff Goldblum), Earth has built its sophisticated defense system leveraging the Alien technology that spans across Saturn and Moon. President Whitmore and score of others who were exposed to the aliens during the previous invasion frequently are haunted by visions of a sphere (think ‘Close encounters of the 3rd kind’) which they assume to be the form in which they are going to invade again. When such a sphere does show up, the current technology blasts it to smithereens. Is that the end of it or is it just the beginning?
Review
Generally a movie cannot be a classic by itself, it can only be a classic for a certain generation of movie watchers. Independence Day (1996) is a classic for kids who watched it in theaters the extravaganza that was never seen before during its time. Technology moves on, aesthetics moves on, method of movie-making moves on but Roland Emmerich seems to be stuck on a time loop through these changes. Most of the returning cast does no better either and their standard stoop further low making the experience more cringe worthy than one would anticipate. The new cast members seems to play along rather than add something fresh, difficult to blame them with the such pedestrian writing.
There must be multiple templates that comes pre-built with visual effects software these days regarding destruction of entire cities, everyone seems to be using a different version of it with ease, but it just has become plain boring. The writing is contrived and riddled with holes and it ends up being a never ending list if I have to document each one of them. Every character does something stupid just to drive the plot like in the B-grade horror movies of the 80s and its always in the worst possible direction. Will Smith made a great career choice by not being a part of this, but his inclusion could have brought in some much needed moments just through his charisma and comic timing.
Verdict
An unnecessary reboot that is dumber and cringy than any of the Transformers movies and that’s the lowest I can rate.
