Like so many Hollywood blockbusters these days, Independence Day: Resurgence ends with a beginning. Before the dust has even settled on the final conflict, the next conflict is already set in motion. Rather than tying a bow around the previous two hours of planet-leveling carnage, Resurgence’s last scene begins teasing another sequel.
Then it cuts to black and the credits begin to roll. When they did last night at Brooklyn’s United Artists Court Street 12, one of the other attendees began screaming. This is as much of their tirade as I could transcribe:
Bulls—! Bulls—! I want my motherf—ing money back! In 38 years, that is the worst movie I have ever seen in my entire life! What the f— was that? We just watched a f—ing preview!
This enraged rant was a tad hyperbolic, but given Roland Emmerich’s cinematic predilections towards widespread devastation, perhaps a bit of overindulgence was appropriate. It also wasn’t entirely off-base. Independence Day: Resurgence is a bad movie, occasionally in ways that are good for a chuckle, like when people earnestly deliver lines like “Now listen up! They’re going for our molten core! ” but mostly just bad in ways that make you wish you hadn’t wasted your money or your time. And it is basically a preview for another movie which they will almost certainly make in a couple years. Like one of this franchise’s giant alien motherships, you can see these things coming from a great distance, and their arrival means nothing but bad news.
Resurgence is set a full 20 years after the first movie, and its aliens’ unsuccessful invasion of Earth. Since then, the world has been transformed ( even if Hollywood moviemaking has not) thanks to salvaged technology from the wreckage of the aliens’ ships. But despite the best efforts of computer wizard David Levinson ( Jeff Goldblum) to create an Earth Space Defense to prepare for subsequent attacks, when the second wave finally does strike, mankind is hopelessly outgunned. This time the E.T.s arrive in a ship 3, 000 miles wide, instantly wipe out the ESD’s big Moon base and defensive satellites, and park themselves right in the middle of the Atlantic Ocean.
The aliens’ new spacecraft is supposedly one-fifth the size of our entire planet, but Independence Day: Resurgence feels vastly smaller than its predecessor. The movie barely even does the one thing everyone remembers from the original Independence Day, which is demolishing iconic world landmarks. This time, in a winking joke, the White House gets spared from the chaos that wipes out the rest of the Eastern seaboard. Most of Resurgence’s destruction money shots already appeared in the film’s trailer; the stuff they haven’t revealed is more of the swarms of human ships battling swarms of alien ships and big giant aliens in the middle of nowhere variety. Perhaps the sad reality of our violent world has negated some of the cheap thrills ID4’s images used to provide. But if that’s the case, why make the sequel at all?
The new cast is a mix of returning veterans and newcomers, almost all of whom have some relation to the older characters. ( The movie is very much a legacyquel.) At times it feels like everyone on the planet has been killed by aliens — except the dozen or so people David Levinson personally knows, including his bumbling father ( Judd Hirsch, who looks like he’s having a grand old time) . Bill Pullman is back as former President Thomas Whitmore, whose rousing speech on July 4th, 1996 helped inspire the people of the world to victory. In the new film’s only remotely emotional subplot, Whitmore’s contact with the aliens has slowly driven him mad, and this once-great leader can now barely speak. Whitmore’s grown daughter Patricia ( Maika Monroe) gave up her career as a fighter pilot to care for him. Now she works as an speechwriter to the new President ( Sela Ward) .
Goldblum remains a quirky delight.