Independence Day: Resurgence

“They like to get the landmarks.” Though it would have been good for it, Emmerich’s new movie doesn’t contain many more similarly prescient lines, and it does show any awareness of its own bullshit. The gravity with which the subject matter, reminiscent of a 1950s sci-fi B-movie, is handled gives one an idea of what Starship Troopers would have looked like if Verhoeven had taken it seriously. With a guilelessness that’s as endearing as it is disturbing, the new Independence Day turns the message of the Cold War-era The Day the Earth Stood Still on its head. A more advanced civilisation is not here to warn humanity of the risk of self-destruction, but to help it destroy the enemy. The purpose of war is not for people to learn from it, but to better prepare themselves for the next war, because without warfare the military-industrial complex would logically collapse. Solutions other than military force are not even considered and the effectiveness of using hard power (even against an ally) is not in any way questioned by the film’s message. It doesn’t explain why society was divided, but mainly shows that society was united by waging war. Military conflicts thus essentially have a positive effect, even if they usually result in a few major cities getting wiped off the face of the earth. Even though I am disgusted by the ideology that the film expresses (not to mention the character of the exceedingly incompetent president), and though its sentimentality and patriotism sometimes exceed the tolerable limit, I enjoyed the second Independence Day as much as I did the first one. In terms of composition, it is a perfect summer blockbuster in which every motif and every character has its own justification (and the extended exposition thus bears fruit later in the film). The multitude of characters allows Emmerich to change the point of view as needed and thus share with us information that is necessary to keep us in the picture while wanting to know more (by the time we get to the climax, we sense that there will be a snag, as all of the plot lines have not been resolved yet). The film is brilliantly paced throughout, including at the level of individual action scenes. The deadline that we are continually warned about comes ever closer, the aliens get bigger and stronger, the number of important characters in peril increases. The $200 million budget is evident and the battles are massive, but neither would matter if the action wasn’t a solid part of the narrative, helping to move the story along by eliminating certain obstacles and creating others. If you are going to make a big, dumb and not very original sci-fi flick, then do it with the storytelling skill found in Resurgence. 80% (21/06/2016)

Does anyone still find this entertaining today, in age of Interstellar, Gravity and The Martian? There is no paradigmatic shift when compared to the twenty-year-old (!) original; instead, everything is just multiplied – the number of characters, fighter planes, the size of the space ships, the number of presidents and their speeches with patriotic background music. The spectacular and loud action begins almost immediately, lasts 100 minutes and is denser than in the first Independence Day, but EVERYTHING seems borrowed from somewhere and there is not a SINGLE innovative element in the entire movie. Personally, what made me suffer the most were the characters and their insipid dialogue and blatant stupidity, which might have seemed funny and cool in the 1990s, but today?! The best moment for me was the fadeout before the end credits when David Arnold’s famous musical theme started to play. (27/06/2016)

What more can I say? An old liberal, all of whose ships have already sailed, but who miraculously continues to knead his overpriced anachronistic visions united by states of love and tolerance. It's half scandalous and half terribly contagious. When two old gays heartbreakingly say goodbye on the screen or Bill Pullman is pulling humanity together with another speech just after a brain collapse, it reminds me why I love Roland so much. He brought the over the top principle very over the top. He doesn't understand the business as much as Michael Bay, so even a meeting of a Chinese sexy wonder, an American yuppie, an Australian surfer, a Jewish morose and an intergalactic ball on the autopsy table looks like a magical mistake, which is a bit unknown to the viewer. The film is best described by two scenes - old Levinson, who sells a discounted book How I Saved the World to comatose retirees, and Dr. Ocun, who immediately begins to kick alien ass after waking up from a 7,300-day coma. This is exactly Independence Day 2. (I'd really need to see part three, btw) (29/06/2016)

The whole Independence Day: Resurgence felt a little lame. The first hour is downright boring and extremely rushed, a lot of things happen and a bunch of new characters are introduced, but those things aren't very important or spectacularly executed and you care less about the characters than you do about the Namibian regional elections. It's nice to see Bill Pullman and Jeff Goldblum in action after all these years, but it's impossible to say that their presence makes the second Independence Day a better film. If they thought we'd applaud the excitement of seeing a heroic president and a likeable nerd save the world years later, they miscalculated. Independence Day really isn't about the characters, so there's not much point in revolving around them for an hour. It's boring. The action does kick in in the second half, but honestly Roland Emmerich has made more interesting stuff, and pulling a Chinese big city and then dropping it on London no longer impresses in the blockbuster universe. This and the aerial battles and the finale on the ground are fine, but none of it is interesting enough to help the film get out of the "pretty OK summer sci-fi washout" box. Unlike the first film, there's a woeful lack of wit, workable pathos, and most of all, those one-dimensional but still likeable heroes you'd root for. Here, you have either anonymous characters bullshitting or quite effectively but not extravagant action. It doesn't hurt in the cinema, but I'm looking in vain for a reason to see it a second time. (15/05/2017)

Fans of the first and opponents of the second may be annoyed, but I have to say that I enjoyed Independence Day 2 as much as the first. Admittedly, in this case it's like a magnifying glass, so there's more of everything, everything is bigger and more apocalyptic and so on. But I had fun, just as I did with the first one. Roland Emmerich works the same way, so you could count on bombastic effects, a few WTF scenes and the blatant heroism of the main characters, and I didn't expect anything more than that. I went to the cinema mainly expecting to watch an audiovisual orgy of monstrous proportions, where I would have the power to switch off and not have to think too much, and that's exactly what I got. In short, a popcorn flick with all the trimmings that can evoke both a sense of nostalgia and a sense of outrage, and in my case it was a nicely made (if slightly silly at times) respite. (16/07/2016)