Independence Day: Resurgence Review

In 1996, Independence Day was released and I immediately fell in love with it. I remember having my mind blown while watching the White House get blown up by an alien spaceship. I remember the terror on the peoples faces as they ran down the highway trying to avoid a wall of fire. I read the novelization while on a family vacation. I had action figures of the aliens and the alien spacecraft. To this day, I enjoy watching the practical set pieces that used miniatures and the banter between Will Smith and Jeff Goldblum. Now, twenty years later, we finally get a sequel, Independence Day: Resurgence. And unfortunately, most of what I enjoyed twenty years ago is missing.

Independence Day: Resurgence takes place twenty years after the first movie. The people of Earth have taken the alien technology that was left behind and developed it into both weapons and spacecraft. Unfortunately, a strange device suddenly appears on the moon and soon after a large spacecraft appears that is roughly 3000 miles wide. That spacecraft soon enters Earths atmosphere causing mass destruction. It is up to the cast of the first movie along with a new cast of characters to find a way to stop the aliens from trying to destroy Earth all over again.

One of the big problems with Independence Day: Resurgence is that it is extremely bloated. Not only does most of the cast (really missing Will Smith in this one) return from the first movie, but you also get introduce to 5-10 new characters that all play into the story in some way. With this mixture of old cast and new, I can't help but compare it with Star Wars: The Force Awakens. The problem is that The Force Awakens does a great job of introducing you to the new cast and slowly brings in the old. In Resurgence everyone gets thrown at you at once and you never get a chance to know and care about them. Also most of the new actors in The Force Awakens were relatively unknown. The same could be said about the new actors in Resurgence except there is Liam Hemsworth and I can't help but think of The Hunger Games and Miley Cyrus whenever I see him. Every time he appeared on screen I was taken out of the movie. A lot of the characters in Resurgence, both old and new, could have been combined and it would have helped remove a lot of the bloat.

With most sequels you can't help but compare them to the first movie and with Resurgence, the main comparison I can make between them is the action set pieces. In the first movie, since the computer technology wasn't advanced like it is today, a lot of the action was made using miniatures. This made the action seem grounded and real. The first movie also has that iconic scene I mentioned earlier, the White House getting blown up. In Resurgence, everything is CGI and that completely takes you out of the action. Resurgence is also missing that iconic scene that will leave a lasting impression.

Independence Day: Resurgence wasn't completely terrible though. For the first two-thirds of the movie I was able to turn off my brain and just enjoy the ride. The story moved at a great pace and I was never bored. I was able to just sit back and enjoy seeing what the characters I enjoyed from the first movie were up to now. The final third of the movie did take me out of it, but to avoid spoilers I won't go into why that was.

Independence Day: Resurgence is missing most of the things that made the first movie iconic. The action scenes are CGI filled, there are no iconic scenes and there are so many characters, you never get an emotional connection with them. If you haven't seen Independence Day, I would suggest skipping this movie. But, if you enjoyed Independence Day, lower your expectations, turn off your brain and give Independence Day: Resurgence a watch.