Eric Paddon wrote:Actually I always liked her best with the 80s hair!

“Independence Day: Resurgence” is not on the cover this week’s Entertainment Weekly, which just landed.

The stars of “Resurgence” are not all over the TV, appearing on “Ellen” or the “Tonight Show” or “Jimmy Kimmel,” showing clips.

In fact, there is dead silence surrounding the hugely expensive, highly anticipated sequel to the massive 1996 Roland Emmerich hit “Independence Day.”

That movie was released on July 3, 1996 to tie in with the actual Independence Day– July 4th weekend. This one is set for June 24th, very specifically NOT that tie in.

There have been no advance screenings, no press. There’s no press junket this weekend. My junketeer friends have received no information. There’s some kind of premiere on Monday in Los Angeles next week, a couple of days before the opening night in theaters. But nothing else is set for New York at all, and that is a bad bad sign.

But the cast did sneak into New York last week for stealth publicity: they rang the opening bell at the New York stock Exchange. They appeared in an AOL Build Speaker series, whatever that is. They were on Sirius XM Radio. On Friday, there was a premiere in Mexico City.

Shhhh. Don’t tell anyone, but “IDR” is coming. The cast must be wondering what’s going on. Or they know.

Maybe it’s a huge $200 million flop. But Fox should have counted on the good will of fans who’ve waited 20 years (like me) to see what happened. Alas, this much we do know: Will Smith passed on the script. Randy Quaid is MIA. Margaret Colin and Mary McDonnell didn’t return. Robert Loggia and James Rebhorn couldn’t return– they’re deceased. There’s a Hemsworth involved.

Fox is just coming off a disappointment with the latest “X Men” movie, which made $100 million less than the prior one domestically. Studio chief Jim Gianopolous is out the door and replaced by Stacey Snider (who should do great things). So if “IDR” is really really not good, they are downplaying it. But my guess is Gianopolous’s exit news, which came this week, is tied to “IDR” and its box office fate.

Or maybe it’s really really great– and we will all be pleasantly surprised. But there are also eleven — 11– writer credits. Five of them are for the screenplay!

PS What did Will Smith know that we didn’t know? The studio shot of Jeff Goldblum and Liam Hemsworth in space suits is worrisome. If they go into space to fight the aliens, the whole “ID4” vibe is altered. Of course, Will is no expert on space movies, as we know.

DavidBanner wrote: I also must seriously wonder why they recast Mae Whitman as Whitmore's daughter. She's still around and available.

As spectacular as you’d hope from a sequel to the 1996 planet-toaster, and as amusingly cheesy. You’ll enjoy yourself enough that you won’t even miss Will Smith.

Weirdly, the only thing not extra-huge is the running time – and that’s where the problems arise. ‘Independence Day: Resurgence’ is crammed with pornographic destruction and madcap action, not to mention almost all the characters from the first movie (minus Will Smith) plus a heap of new ones – and it’s only two hours long. So it’s goodbye to proper character development and the slow-build tension that made the first film such a thrill, and hello to exposition delivered at double speed and a cop-out ending that makes absolutely no sense.

Which isn’t to say ‘Resurgence’ can’t be a lot of fun in short bursts. Emmerich’s glee is infectious as he trashes Big Ben but leaves the rebuilt White House standing, and there are few things on earth cooler than Jeff Goldblum exasperatedly explaining how doomed humanity is, again. But it’s all too much too fast, and the cumulative effect is like watching a two-hour trailer – more dizzying than thrilling.

BobaMike wrote:I agree Andy..pacing is a problem in most big movies. We just saw Finding Dory, and I felt the movie was very rushed. In Nemo, it took the whole movie to cross the ocean, yet they manage to do it in the first 10 minutes of the sequel. Then after that it was just one chase scene after another. Needed some more "down time".

This scattershot but frequently spectacular sequel sees Roland Emmerich reclaiming his title as the DeMille of global destruction.

We had 20 years to prepare… so did they,” states the tagline of “Independence Day: Resurgence,” a cheerfully ludicrous re-encounter of the third kind that doesn’t show any particular evidence of all that planning. Sketchily conceived in all departments but its sensational, more-is-more visual effects — which is, let’s be honest, where its efforts should be concentrated — this belated, cluttered sequel to the 1996 smash “Independence Day” breaks far less ground than its alien invaders, but confirms director Roland Emmerich as modern cinema’s most spirited conductor of popcorn chaos.

Perhaps excessively concerned with burnishing the supposed legacy of its predecessor — a distant memory, if that, for much of its target audience — this cinematic Big Mac entertains abundantly on its own second-hand merits. While unlikely to become the pop-cultural behemoth “ID4” was two decades ago, “Resurgence” should cast a sizeable shadow over its box-office competition.