INDEPENDENCE DAY RESURGENCE - It's Not That Bad!

[Eric W.]

http://arstechnica.com/the-multiverse/2 ... x-and-fun/

Ouch.

[AndyDursin]

The funny thing to me though are these people who think the first movie has all this "heart and emotion." It really doesn't. It's utterly superficial, filled with stereotypes and is basically disposable. It's better than this, sure...but I think folks need to go back and rewatch the original again objectively.

I mean, that review called the first film a "classic." Seriously?!?

[Monterey Jack]

I mean, that review called the first film a "classic." Seriously?!?

People like this are why we're getting a Mighty Morphin' Power Rangers movie.

[Eric Paddon]

The first film was indeed disposable fun entertainment in the pre-9/11 world and nothing more. It's because it didn't have the luxury of legendary actors amidst the jeopardy and a Williams type score that it can never be on the same level of the superior 70s disaster films it professed to draw so heavily from.

So just out of curiosity, so long as they spend a lot of time referencing the first film is there ever any "explanation" for why Brent Spiner isn't dead as we all thought these last twenty years??

[AndyDursin]

That's a good point about the cast. Even Goldblum, basically just repeating his Jurassic Park performance, didn't have nearly the material to work with. Bill Pullman was always a lightweight to me. Smith launched his big-screen career because of the picture, but it's an awfully superficial part filled with one-liners and not a shred of credibility behind it. Then again that's kind of how the whole movie functions.

This sequel tries to establish a bunch of characters who all, sort of, "get someplace" by the end of the film. It's a nice try really, but several of the performances are so bland, and the movie so relentlessly paced that there's no time for any of them to register. And why Vivica A. Fox is even in this film when (SPOILER) she solely appears to transport a pregnant woman onto a helicopter before falling off the building is ridiculous. The fact she was the only returning female cast member probably says something -- I'm not sure what, but it's kind of curious when the likes of Mae Whitman, Margaret Colin (who had a really big role), Lisa Jakub, etc. are all still alive.

As much as I hate to say it, even Sela Ward is terrible as the President (sorry guys!). Her line readings felt as believable as Kate McKinnon doing Hilary on an SNL sketch ("there will be no peace!!").

My main thought is this film was heavily cut down. The kid playing Will Smith's son has utterly nothing to do -- only the other Hemsworth brother registers amongst the "young uns". There's also a blatant push for the Chinese market in both the casting one of its stars ("Angelbaby") as a jet pilot and the fact the big destruction sequence is centered around China also. Given the box-office receipts this weekend, though, can you blame them?

So just out of curiosity, so long as they spend a lot of time referencing the first film is there ever any "explanation" for why Brent Spiner isn't dead as we all thought these last twenty years??

Not really. Just that he's been in a coma for two decades. Spiner does get more screen time here here and it is fun watching him engage with Goldblum and company.

Frankly I think I was probably being generous with 2.5 stars. It is likable enough, and the end is fun, but it DOES have a lot of problems.

[Eric Paddon]

Hey, I was just rating Sela on the appearance scale!

Well at least a coma is something of an "explanation" since it at least acknowledges that he wasn't recovering off-camera during the first film!

Whenever I hear Bill Pullman's name I always think first of the line in "Ruthless People,", "This must be the stupidest guy in the world."

[AndyDursin]

Hey, I was just rating Sela on the appearance scale!

Well at least a coma is something of an "explanation" since it at least acknowledges that he wasn't recovering off-camera during the first film!

Whenever I hear Bill Pullman's name I always think first of the line in "Ruthless People,", "This must be the stupidest guy in the world."

LOL. I know, I'm just teasing on Sela. She looks good but she delivers her lines with all the gravitas of an Anacin commercial.

[mkaroly]

Whenever I hear Bill Pullman's name I always think first of the line in "Ruthless People,", "This must be the stupidest guy in the world."

HA HA HA!! My favorite moment in RUTHLESS PEOPLE!

[Eric Paddon]

My memory's failing, he's the "stupidest person on the face of the Earth"!

[Eric Paddon]

This item meanwhile summarizes why the term "disaster porn" was invented.

http://deadline.com/2016/06/independenc ... 201778773/

"Some of Fox’s initiatives to excite fans fell flat. Recently, there was a cool portal Independence Day: My Street, where one could enter their physical address and see their block pulverized by the U.S. Air Force and UFOs. The clever idea backfired when the media noticed that users could enter in the addresses where tragedies took place, i.e. Brussels Airport, Café Bonne Biere in Paris and 1 World Trade Center, the latter generating eerie images reminiscent of 9/11."

[Monterey Jack]

4/10

Exactly what I was expecting...cliché-ridden, flat characterization, mass devastation that's very, very rote and unimaginative, and baiting the viewer with promises of more sequels that will now never come considering how much money this lost. It was vaguely fun to see Brent Spiner again (nimbly running around after being in a coma for TWO DECADES like he just woke up from a light afternoon nap ), but otherwise this is the worst type of Nostalgia Porn, a balsa wood return to what was balsa wood twenty years ago, only with the "wow factor" that the original's special effects had now so routine it's hard to think of a single month of the year without at least two movies containing a comparable amount of F/X work. It never becomes flagrantly irritating (although I found myself bellowing, "BULL-FECES...!" out loud when Judd Hirsch's mugging Jewish caricature papa commandeers a bus full of kids and drives through the MIDDLE OF THE DESERT...only to JUST HAPPEN to drive by son Jeff Goldblum ), but that's just how low the bar has been set, here. It's a McMovie, heavy on the cheese, and like a meal at Mickey D's, you'll forget you ever had it two hours later.

[AndyDursin]

It's a McMovie, heavy on the cheese, and like a meal at Mickey D's, you'll forget you ever had it two hours later.

That's basically every "tentpole" movie today.

[Monterey Jack]

Just saw a vanilla DVD copy of this at the DOLLAR STORE.

[AndyDursin]

Lol Must have had a lot of discs from unsold combo packs lying around. The movie you can't give away!!

[AndyDursin]

Roland Emmerich says he should've stopped making this one when Will Smith departed, which caused the entire thing to be rewritten:

“I just wanted to make a movie exactly like the first,” said Emmerich, who while the film was underway, lost his leading man, Will Smith, to another tentpole project. “But then in the middle of production Will opted out because he wanted to do ‘Suicide Squad.'” Smith led the original “Independence Day” film as a wisecracking marine fighter pilot, and was slated to star in the sequel, but the actor reportedly cost too much for the already expensive sequel.

“I should have stopped making the movie because we had a much better script, then I had to, really fast, cobble another script together,” Emmerich said. “I should have just said no because all of a sudden I was making something I criticized myself: a sequel.”

https://www.indiewire.com/2019/11/rolan ... 202187244/