My Review of "Independence Day: Resurgence"

Independence Day: Resurgence is the sequel to the massively popular movie Independence Day. I've been a fan of the original movie for quite some time and I believe I watched this sequel when it first came out back in 2016. I didn't remember too much about it but I did remember I didn't like it for some reason. With an itch to watch it I finally got to see why I didn't remember it that well.

This movie takes place 20 years after the events of the first movie. A lot has changed. First of all the world is more united than ever. World peace is amongst us only because the world population has united to defend themselves from future alien attacks.

With the defeat of the aliens in the last movie the world has had 20 years to learn about the enemy's weapons and tech. There are still tons of remnants of the original alien attack. Technology has evolved exponentially.

All this comes to a head when mysterious things start happening on the moon's surface. Technology is suddenly glitching and all of a sudden a new alien ship arrives. We don't know what it is but through fear of the attack from the previous movie no one is going to wait for the first punch. Instead we blast this alien spacecraft into smithereens.

Not too long after the aliens from the first movie come back and now bigger and badder than ever. All of the humans that have had contact with them in the first movie are having visions of things that can potentially help us survive this horrible invasion.

In the meantime there's some small side stories throughout this movie. We have the return of David, former president Whitmore and even the cooky scientist in the first movie. Each one of them has some sort of role to play in this movie. There's an added cast of new young characters.

The main new characters are the children of the original cast Patricia and Dylan and a newcomer Jake. Their dynamics doesn't really work in this movie. You can tell they tried to link the 3 of them together but the sheer amount of minor characters that have been added to this movie kind of make us lose focus on important relationships.

In fact they added too many characters that have no real significance to the movie. There are a bunch of weird story decisions and casting that blatantly deal with trying to make the movie more diverse. For example there are 2 Asian characters that were tact on who don't really add anything to the story. They're there for eye candy and motivation for the eye candy.

I also found it weird that they would highlight Dylan as the son of the main character of the original movie and then make him into a minor character. He's in there but it almost feels like he's a token character along for the ride.

Tonally this movie is all over the place. You can tell that they're trying to recapture some of the fun moments of yesteryears. Unfortunately they're trying to do this by close to replicating scenes from the original. David's father really didn't need to belong in this movie and the side story of him and the stranded kids was utterly superfluous. They were hoping that it would provide the comic relief that the original was able to capture. Unfortunately it didn't work.

We also have the same sacrificial scenes with small twists sprinkled throughout the movie. Again, I know what they're trying to do but it doesn't really work well. This movie truly felt like a methodically planned money grab. You can tell from watching it what they added for specific money groups that they wanted to appease.

Overall, this movie had so much potential and you can see glimpses of greatness in this movie. Instead it's an overbloated film that is not even hiding the fact they're trying to cash in on nostalgia. I was really hoping for more and really looked hard for some silver lining but I really couldn't find much except the special effects were really well done. I have to give this movie a 5.5 out of 10. It pains me to say this but they don't need to have another sequel if it's going to end up like this.