BEFORE: Jeff Goldblum carries over from "Thor: Ragnarok", and he's having a pretty good year - this will be his 5th appearance in my Year 9 countdown, but there are a LOT of 6-appearance actors this time, a few 7's, and then there's the Top 3, with 8, 10 and 14 appearances. I'll count it all down after the close of regular play in mid-December.
This was down among the "unlinkables" for a while, because I missed the appearance of Maika Monroe in both this film and "The 5th Wave". I've got both alien invasion films on the same disc, it would have been great to put them side-by-side, but I followed a different linking path instead. And look, as a result I get to transition from one Hemsworth brother to the other! See, it all works out.
THE PLOT: Two decades after the first Independence Day invasion, Earth is faced with a new extraterrestrial threat. But will mankind's new space defenses be enough?
AFTER: What also carries over from "Thor: Ragnarok" is this feeling of sort of throwing all these different characters and plot elements into a blender, hitting "purée" and hoping for the best. Sometimes that really works, and sometimes it doesn't, or maybe it's all a matter of personal preference, I don't know. Today's film, however, got labelled as a box-office bomb because it got crushed by "Finding Dory", or people felt that it didn't somehow capture the magic of the first "Independence Day" film - and once it gets that stink of failure on it, it's hard for me (or anyone) to step back and view it objectively.
Does this film completely suck? I don't know, that seems a little harsh. There are way too many plot contrivances and coincidences, but for that matter, it was a huge coincidence that Thor would encounter Hulk on another planet, so again, who am I to judge? Sometimes these things work and sometimes they don't, or it's a matter of personal preference. Maybe I've just seen too many films this year, and I'm desperately in need of some time off to get my head together again. And usually I would be closing up shop right about now, maybe coming back for a couple of Christmas movies, but thanks to working two Comic-Cons and then taking a week's vacation, the end of the year is near, but it's just not here yet. (Though I'll be closed for business next week (Nov. 12-19) I'll be back open on Monday, Nov. 20 for "Justice League". Then 8 more films in November, and 18 in December - the new "Star Wars" release schedule now dictates that I can't knock off in early November, like I used to. Still, I believe it's all going to work out.
Remember, there are only about a dozen different types of movies, like horror or sci-fi or "comedies where a black actor dresses like a woman" - and each of them has a certain number of conventions that need to be followed, like the movements in a symphony. If someone steps outside the genres and presents the audience with a complex family drama with an incestuous relationship, or a superhero film where the villain wins in the end, well, they've probably got a tough slog ahead. And in the case of a franchise film a studio has to set something in a universe that needs to be as familiar as what has gone before, while also breaking new ground to keep things fresh.
And then we all vote with our ticket purchases. Reviews be damned, because that's the only language that Hollywood understands - if a film makes a huge profit, then it deserves one or more sequels, or at least a dozen films that hit the same notes, more or less. "Independence Day" made a profit, so a sequel was inevitable, the only question then became when, and how many of the film's actors would be able to return. "Resurgence" lost money overall, so there may not be a third film in the series, even though they left themselves wide open for one, story-wise. "Thor: Ragnarok" was my 8th trip to the movie theater in 2017, and each time I'm sending a message to Hollywood - which is "more like this, please"- even if the movie is not great, the message has already been sent. This is why I did not go to see the new "Pirates of the Caribbean" film this year, I'll probably watch it when it airs, but I am in favor of Disney stopping production on the franchise at some point. I hope they got that message when I failed to buy a ticket.
So all that brings me back to "Independence Day: Resurgence", which I did not feel the need to see in the theater, and I think I made the right call. I go to see this modern-day lounge act, Richard Cheese, whenever he's in town, and he'll tell the audience, "If you haven't seen us before, you're about to hear a traditional 4-piece lounge combo play sort of "swankified" versions of current hits, for about two hours, and you're in for quite a treat. If you HAVE seen us before, same fuckin' shit." So we have to quantify this sequel as "same fuckin' shit." Yep, the people who vote with their movie ticket purchases are quite fickle, so even after they vote with their purchase to see more films like this, often when presented with more of the same, they'll collectively say, "Yeah, this is what we said we wanted, only not this way."
We've got returning characters from the first film, sure, only some of them show up only to die quickly, or pull the grand sacrificing moves, which take a bit longer. We've got famous landmarks being blown up or crushed by giant spaceships - remember how shocking it was when they blew up the White House in the first film? Well, they (almost) do it again (crap, they probably just finished re-building it, too...) and then they move on to completely NEW landmarks to blow up real good. We've got jet fighters attacking the big spaceship, only Will Smith's not here, and his stepson is flying a jet in his place. We've got Jeff Goldblum and Brent Spiner's nerdy and wacky scientists back, because apparently they're the only two alien experts in the whole country, and the lovable schlumpy father of the scientist, getting into trouble again like only an old Jewish guy can - but he means well.
The key conceit here is that we always knew the aliens would be coming back, but we didn't know when - and we didn't know they'd have enough sense of irony to attack on the anniversary of the first attack. So we had twenty years to prepare, and knowing Americans the way I do, that probably meant 19 years of slacking off, followed by 11 months in committee trying to decide the best path forward, and then maybe 1 month of actual work, if you're lucky. How does that all add up? Huh, the aliens caught us by surprise AGAIN, because we probably all had TV shows to watch, and new potato chip flavors to vote for. This is why the rest of the world hates us.
So, it's another mad scramble to decode alien technology, track down some nuke-ular weapons and come up with a desperate, last-minute plan that's so crazy, Goddammit, it just might work. And what a shocker, the he-man brahs who fly the jet fighters and the military people from around the world have to put aside their egos and work together to make it all happen. This is what we do when we have to save the world, so we can live in peace and harmony again and go back to being racist, sexist entitled a-holes. Nothing changes, not even in the future. Umm, which is really an alternate "now", I guess. When does this take place, 20 years after the first one? OK, that's now, only this is not our Earth, because a woman is President. Some screenwriter was clearly banking on a Hillary Clinton presidency...
The worst offense in this film, beyond all of the contrivances and coincidences, is how obvious most of the dialogue is. People just don't talk this way in real life, as if they're always giving the audience expositional facts. Like when one of the characters is revealed to be in a coma at the start of the film, and his caregiver enters the room saying, "Can you believe it's been 2,747 days since you lapsed into your coma?" Umm, thanks for that information, but besides people not talking this way, that's a number of exactly zero significance, so why would he even bring that up? And this is pretty much how the dialogue works in the whole picture. "Come on guys, let's get into our jet fighters, and turn the engines on, and fly toward the big spaceship and try to blow it up!" People wouldn't say that, they'd just say something more generic and go and DO that. It's show, don't tell, dummies.
Plenty of NITPICK POINTS tonight, too - the most obvious being: how did that jet fighter shoot THROUGH the alien's shield in order to hit the mechanism that would disable the shield? Even if you allow for the possibility that the alien needed to drop its own shield to fire its weapon, it still doesn't work. Because then you have to allow that an alien can build a highly-advanced shield, but not one that it can fire a weapon through, it can only create one with this flaw, that it has to be inactive when it wants to take a shot. And that's just dumb, and if there's one thing these aliens are not, it's dumb.
There are also many, many problems with the size of the alien ship(s). I get that the filmmakers wanted to up the ante this time around, but having a ship or ships that are roughly the size of Europe couldn't possibly work. A little research on the web tells me that though they may have their own gravity, the gravity of the Earth is greater, and these ships would be torn apart if they tried to enter Earth's atmosphere. Also, something of that size and weight could not be in those shapes. If they're big enough to have gravity, then that gravity would force them into a roughly spherical shape. And even if they could land on Earth, this would affect the Earth's rotation and throw things completely out of balance. So the science just isn't there to support these images.
Don't even get me started on the science about drilling through the earth's crust to get to its (presumably) soft, caramel center...or is it coconut?
Also starring Liam Hemsworth (last seen in "The Expendables 2"), Bill Pullman (last seen in "American Ultra"), Jessie T. Usher, Maika Monroe (last seen in "Labor Day"), Sela Ward (last seen in "Gone Girl"), William Fichtner (last seen in "Elysium"), Judd Hirsch (last seen in "Tower Heist"), Brent Spiner (last seen in "Stardust Memories"), Vivica A. Fox (last seen in "Ella Enchanted"), Angelababy, Charlotte Gainsbourg, Nicolas Wright (last seen in "White House Down"), Robert Loggia (last seen in "Tim and Eric's Billion Dollar Movie"), Patrick St. Esprit (last seen in "We Were Soldiers"), Deobia Oparei (last seen in "Moulin Rouge!"), Travis Tope, Ng Chin Han (last seen in "Captain America: The Winter Soldier"), Gbenga Akinnagbe, John Storey (last seen in "Down with Love"), James A. Woods, Joey King (also last seen in "White House Down"), Robert Neary.
RATING: 4 out of 10 EMPs
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