INDEPENDENCE DAY : RESURGENCE - Friday 24th June 2016.

'INDEPENDENCE DAY : RESURGENCE' which I saw on Friday evening is the sequel to 'Independence Day' which opened in July 1996 and went on to take out the highest grossing film of 1996 worldwide, grossing US$817M, and by September of that year ranked as the sixth highest grossing film of all time. Now 20 years later, it sits at the #55 spot. Made for US$75M back then and Directed by the 'Master of Disaster' himself Roland Emmerich and Co-Written by him too, that film propelled Will Smith into the stratosphere (literally) together with his other co-stars that included Jeff Goldblum, Bill Pullman, Randy Quaid, Robert Loggia, Judd Hirsch, Vivica Fox and Mary McDonnell. Along the way the movie picked up an Oscar for Best Visual Effects and 32 other award wins and another 33 nominations. And now twenty years later, in terms of real time, and movie time, the long awaited sequel has arrived. Made for US$165M and released worldwide just last week, Roland Emmerich is once again in the Director chair with a Co-Producer and a Co-Writer credit too, and, with a number of that original line up returning again with their cans of 'whoop-ass' to thwart them pesky alien Mo-Fo's out of the sky and into oblivion . . . maybe! The film has so far taken US$143M over its opening weekend worldwide.

This time Jeff Goldblum is back as is Bill Pullman, Brent Spiner, Judd Hirsch, Vivica Fox and Robert Loggia (who died after filming wrapped, and to whom the film is honoured), joined by Liam Hemsworth, William Fichtner and Charlotte Gainsbourg but alas no Will Smith. Smith's character in the first film, Steven Hiller, we learn was killed nine years ago when testing a new experimental fighter jet designed using alien technology. Now hailed a national hero, his memory lives on, and manifests itself in the film through his son Dylan Hiller (Jessie Usher) - also an acclaimed pilot and captain of the Earth Space Defence (ESD) which rose out of the events of the 1996 attack.


It seems that 20 years ago when the invading aliens were wiped out, they sent a distress signal to their other fleets in deep space before finally succumbing to the might of Uncle Sam, and secreting themselves away elsewhere around our fragile green planet. Over those intervening years, The United Nations has rebuilt itself and created the ESD programme based at Area 51 using recovered alien technology as an early warning system and as its defence against future alien hostilities. Earth now also has early warning bases on the Moon, on Mars and on Rhea - one of Saturn's moons.

With the advent of global celebrations marking the 20th anniversary of that 1996 alien attack the now President of the USA Elizabeth Lanford (Sela Ward), orders an attack and destroy directive on a vast spherical ship that appears through a worm hole over the Moon Base. However, David Levinson (Jeff Goldblum) now Director of ESD is not convinced that this spherical ship is hostile, having boarded a fully intact downed alien ship laying dormant in Africa and come to the realisation that it sent an intergalactic distress signal back to its home world 20 years before. But, the President blows it into oblivion before any form of contact can be made choosing to shoot first, and ask questions later.

Almost simultaneously, the ESD report that its base on the Saturn Moon has gone . . . . without a trace, and before you can say 'Uncle Sam' a space ship measuring 3,000 kms in diameter emerges and wipes out the Moon Base killing all and destroying everything in its path on its journey toward Earth. Before doing so however, Levinson and ESD pilot Jake Morrison (Liam Hemsworth) in the latters space tug, retrieve a vital container from that downed spherical ship which they take back to ESD HQ at Area 51. Here ex-President Whitmore (Bill Pullman) and Dr. Brakish Okun (Brent Spiner) who has just woken from a twenty year coma, have been experiencing visions of alien logograms since their close encounters with the alien kind of twenty years ago and set about trying to interpret these and decipher their meaning - with some success.

In the meantime, the 3,000kms wide alien spacecraft enters Earths atmosphere with is own gravitational force and begins to devastate much of Asia with Singapore getting flattened. With its own gravity many buildings and structures are lifted high into the air, and as Levinson comments 'what's goes up, must come down' . . . and it does - on London, in spectacular fashion! When the alien super ship comes to rest it does so over the Atlantic Ocean and much of the USA with further widespread death and destruction, all delivered with Emmerich's trademark gravitas. It promptly begins drilling mid-ocean with the aim of sucking out the Earth's core to harvest the heat source to power its own vessels, but in so doing will throw out our planets magnetic fields, which in turn will destroy us. Levinson had seen earlier evidence of this in the African ship he boarded, but at the time did not understand the significance of that activity which mysteriously halted when the attacking aliens were thwarted twenty years earlier.

Back in Area 51, Dr. Okun cuts open the container retrieved by Levinson and Morrison and out rolls another spherical orb of artificial intelligence that is able to communicate directly, and advise that it is friendly and had come to warn Earth of the attack now happening and help evacuate humanity to a refuge planet. The sphere tells its own story of how it is the sole survivor from a world also wiped out by this aliens now attacking the Earth, and that their Queen is now coming to wipe it out too once and for all, knowing that the sphere is the last threat to their existence. And so Hiller is tasked with a counter attack on the Queen with the full and unrelenting force of ESD, but this attack doesn't go quite according to plan resulting in the bulk of the attack squadron being wiped out . . . except our heroes of course.

The Queen now rapidly advances to retrieve and destroy the sphere now locked inside an isolation chamber within Area 51, believed to be safe and secure. A decoy mission is quickly planned and rapidly executed to sidetrack the Queen out into the open and therefore exposed to attack using ground and what's left of the air forces. The Queen however, is not the Queen for nothing and when she's pissed you don't want to get in her way, as many find out to their ultimate cost. Whitmore, bows out with his final salute to Uncle Sam and flies the space tug loaded to the gunnels with nuclear warheads into the Queens space ship and destroys it, destroying himself in the process. The Queen escapes and quickly tramples on everything and everyone and breaks through to the isolation chamber and the sphere. But in the heat of the desert and with the force of her own gun ships piloted now by Hiller, Morrison and Whitmore's daughter (also a trained fighter pilot conveniently), the Queen is destroyed, and with it the Atlantic drilling is halted with minutes to spare before our core is punctured, and the mother ship begins its retreat.

Strap yourself in for death and destruction writ large as only Roland Emmerich knows how to deliver, but beware, this does not equate to a great movie by any means. Yes, it's big on spectacle and this is handled well, but really, there is nothing new here that we have not seen before in other large scale disaster epics, alien or otherwise, over the last two decades. As for the story - it's a bit muddled, hurried and convenient, and you need to suspend belief as to the geography and science behind some of what we are being led to believe here . . . even with Hollywood's poetic license! This film lacks the emotional gravitas delivered so well by Will Smith twenty years ago and the grounding of the real world as it was back then, opting for a parallel world of 2016 with over zealous fantasy and seriousness. It is also served up with a good dose of cheese too throughout, and particularly in the closing scenes where Uncle Sam whips ass with the help of a token African War Lord and a Chinese female fighter pilot, an attempt at another rousing speech by ex-President Whitmore as they go once more into the breach, and an outed Scientist (Dr. Okun) who proclaims that with the help of what the sphere can teach us we'll take the fight to the aliens uniting the galaxies across the cosmos, in what will be 'Independence Day 3'. See it at your local Odeon for the big screen experience, but you can easily wait for the big screen experience in your own home too.

 

-Steve, at Odeon Online-