Independence Day: Resurgence Movie Review!!!

Bigger and louder than the original but is it better? Read our review to find out!

I vividly remember watching the original Independence Day all the way back in 1996.  I was only 16, it was a perfect sunny summer day, my buddies and I were pretty excited.

We were all fans of Will Smith in Fresh Prince and let’s just say we weren’t disappointed, ID was a blockbuster of epic proportions! 

Great characters, great effects, the perfect balance of action and humour, it just ticked all the right boxes.  We came out smiling from ear to ear, think I even went to see it a second time in the following weeks.

Ah the memories..

It was cool how ID was a complete stand alone movie before the days of sequels and franchises, but that’s the age we live in now and so here we are, Independence Day: Resurgence.

It’s not a terrible movie but it’s just so so meh.

The plot’s pretty much the same as before, aliens come in giant ships and try to take over the world again, except this time the main ship is almost as big as our entire planet.

We’re slightly better prepared this time round, harnessing some of the alien technology salvaged from the first attack but we’re still hopelessly outnumbered.

I liked their joke about how they always like to take down popular landmarks and that’s exactly what they do, giving us the usual destruction and mayhem set pieces from around the world.

The most fun for me was the Godzilla-like battle scene at the end.  It was pretty cool though not nearly enough to save the movie from being overwhelmingly mediocre.

The characters in the original were great and how Resurgence handles the memories of those characters is this movies’ biggest failing.

Will Smith is dead, the cool president from the original has become a bumbling old has-been, Goldblum is once again distant from his dad (Judd Hirsch) and Goldblum’s wife is nowhere to be seen. 

It may have been better to just leave out all the original characters, but then again, all the new characters are so rubbish and completely forgettable, perhaps not.

Perhaps my inability to dissociate this movie from my memory of the original is what kept me from enjoying this more, but I struggle to imagine that new audiences unfamiliar with the original would be jumping for joy either.

What was also annoying is how lazy film-makers always opt for giving aliens some kind of hive mentality these days, kill the queen and the rest all die, how convenient and boring.

This is a perfect example of the kind of lazy story telling you can expect from Resurgence unfortunately.

The heavy handed and in-your-face evidence of collaboration with China also don't help matters.  Even Angelababy can't save this ride!

It looks pretty and sounds loud, so if eye candy is what you’re after, you’ll definitely find it here (AV enthusiasts rejoice), but if you’re looking for a good story to match, you'll need to look elsewhere.

I found myself later the same day trying to remember what I actually did earlier, a sadly forgettable movie experience.

Rating 3 out of 5 (one extra point for the amazing Judd Hirsch).

Bobby