by Dai » Mon Jun 27, 2016 12:12 pm
It's a strictly by-the-numbers, but competent sequel. Where it suffers most is in trying to bolt every plot beat from the original onto the new script. The result is that anyone familiar with the original will quickly know what to expect at any given moment (with one much appreciated exception at the movie's climax that I won't spoil), which can make scenes feel perfunctory. In paticular, the first act is nowhere near the wonderfully taut and well-paced experience of the original, and it frankly takes a bit too long to get going, but once it does it rarely stops. In some ways, the comparison of ID4 to ID:R makes me think of The Day After Tomorrow and its spiritual successor, 2012; everything in the second movie is bigger, brasher and flashier, but the increased scale makes the viewer more disconnected from the events on screen. Don't make too much of that comparison though; ID:R is a far better movie than 2012.
Interestingly, Hollywood's ongoing attempts to woo Chinese audiences are fully on display in ID:R, and are as brazen as every other aspect of the movie. No doubt this trend is set to continue as China accounts for an ever-increasing percentage of ticket sales for Hollywood action movies.
When Independence Day first came out, it blew me away, and was one of my favourite movies for years after. I still like it, though its flaws are all too obvious to me now, and I can appreciate it for what it is: a dumb, loveable B-movie. Go into the sequel expecting nothing more than that, and you're unlikely to be disappointed. It doesn't redefine the genre, but it was clearly never intended to, and so there's the satisfaction of a movie that knows what it is and hits the target it aims for. There are no pretensions here, no deep meanings, and no one gurning for an Oscar; it's Earth vs the Flying Saucers Round 2. Whether that's good enough is up to you.