Independence Day 2 (2016)

[jellydonut25]

It doesn't really look like Independence Day to me at all...

[mr.negativity]

io9:

[mr.negativity]

[Gwangi]

The problem here is that at least the first movie had some great practical effects (the destruction of The White House, Empire State Building - all miniatures), while this one looks like another CGI fest and thus making it just one of those run of the mill features.

[mr.negativity]

^Not Chris Hemsworth is the worst special effect in the trailer.

[Gargantuan Gargantua]

I like it how they reversed engineered alien technology but still manage to drive a Humvee.

[XvGojira]

One thing that will sadly be absent from the new Independence Day movie, is the giant statue of Randy Quaid's character that has replaced the statue of Liberty. But instead of a torch he's flipping off the sky above in warning to all other alien life forms.

[gfan1984]

A new trailer/mock news story for the movie. What I find funny is the mock news agency is called United World News....hmmmm

[The Shadow]

[XvGojira]

[The Shadow]

That'd be awesome and hilarious to see in the movie. I can an imagine a possible scene of a confused duo of aliens at the communications station in one of the attacking alien ships as they receive the message "Up Yours!."

Xilg: 'Up Yours!" Up Yours what?

Zrth: Maybe the rest is missing? Scan again to see if there's any more.

SHIP ALERT: WARNING! WARNING! Brace for impact!

Scene dissolves into a sheet of blue-white as the energy beam pierces the ship.

[mr.negativity]

"Our two works are connected like soul brothers," says original author

[mr.negativity]

BMD:

Independence Day: Resurgence isn't the complete and total disaster I expected it to be, but it's also not quite worthy of a recommendation.

[mr.negativity]

[canofhumdingers]

So this movie wasn't terrible. In fact, I actually thought it was a decent follow up to the original. The experience of seeing a sequel made two decades after a stand alone film was a little odd, but you get used to it quickly enough. The story is not as contrived as I feared it might be and is serviceable enough to have fun with. It's nothing spectacular or ground breaking, but neither was the original film's story... But like I said, it works fine.

The effects are what you'd expect from a modern CGI disaster (or Roland Emmerich) film. However, I did appreciate the effort the effects crew put in to making some of the effects match the look of those in the original film. Explosions in particular were very orange and fireball-y just like 20 years ago. Some things look very modern cgi, but there's plenty of things that made me go, "hey cool! They're really trying to make it fit visually with its predecessor." And not just in the design, but the actual lighting, detail, etc.

Also, there's at least one big effects sequence that takes place in broad daylight with very natural color - no obnoxious digital shading hokery pokery - and that was very refreshing. We watched the first film on blu ray the night before and I really appreciated the color palette for its very natural and real look as opposed to the heavy tinting we see far too much today so it was really nice to see that here too. In fact, I don't specifically remember a lot of digital color grading in the rest of the film, but a lot of it takes place in military bases and other environments where there's lots of "mood lighting" so to speak. In other words, I don't think it was heavily colored after the fact, but the lighting wasn't exactly "natural" due to environmental factors.

If I had one major critique it would be the dialogue. The first movie was corny as heck (and so is this one), but it really had fun with the dialogue. Particularly Will Smith's zingy one liners. That is pretty much entirely missing from this film and it definately suffers for it. There is ONE solitary one-line zinger towards the finale. That's it.

In the end I enjoyed it as much as I had hoped I would (but feared I probably wouldn't). If you like the first one in all of its dumb corniness and over the top spectacle, you'll probably dig this one too. It's not as good as the first but it's a worthy entry in the ID4 universe. And the big daylight effects sequence (I'm trying really hard not to spoil something) totally won me over. I really had fun with that part.

[klen7]

I enjoyed this, my review probably reads very similar to canofhumdingers. I do think the pilots didn't fill the charisma gap left by Randy Quad and Will Smith. I really liked the daylight sequence as well. Not sure how I feel about a third entry, but it's fine as sequels go.

[Dai]

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.

[klen7]

[Dr Kain]

Some things I didn't talk about in the review, some due to spoilers:

[klen7]

A couple responses to your quibbles, and a couple quibbles of my own.

[mr.negativity]

[Jinzo Ningen]

[mr.negativity]

[XvGojira]

Independence Day 2 was dumb and kind of fun and I would 100% be down for more Jeff Goldblum talking to alien orbs.