Independence Day: Resurgence (Roland Emmerich)

The original Independence Day has a 61% rating on Rotten Tomatoes. That’s somewhere between fresh and rotten - probably like tomatoes that have been sitting out for a few days and have starting losing colour and flavour. Not exactly high praise. It’s a much lower rating than I expected. I assumed Independence Day was awesome and that everyone else thought so too. So I revisited it a couple weeks ago.

And Independence Day is still awesome.

It actually probably isn’t, but I grew up feeling that it is, and that feeling has been there - as the new one reminds us at least 35 times - for 20 years, so it’s not going away now. Sometimes revisiting childhood favourites is underwhelming and disappointing, as these sacred objects turn out to be false idols (fans of the original Ninja Turtles movies, leave your happy memories alone - don’t watch them as an adult). But sometimes things line up perfectly - like a spaceship over the White House - and the results are explosive. The perfect way to become a lifelong Independence Day fan is to be 10 years old when it was released in 1996.

And I think the only way to become an Independence Day: Resurgence fan is to be 10 years old in 2016.

The aliens are back, for reasons unclear. They want the Earth’s core, yes, but they also seem to be pretty pissed that President Bill Pullman’s speech from the original has made it onto so many “Top 10 Best Movie Speeches” click-bait websites. One of the boss aliens had the speech on loop - I guess it got the recording from that megaphone somehow, or bought the VHS of the movie - and had been torturing itself, again, for 20 years(!). I was surprised we didn’t see its dartboard with Pullman’s portrait taped to it. But anyway, they’re back.

And so is almost everyone from the original. Whether they should be is another question, but it doesn’t matter because the movie shoehorns them in wherever it can. Jeff Goldblum saved the world the first time and so now he’s in charge of everything. His dad is back (Judd Hirsch), and the movie doesn’t let us forget he’s Jewish (everyone is a putz). Bill Pullman is back, played mostly by his beard (though the beard leaves when it’s time to get serious). Even the guy who got squeezed and used as a ventriloquist dummy (“reeeeleasssse meeeee!”) is back, even though he was definitely dead in the first one, but oh well.

Conspicuously missing is Will Smith, and that’s the problem. In his place is his character’s son (played by Jessie Usher) and Thor’s brother Liam Hemsworth. And it’s like replacing a gourmet steak and lobster dinner with two pieces of unbuttered toast. That sounds like an overstatement, but it isn’t. 1996 Will Smith was Will Smith at the peak of his powers. Independence Day established him as the movie star and we haven’t really had anyone like him since his decline. Will Smith’s charisma was as big as the alien ships. It was as big as the movie itself, which spawned a new era of summer blockbusters. If the original itself wasn’t good, and again it probably wasn’t, it didn’t matter. Will Smith’s charm carried it. So even though 10 year old boys love aliens, fighter jets, spaceships, and explosions, if you take out Will Smith, the movie isn’t memorable. The original probably has as many problems as Resurgence, but it doesn’t matter. The original had 1996 Will Smith. Hemsworth, on the other hand, is like a contestant on The Bachelorette who doesn’t get any screen time because all he is is handsome and probably nice. All the other characters are just as dull and aren’t even worth mentioning, and there is way too many of them. It’s like Emmerich knew it would take 10 young actors in 2016 to make up one Will Smith in 1996. But they don’t even come close.

There are plenty of other problems. There are no real stakes when the stakes are so huge - half the planet gets flattened but no one is really that sad. There are awkward references to the original, like one completely recreated scene, or when President Hilary Clinton (actually President Lanford, played by Sela Ward) shouts “there will be no peace!” for some reason. And everyone has an annoying sidekick - Hemsworth’s sidekick is horny for a Chinese pilot who later becomes his sidekick, there’s a guy in a suit tagging along with Jeff Goldblum until he trades in for an African warlord, leaving Goldblum with Charlotte Gainsbourg who is a psychiatrist for some reason, and Hemsworth and Usher are mad at each other but then they’re pals. It’s all a mess.

There are some fun scenes - I’m always up for a giant monster, and I’m a sucker for disaster movies. Some of the action sequences are spectacular. And there are some interesting ideas: in the intervening, again, 20 years (!) since the aliens last attacked, all the societies on Earth have collaborated and used the leftover alien technology to advance the global civilization. It could be a big mess of mindless fun, and 10-year-olds will probably like it. But without a real star or a single interesting character to care about, it remains flat, dull, lazy, and bloated, and those 10-year-olds won't love it when they're 30.

We’re all just attending boring prep school without the Fresh Prince.