My Thoughts on "Independence Day: Resurgence"

(This is the main poster for Independence Day: Resurgence.) 

 

 

 

 

We always knew that they'd be back, or did we 🤔? It is officially the 10th anniversary of Independence Day: Resurgence, the (maybe) long awaited sequel to Independence Day (1996), a true 90s classic. Everything a blockbuster should be. I wrote a review of that movie already, you can go give it a read since it the previous post before this one since I'm still working on my Cowboy Bebop (1998) review, and I have no idea when it'll actually be finished. Hopefully before the end of the summer ☀️ or the end of the year. Hopefully it won't take that long 😬. This movie came out in 2016, which was the 20th anniversary of the first movie. That wasn't purposefully done, it just kind of worked out that way, that Roland Emmerich and Dean Devlin were finally able to make a sequel to an Independence Day sequel, or they decided to make an Independence Day sequel after so many years. And the release of that sequel just happened to land on the first movie's 20th anniversary. 

 

Though, when it was decided to make an Independence Day sequel, and when it pretty much became a legacy sequel, they built the movie around that. They constructed it around the idea that it would be an anniversary movie of sorts. Because they set the movie 20 years after the first one in real time, and not only had the characters from the first one grow old, as they would do in that time, but also have the world evolve in change after the Harvester invasion. The world rebuilt after the War of 1996, which is what the war depicted in the first one is officially called in the lore (not the most creative name, but considering there's a real-life war called the War of 1812 and another real-life war called the Six Day War, I'll let it slide), stronger than ever, having incorporated the Harvesters' technology with their own, and humanity managed to stay united after the war was won rather than fracturing and reverting back to their old ways. Countries squabbling with each other over the control of the entire world. That's what the Cold War was about, and it's what the current geopolitical reality of our world is about. 

 

But the Independence Day world somehow managed to avoid all that. Guess being invaded and almost destroyed by aliens 👽 put things into perspective for humanity, for the various governments and world leaders of the world. Even though I'm not convinced such a thing would happen for real in our world. COVID-19 🦠 convinced me otherwise. But is cool for this world, this fictional universe that Roland Emmerich and Dean Devlin created. It is a more optimistic vision of our world and how we as a species would react in the face of world-ending alien invasion 👽. A vision that could've only come from the 1990s. Or maybe Emmerich and Devlin are just naturally optimistic people, and they see the best in humanity rather than the worst, and they're convinced that if our species' existence were truly threatened, if our species was on the verge of extinction, the better side of humanity would come out, and we would come together as a species to face this existential threat head-on. And that we would stay united, even after the threat has been vanquished. 

 

I think humanity would unite in the face of an alien invasion 👽, but I'm not entirely convinced that they would stay united after the alien threat 👽 was vanquished, after we defeated the aliens 👽 and sent them packing, or just wiped them entirely, and kept some of them prisoners, like this movie shows humanity did with the Harvesters after they won the war. They have hundreds or thousands of them kept as POWs (prisoners of war) at several different facilities around the world including Area 51, which now the headquarters of the Earth Space Defense 🌎 (ESD 🌎). More on that later. The War of 1996 led to over 3 billion deaths, during a time when the global human population was 6 billion, easily making it the deadliest war in human history, dwarfing World War II several times. World War II was considered the deadliest war in human history, and still is in our world, and that war led to 60–75 million deaths. With the War of 1996, we're taking billions of deaths. 3 billion to be exact. 

 

That's unimaginable for most people, people probably didn't think there would be a war where that many people died unless it was a nuclear war ☢️. Sure, a nuke ☢️ was used during the war, President Whitmore ordered it after he almost got taken over by the Harvester that was being medically examined in Area 51, and he peered into its thoughts and saw their plans of human extermination, but after that, no other nukes ☢️ were used since the attack didn't work due to the Harvesters' shield technology. Technology that the humans themselves now make use of. I would've liked to have seen a movie or a tie-in video game or comic that was set in-between both movies, and showed what the world was like before it was fully rebuilt, or even a movie set during the war, but during a different perspective. Like, from an ordinary citizen's perspective. See how they dealt with this apocalyptic event. Since we mostly saw the war from the perspective of government and military people. 

 

Sure, David and his father Julius are both regular people, but they only got to come along because they knew people who worked in the government. The most normal people we see in the entire first one are Russell Case and his family. But even then, he's a pilot and Vietnam vet 🇻🇳, and he participates in the final battle against the Harvesters. So not completely a normal everyday person. Or I would’ve liked to have seen the international response to the invasion and the war, since we only see the invasion and the war from the perspective of the United States 🇺🇸, of Americans 🇺🇸. From really three cities, New York, LA, and Washington DC. While Russell Case and his family come from a trailer park out in California somewhere. I would’ve loved to have seen Africans and African war lords deal with the remnants of the Harvester invasion. Something that movie alludes to with the character, Dikembe Umbutu, but we never actually get to see. So much untapped potential that this movie only barely scratched the surface. 

 

This movie expands the lore in a much way, but there wasn’t much ancillary media from this movie to really flesh out that lore. Because humanity united to defeat the Harvesters and stayed united even after they were defeated, that means the UN 🇺🇳 in this universe is a more powerful organization. It has teeth, and it founded the ESD 🌎, whose main job is deal with the remnants of the alien enemy 👽 left behind after the invasion, and be on the look out for their return or the arrival of any other alien threat 👽. The fact that the Harvesters’ were the first alien species 👽 humanity ever encountered made them pretty wary of any oncoming alien visitors 👽. They have conditioned to assume the worst, and they are ready to shoot first if necessary. So you can kind of forgive the humans who shooting at the good alien 👽 in this film, the Sphere ⚪️. But, their instincts about the Harvesters returning were correct, since they’ve come back with reinforcements, ready to avenge their loss here on Earth 🌎. To finally take the planet that refused to go down. 

Roland Emmerich and Dean Devlin did intend for this movie to be a two parter called ID: Forever. Which might seem odd until you realize that the title of the first one was abbreviated as ID4. So, they were just planning on cutting to the chase and titling the sequel, ID: Forever, and having it be a two-parter. But at some point, they decided to make it a traditional trilogy instead, with the second one being this movie, Independence Day: Resurgence and then the third movie be whatever else. Maybe they were planning on doing a Matrix type of thing where the sequels wouldn’t titled or treated as a two parter, but would be essentially be a two parter in practice. The Matrix Reloaded and The Matrix Revolutions are really one movie split into two parts, and when you watch those movies with that mindset, they become a lot more satisfying. It’s helped by the fact that they were released in the same year, 2003, just months apart, and they were filmed back-to-back. James Cameron even took a similar approach with the two Avatar sequels we have so far: Avatar: The Way of Water 💦 and Avatar: Fire and Ash 🔥. 

 

Those movies were filmed back-to-back, and they are sort of one movie split into two parts. Or at least, they feel very connected since they feature pretty much all the same characters, looking the exact same, and they have very similar plots. It’s the Sully family meeting a different Na’Vi tribe in an exotic location that specializes in living in that exotic location, and they have to help defend it from humans who are still trying to exploit the land and its creatures for their natural resources. The only difference is that in Fire and Ash 🔥, the Na’Vi tribe they meet is hostile to them, or at least, their leader is, and even teams up with the humans, or at least the cloned Avatar version of Colonel Miles Quaritch. Because like the Wachowskis before him, Cameron would rather use the same bad guy again than create a new one. At least Smith is a more interesting character than Quaritch. Quaritch is just a walking military cliché. 

 

The third one never got made, so we don’t know what title of it would’ve been. But we do sort of know what it would’ve been about, which I’ll get into later when I actually start talking about the film. They said they would only make a third one if this one was successful. They also said that would make a Stargate 2 if Independence Day: Resurgence was successful. And of course, it wasn’t. It only made $389.6 million 💵 worldwide against a budget of $165 million 💵. It wasn’t as big of a bomb 💣 as Moonfall 🌕 (2022) would end up being, but it still wasn’t very good for a movie that cost that much to make, and was a sequel to a beloved and highly successful movie from the 1990s. Remember, the first one made $817.4 million 💵 against a budget of $75 million 💵. We went from that to $389.6 million 💵 against a $165 million budget 💵 for Resurgence. It’s probably a good thing Stargate 2 didn’t happen for Stargate fans since Roland Emmerich and Dean Devlin don’t really like the TV shows, and don’t consider them canon to their movie, and this sequel they were planning on making would’ve ignored all the TV stuff and gone in its own direction. 

 

I remember seeing this movie in the theaters when it originally came out on June 24, 2016, and I was very disappointed in it. I wanted to like it, I really did, especially in the face of all the negative reviews it got. I didn’t take those negative reviews seriously because the first movie got negative reviews and that movie’s a classic. But, I just didn’t. I wrote a review of the movie on DeviantART, and it was pretty negative. It didn’t outright hate it, I didn’t loathe the movie the same way I did Lucy (2014), but I was very bummed out that I didn’t like it 🙁. But, it’s been 10 years, a lot has changed. I’ve changed a lot since I wrote that initial review. I was just a teenager when I wrote that, and now I’m an adult. Maybe I might feel differently about the movie watching it 10 years later as a 27 year old adult than a 17 year old teenager. I’m open to having my mind changed about this movie. 

So, what did I think of it? Well, this is going to surprise all you reading this. It certain surprised me, but I think I actually liked it better this time around. 🤯 I know, shocking, I didn't see it coming either. I really don't know what was different, watching it this time, if it's just time being so far removed from the movie's release. Having hindsight, and having things in perspective. Maybe I was in a bad mood when I originally saw it, that's possible. Your mood can totally affect how your perceive a movie in the moment while you're watching it. I certainly felt like I was in a good mood when I was watching this movie. My mood 100% affected me when I watched Man of Steel and Batman v Superman: Dawn of Justice. I was in a bad mood when I watched both of those movies in theaters. I went into them with negativity, wanting to hate them. Or I didn't allow myself to like them. 

 

I heard and saw all the negative reviews for them, especially Batman v Superman, and I guess i just wanted to be in with the crowd. But then watched those movies again, years later, with a better mood and a different mindset, I actually liked them a lot more. I wasn't swirling around in negativity like I was before. It's ironic because Batman v Superman came out the same year as this movie, and they were hated by a lot of the same people. By the same people that will try to convince you that Supergirl (2026) is worth watching, or the DCU is stable and will be long lasting, or that James Gunn is a genius 🙄. But it weird because I didn't go into Resurgence wanting to hate it. Like I said, I wanted to like it, I was looking forward to it. Especially after seeing that first initial trailer, that trailer is awesome. Even people who don't like this movie and still to this day don't like it and denounce it will say that trailer is awesome. It's one of the best put together trailers I've ever seen. It really gets you pumped and ready to see this movie. And while movie definitely doesn't live up to that trailer, it is still a fun movie I would say. I guess the negative reviews had a lot more influence over me than I thought 🤷‍♂️. 

 

It's not as good as the first one obviously, but it's not as bad as I remember. I think people should give it another chance, and see what they think of it. Especially those like me who only saw the movie once when it was in theaters, and never saw it again. It's funny because a lot of the notes I wrote for this review prior to actually rewatching the movie were written with the idea that the movie was bad and I still wouldn't like the movie, even after rewatching it. Now a lot of them don't represent my true feelings about the movie since my opinions on the movie have changed. I'll just have to work with them the best I can. I won't use the ones that don't work at all with how I feel about the movie, and I'll delete them from my list in Notes. 

 

The movie does still have flaws, there are things that I still don't really like about the movie, or I think could've been done better. Like I still think it’s a mistake that they killed off both Steven and Jasmine Hiller. I understand that they couldn’t get Will Smith back because he was committed to Suicide Squad (2016), which also came out the same year, but come on, they didn’t need to kill him off in-between films and destroy any possibility of him ever returning in a future movie. Even if their plans to make a third one after this didn’t pan out because of this movie’s failure in theaters. They could’ve just said that he was in a coma, or he was in cryogenic stasis recovering from his injuries, kind of like Faye in Cowboy Bebop (1998), because the in-universe explanation for why Steven isn’t back in this movie is that he testing a new aircraft that was created using the Harvester technology, and there was some kind of malfunction and it exploded 💥, killing him instantly. 

 

Well, instead of having him die in that accident, what they could’ve done was have him survive, but barely, and with life threatening injuries. Like, his injuries were so severe, that they decided to try some new experimental treatment using the Harvester technology that heal his body entirely from the injuries he sustained from the accident. But, the process takes years, more than 20 years, which would be 2027 since the accident took place in 2007. That’s the year he died in the actual lore as it is. But, here in my version, he doesn’t die, and he’s just put under stasis for 20 years to heal from his injuries. That way you explain why he isn’t here, and you leave room for Will Smith to return in a future movie if he so wishes. They could’ve even included a subplot where Dylan and Jasmine go to retrieve his body and take him to be looked after in Area 51 when the Harvester mothership arrives. And then in the next movie, had it gotten made, they could’ve revived him, woken him up from stasis and have him join the fight. 

 

But because the accident occurred in 2007, and he was in stasis for the 11 of the 20 years he was supposed to be under to fully heal from his injuries, he has no memory of that whole time. His last memory is of the accident and when things went wrong when he was testing this new aircraft. You could use that create drama in the movie, as Steven is struggling to make up for that lost time, the 9 years that he missed. Maybe struggles to reconnect with his wife and son because of how much things have changed, much they’ve changed, and how he hasn’t really. He’s still the same guy that he was in 2007, and he’s trying to readjust to this new reality. But ultimately, he rises to the challenge to face the Harvester threat head on by leading the human side of the Sphere ⚪️’s resistance. Like, as soon as he was woken up, I’m sure they’d all elevate him to the role as Supreme Commander of the ESD forces 🌎, because he was the hero that thwarted the previous Harvester invasion in 1996, along with David. And because they revived him prematurely, he’s still not fully healed yet, and still needs time to recover, which add further drama, and contribute to his character arc. 

 

They could still use that as an explanation if they decide to make another Independence Day movie and they decide to retcon his death. When you kill him off, you pretty much remove any possibility of him ever returning. It limits creativity, and what you can actually do in future sequel. Imagine if they did what I suggested or something similar to that, the second movie was successful enough for them to make a third movie, and they announce that Will Smith is coming back for the third one. Do you have any idea how pumped people would be? A lot of people say that the big thing that this movie was missing was Will Smith. Having Jeff Goldblum wasn’t enough, they wanted Will Smith. Well, by keeping his character alive, and explaining his absence in a way that it doesn’t eliminate the possibility of him ever returning, you could give that to them. When I first saw the movie back in 2016, I wasn’t against the idea of Will Smith not being in the movie, and it just starring Jeff Goldblum, because I saw it as a continuation of the same style as The Lost World: Jurassic Park. Doing a sequel to a movie with Jeff Goldblum where he wasn’t the main lead, and then elevating him to the main lead. 

 

But on my recent rewatch of the first movie, yeah, I would’ve liked to have seen Will Smith in this movie. He’s probably the actor people most associate with the first movie, more than Jeff Goldblum even, and he is forever tied to that first movie. Just as much as he’s tied to the Men in Black franchise and the Bad Boys franchise. Independence Day (1996) and Bad Boys (1995) were the two movies that made Will Smith a movie star. An international movie star. He has as much to thank Independence Day (1996) for his movie career as he does Bad Boys (1995). This movie does feel like it’s missing something without him there, and it’s a huge missed opportunity that they killed him off, because now they can’t bring him back without retconning this movie, or at the very least retconning his death. There is one possibility though ☝️. You can keep him dead, but still him back…through cloning. If you really wanted to keep this movie in continuity, you could explain that they got a sample of his DNA 🧬 somehow, and then cloned him, and kept him hidden and under wraps all that time. Because even though this is an alternate world where humans have incorporated alien technology 👽 into their own, and advanced hundreds of years technologically, human cloning is still illegal and frowned upon by most people. Even though cloning has become more advanced thanks to the integration of Harvester technology. 

 

So, you could explain that after the accident, Steven was cloned by some group, or company, or scientist, using some samples of his DNA 🧬 that they had obtained, gave him all his memories right up until the accident, and then kept hidden in a secret facility during that time right up until the Harvester invasion, and then they decided to bring him out and unveil him to the rest of the world so he can join the interstellar fight against the Harvesters. They’re gonna need the hero of 1996 if they’re going to have any chance of defeating them. Plus, it would sort of be a nod to Will Smith’s dual role as Henry Brogan and Junior in Gemini Man ♂︎, which heavily dealt with human cloning and the ramifications of it. Sure, it’s wacky, isn’t much wackier than some of the stuff they actually did in this movie. Like, how much of a leap is a cloned Steven Hiller compared to a giant spaceship the size of the Moon 🌕 landing on Earth 🌎 without causing the whole planet to break apart? To be fair, they do explain that it’s because the ship has pads on the bottom of it that generate a gravity field, specifically to prevent the planet from breaking apart while it’s landed there. Or having Dr. Okun survive his ordeal in the first movie and be in a coma for 20 years. 

 

They went out of their way to retcon Dr. Okun’s death, and say that he didn’t actually die, he was just in a coma. He wasn’t even a main character in the first one. He was a supporting character. A memorable one to be sure, but still a supporting character. He shows up pretty late into the movie, long after all the actual main characters have been introduced, and the Harvesters have launched their attack, destroying at least some of the major cities on Earth 🌎. And it’s not as if they elevated him to being a main character, since he’s still ultimately a supporting character. Why couldn’t have they have done the same for Steven Hiller, the actual main character and main hero of the first movie? The character that people actually remember and quote to this day. “Welcome to Earth 🌎,” “Now that’s what I call a close encounter.” Those are two of the most quoted lines in the first movie, even this movie quoted the second one, and they both came from Steven Hiller. They’re both things he says after he punches a Harvester in the face. But whatever, they couldn’t get Will Smith back because he was busy working on another movie, so they quickly came up with something to explain his absence. Sure, it wasn’t the best explanation in the world, and they could’ve come up with a better one, as I’ve laid out here. But considering the time crunch they were working on to get this film done by June 24, 2016, it’s a little bit forgivable. 

 

What isn’t forgivable is what they did to Jasmine. You brought her back, made her a doctor, and then killed her off nearly at the halfway point, before the end of the first act. You might as well not have even brought her back at all if you were going to completely waste her like that. Again, Dr. Okun was only a supporting character in the first one, and yet, he still got way more to do in this movie than Jasmine ever did. Jasmine barely has any lines or screen time before she’s killed off during the mothership’s landing, which is a cataclysmic world ending event in and of itself. Millions of people died from just the ship landing on its own because it’s so big. It’s so big that it has its own gravitational pull. That’s the thing that causes the majority of the destruction that we see on screen: the ship’s gravity. It just lifts everything up, and sends it falling back down as it passes or approaches a new city, country, or continent. The whole thing covers the Atlantic Ocean, or at least most of it. But, as much as I don’t like that they killed her off, and I wish that she survived, I do like they did make her death a big part of Dylan’s character arc, and had it affect him a lot, and motivate him to keep fighting the Harvesters because she was his biological mother. 

 

Steven was only his stepfather, and he seemed to have a deep attachment to Jasmine that went beyond the attachment he had to Steven because she was there from the very beginning. She gave birth to him, and raised him right up until Steven came into their lives, and he rose to the challenge to be the father that Dylan was missing. Jasmine was the one who Dylan spent most of his time with during the War of 1996. They surviving together in the ruins of Los Angeles, making their way to Marine Corps Air Station El Toro, the base that Steven stationed at. Picking up other survivors along the way. So, you get the sense that he would be more broken up about her death than Steven’s, even he clearly loved Steven, he respected him and wanted to be like him, pretty much joined the same field that he worked in (became a fighter pilot just like him), and clearly still sad about his death all these years later. 

I also don’t care for the music. The score for the first movie was done by David Arnold, the same composer who did the score for Roland Emmerich’s previous movie, Stargate, as well as the film he did immediately after Independence Day (1996), Godzilla (1998). He also scored a few of the James Bond movies, particularly the ones with Pierce Brosnan after GoldenEye (1995), which was scored by Éric Serra, Luc Besson’s go-to composer. He scored Tomorrow Never Dies, The World Is Not Enough, and Die Another Day. He also scored the first two Daniel Craig James Bond movies, Casino Royale 🎰 (2006) and Quantum of Solace. Which adds to the greater amount of continuity between those two films than the rest of Daniel Craig’s tenure as the character. There is somewhat of a disconnect between Casino Royale 🎰 (2006) and Quantum of Solace and Skyfall, Spectre (2015), and No Time to Die, despite the fact that they’re supposed to have an interconnected storyline that spans across all five movies, and there’s greater continuity between them there has been in the previous Bond movies. Or at least, that’s what I’ve heard from some Bond fans.

 

Because Roland Emmerich decided not bring David Arnold back, or because David Arnold refused to come back, or was otherwise unavailable, it was going to be some big shoes to fill for whoever they got to do the score for Resurgence. Roland Emmerich got two of his frequent collaborators to do the score for the movie, Harold Kloser (who also served as a co-producer on the film) and Thomas Wander. I do appreciate that they brought back some of the old themes from the first one, especially the one for the end credits, that theme could easily pass for a Superman theme and no one would bat an eye, and I do like the two licensed songs they included on the soundtrack, "Electric U" by Kid Bloom (which is slowed down in the film for some reason) and a cover of "Bang Bang (My Baby Shot Me Down)" by Annie Trousseau, and the theme for the opening where we see President Whitmore's speech from the first movie being transmitted to the Harvester queen, which triggers the second invasion 20 years later, is pretty good too, the new music that Harold Kloser and Thomas Wander composed for this movie is underwhelming. 

 

Which is kind of shocking because they have produced good work, both on their own, and together, like their score for Midway (2019) (which was also directed by Roland Emmerich) is honestly pretty good, especially the tracks "Nobody Wants a War" and "Abandon a Ship." But, most of the score of this movie is pretty generic and forgettable. Most of the new music really stands out, or is really that remarkable 😕. It just blends in with music you've heard in other movies around that the time or even still now. There aren't a lot of memorable film scores nowadays. Nothing truly iconic. Even scores by the masters of the old days don't hold a candle to their older work. Like, I heard John Williams's score for Disclosure Day was pretty generic and didn't hold a candle to any of his older work. But, he is in his 90s, he's getting up there, so that isn't that surprising. But for the others, the ones who aren't as old as him, I don't know what's happening, why they're unable to produce work that at least matches the quality of their old work. And what is it with these newer composers who can't produce any good work on their own? 

 

I also think it was kind of a missed opportunity to not bring back Mae Whitman to reprise her role from the first movie as now ex-President Thomas Whitmore's daughter, Patricia Whitmore. I mean, Maika Moore isn't bad in the role, she's fine, but I think it would've been that much better if they did get Mae Whitmore to play the role again as an adult. That way you could get just that more cast members from the first one back, and there would've been a greater sense of familiarity between her and Bill Pullman since they worked with each other before on the first one, there would've been some rapport, and this could've been their to finally reunite after so many years. And it would've possibly even more heartbreaking 💔 when Thomas Whitmore sacrifices himself, and Patricia sees her own dad get blown up 💥, if it was Mae playing the role and not Maika. She easily could have done it too, she was still acting by then, she had just done a movie called The DUFF, which came out the year before. Maybe that's why she didn't do it, because she was busy working on The DUFF to work on Independence Day: Resurgence. But, since The DUFF came out in 2015, that means that it would've have to have been filmed the year before in 2014, so she could've done Resurgence if Roland Emmerich had even thought of bringing her back. Maybe she busy on the press tour. 

 

I also don't care for the design of the good alien 👽 that's in the film, which is just called the Sphere ⚪️, for obvious reasons. I mean, I like the Sphere ⚪️ in concept, I like the idea of introducing other kinds of aliens 👽 besides the Harvesters, helps expand the universe and makes it feel bigger, but I feel like they could've come up with a cooler design than it just being a white sphere ⚪️ with a white visor. I know, the idea behind the Sphere ⚪️ is that came from a species that forwent their physical biological forms to live inside of computers, and this thing is essentially a robot, but still. There's nothing that says that it had to be a white sphere ⚪️. But, I still like to think that Roland Emmerich and Dean Devlin were both inspired by the Michael Crichton novel 📖, Sphere (1987) and the movie adaptation, Sphere (1998) to make the good alien 👽 in the movie a literal sphere. 

 

But other than that, I liked everything else in the movie. I liked the destruction scenes a lot more this time around, the anti-gravity stuff, with the cities being lifted into the air, and then building falling down to Earth 🌍 including the Burj Khalifa, the world's tallest building, which crashes down in the River Thames, the part of it that goes through London. Even that moment during the first real aerial battle scene in the movie, Liam Hemsworth's character Jake Morrison goes, "Gah!" while making a turn, which is one of, if not, the most mocked moment in the entire film (and something that people try to point to as proof that Liam Hemsworth is a bad actor), didn't bother me on my second time around. I even liked Dr. Okun in this, I thought I was going to find him annoying, I even wrote a new note talking about that, but I didn't. I actually enjoyed his character a lot the second time. I'm still sour about them killing off Steven and Jasmine Hiller 😑, but I did like Dr. Okun. I feel like he was going to have a much bigger role in the third one if they had made it, and he already has a bigger role in this than he did in the first one. He shows up a lot sooner in the runtime than he does in the first movie. He pretty shows up at the halfway point, and the first movie is 2 hours and 25 minutes long if you go by the theatrical cut or 2 hours and 35 minutes long if you go by the Special Edition. And he is the first confirmed gay character ⚣ in the franchise. Retroactively, but still. 

 

He has a relationship with another one of the scientists at Area 51, Milton Isaacs, who apparently was also in the first one. He took care of him in the 20 years that Okun was in a coma for, and developed a romantic attachment ❤️ to Dr. Okun, which was unrequited, right up until Dr. Okun is woken by both the arrival of the Sphere ⚪️ and the return of the Harvesters, then it seems pretty requited. Dr. Okun definitely seemed broken up when Milton died during the Harvester queens' attack on Area 51 😭. So, the feelings seemed like they were mutual. It makes sense why this is in here because as I stated before in the review of the first movie, Roland Emmerich is gay ⚣ himself, so of course he would use this opportunity and his position of power in Hollywood to include gay characters ⚣, even if it was more him retroactively revealing that two characters were gay ⚣ when there was very little to suggest that they were gay ⚣. 

 

I mean, I could believe both Marty and Jimmy in the first one, two friends or associates of both Steven and David (Marty was David's boss at the cable company), were gay ⚣, that's why I talked about it in my review, because to me, they both acted really gay ⚣. Especially Marty. Not Okun and Milton. We just didn't see enough of them to really get sense of their sexuality, what their sexual orientation might be. They didn't explicit any subtle or overt gay behavior ⚣. Which, I know, it would've been really stereotypical to have them both act really effeminate and talk with a lisp, and not every gay man ⚣ talks or acts like that, but still. There was nothing to really suggest that those characters were gay ⚣ and that they would end up together. But, if you're someone that hasn't seen this movie (which is totally possible because it seems like the majority of people have forgotten this movie even exists and that Independence Day (1996) even had a sequel), and you're worried about this movie being "too gay ⚣" for you, don't worry, because they made it subtle enough to get past Chinese censors 🇨🇳 since the Chinese government 🇨🇳 highly disapproves of anything overtly gay ⚣⚢ in media. 

 

Any movie that has strong LGBTQ+ themes 🏳️‍🌈 in either gets heavily censored or banned entirely. That's why whenever Disney includes LGBTQ+ characters 🏳️‍🌈 in their movies, they either make it super subtle and inoffensive to where people wouldn't really notice it unless they really looking for it, or they remove those scenes entirely for the Chinese release 🇨🇳. Another reason why Taiwan 🇹🇼 is so much better than China 🇨🇳. It's the most LGBTQ+ friendly country 🏳️‍🌈 in East Asia. Possibly all of Asia. They were the first Asian country to legalize same-sex marriage, and they currently have LGBTQ+ individuals 🏳️‍🌈 working within the government in key positions. While China 🇨🇳 on the other hand, is still censoring LGBTQ+ people 🏳️‍🌈 in movies and TV shows, and pretending that they don't exist because they don't want them to exist 😒. 

 

Just because it's communist ☭ doesn't mean it's progressive. Most Marxist-Leninist states or Maoist states were or are socially conservative, especially it comes to gender and sexuality. China 🇨🇳 isn't even really a communist ☭ anymore since they switched to a market economy, or a mixed economy, under Deng Xiaoping, who was the guy ♂︎ that took over after Mao Zedong's death. They are capitalist in all but name. They are only really nominally communist ☭. But still, you know what I mean. They're still under the same repressive regime that was established all the way back in 1949, 77 years ago. This anti-LGBTQ+ sentiment 🏳️‍🌈 was present even under Mao, and was present in the Soviet Union ☭ as well, especially under Joseph Stalin. The most anti-LGBTQ+ 🏳️‍🌈 Soviet leader ☭ in history. So, if you're someone who cares about LGBTQ+ rights 🏳️‍🌈 and LGBTQ+ representation 🏳️‍🌈, and you identify as a communist ☭ and cheer on either China 🇨🇳, or the Soviet Union ☭, or both, you better think twice before you do. You better reevaluate your values, and what really matters to you in life. 

 

I always liked the idea of humans taking the Harvesters' technology, reverse engineering it, and incorporating it into their own and becoming way more advanced as a reason. That always intrigued me about the movie, and made want to go see in theaters originally because if you are going to do a sequel to Independence Day (1996), or really any alien invasion movie 👽, you might as well show how humanity adapted and used the technology of their invaders to better their own. Because that's what happen. If aliens 👽 really did invade us, and we somehow managed to defeat them, we use their technology to better our species, or at least create more advanced weapons. Like, whatever was left behind, we would use, and we'd reverse engineer it, and incorporate it into our own. 

 

Even though some people have complained that the futuristic stuff strayed too far away from the look and aesthetic of the first movie, but I disagree. Even back then when I saw this, I still felt like this still looked like Independence Day. Because Independence Day had that blue or aqua colored tint to everything, especially when it came to the stuff with the aliens 👽, which weren't called Harvesters back then, but just "the aliens 👽." Given how humanity integrated their technology in with their own, it stands to reason that the movie would have this cooler blue or aqua color tint to it. It's a natural progression of what was shown in the first one. I like the design of the rotorless Marine One that the president in this film, President Lanford, played by Sela Wards (who was also in another Roland Emmerich movie, The Day After Tomorrow), flies in, and the design of the main fighter aircraft that the ESD 🌎 uses, the H-8 Global Defender. I thought that thing looked cool then, and I still do now. The ESD Bomber 🌎 looked cool, and so did the Space Tug, which is the same space/aircraft we see throughout the film. At least the first half. That was another design that intrigued me in the promotional material in the lead-up to the film's release, and it did not disappoint. I even liked the detail on the new weapons that the humans created using the Harvester technology, that they fire a straight beam, and then we see the actually projectile travel down that beam until it hits target. Just like the laser beam weapons on the City Destroyers in the first movie. That's a detail that they didn't have to add, and it's nothing most people would notice, but it is a cool way of showing that these weapons were created with the same technology as the Harvesters. They're derived from the same source. 

 

It's actually fitting that a lot of the first half of the movie takes place on the Moon 🌕 and deals heavily with a Moon base 🌕 that built sometime during the 20 years between the first and second movie, and is operated by the ESD 🌎 to be first line of defense against another potential alien threat 👽, because the opening scene of the first movie also took place on the Moon 🌕. It opens with a shot of the flag 🇺🇸 planted on the Moon 🌕 by Neill Armstrong and Buzz Aldrin during the famous Apollo 11 mission, as well as the plaque they left behind too saying that they came in peace for all mankind. They even include audio of someone reading out the text that's written on the plaque, either Neill Armstrong or Buzz Aldrin or someone else on the Apollo 11 crew. And then of course, the Harvesters once again show on Earth 🌎's doorstep from behind the Moon 🌕. They sure do like sneaking behind the Moon 🌕 don't they? Only this time, they left behind damage. They destroyed the ESD Moon base 🌎🌕, and sent several pieces of the Moon 🌕 flying into space.  

 

A lot of people didn't like the CGI in this movie, and felt like the movie overused CGI, and prefer the practicality of the first movie, which mostly used models and miniatures. And yes, the practical effects in the first Independence Day are impressive and still are impressive to this day, and part of me does wish that there could've been more practical effects in this movie, but watching it again a second time, the CGI really didn't bother me. It's a movie from the mid-2010s, and it's a late Roland Emmerich movie, of course it's going to use a lot of CGI. Roland Emmerich embraced this technology more than anyone else in Hollywood (except maybe George Lucas, James Cameron, the Wachowskis, Robert Zemeckis, and Robert Rodriguez), certainly more than Michael Bay, who a lot of people to this day compare him to, and he uses CGI as much as possible. Wherever there could be CGI, he uses it, and he clearly prefers using it over practical effects. 

 

He talked about in the making of documentary on the 20th anniversary edition Blu-Ray 💿 of the first movie that he felt limited in the old days of having to mostly rely on practical effects, models, miniatures, puppets, animatronics, makeup, and prosthetics. But with CGI, you can do anything, the only limit is your own imagination and the amount of money 💵 you have at your disposal. So, with the second movie, since it had been 20 years and CGI had become far more advanced since then, he felt free to do whatever he wanted. Whatever, he, Dean Devlin, and the other writers on this movie came up, they could do, they wouldn't need to worry about technological limitations. Just budgetary ones. And considering this movie had a production budget of $165 million 💵, that wasn't a problem either. 

 

Besides, it's not like the first one was devoid of CGI. A lot of the fighter jets during the aerial battle scenes in that movie were CG, so were the Harvester attackers. Sure, it wasn't to the same extent as in this movie, but it was still there. Even this movies isn't all CGI since there are shots of the Harvesters' feet or hands or whatever those are, or their tentacles (especially when they're interacting with people), where they are practical. Honestly, that's the best route. Use practical effects in close up shots or when the creatures are interacting with the set or the actors, like directly touching them, and then use CGI when the creatures are in movements and need to do complex movements besides just walking or turning their head left and right. It's the same rule that most of the Jurassic movies follow, even the newer Jurassic World movies which use way more CGI than the Jurassic Park movies did. Can't say that this movie is going against that rule. 

 

The city destruction, all the anti-gravity stuff with the mothership lifting entire cities into the air with its gravity field, and then dropping it down as it passes by, looks really good. And the Harvester mothership, the Harvester attackers, and the human-built aircraft and spacecraft like the H-8, the bomber, Marine One, and the Space Tug all look great. But, the thing that benefits the most from the greater use of CGI in this movie are the Harvesters themselves. The Harvesters (back when they were just called "the aliens 👽") were portrayed by a mixture of puppets and animatronics in the first movie. It's honestly impressive working looking back, watching that movie again 30 years after its original release in 1996. But given that they were mainly puppets and animatronics in that movie, they were pretty limited in their movements. And if there's one thing Roland Emmerich doesn't like to be, it's limited by effects and by movement. 

 

So, when it came time to make the second one, it was pretty much a no brainer that the Harvesters would be all CG. I mean, George Lucas switched to an all CG Yoda for the last two Star Wars prequel films the first chance he got. He even went back to Star Wars: Episode I – The Phantom Menace, and erased the puppet Yoda and replaced him with the CG Yoda because he hated the puppet Yoda, he hated how it looked in that film, and thought the CG Yoda looked a thousand times better. And honestly, he was right, that puppet Yoda looked horrendous. It didn't match the same look as the ones from the last two original trilogy films, Star Wars: Episode V – The Empire Strikes Back and Star Wars: Episode VI – Return of the Jedi. So, why do the same with the Harvesters? 

 

Like, the scene where Thomas Whitmore goes into the isolation chamber to be taken over by one of the Harvesters they have prisoner in Area 51, so that they can interrogate it and get information about it about the mothership that just landed on Earth 🌎, and then the guards decide to start shooting at it because it looks like it's about to kill Thomas, and then Dikembe Umbutu kills it by literally stabbing it in the back with his machetes. That scene right there is the reason to do the Harvesters all CGI, or mostly CGI. That scene is so cool, it showed the potential that these creatures have when they're not restricted in their movements by puppetry or animatronics. How it just crawls onto the ceiling, grabs the gun with its tentacles and then just starts firing, that's really cool. Even the part, where the Harvester crawls out of its biomechanical suit and then gets stabbed by Dikembe Umbutu for good measure to make sure it doesn't get away and it dies for real is pretty cool. 

 

Dikembe Umbutu is honestly the best of the new characters that was introduced in this movie. I wish he had more screen time, and had a bigger role in the story than he actually does, and I like I said, I wish we got to see more of his backstory and his and his people's fight against the Harvesters in Central Africa. They hint at this little war that took place in the time in-between this movie and the first movie, within Central Africa between Dikembe Umbutu's forces and the Harvesters holdouts that were left behind after the mothership was destroyed and the War of 1996 was won by the humans, and still kept fighting even after their defeat. He talks about how the Harvesters hunted them, and they need to learn how to hunt them, and they got good at killing Harvesters. To the point that they even collect their skulls as trophies and left them as warning to any outsiders who may stir up trouble for Umbutu and his forces. 

 

They even formed a new nation out of the ashes of the old nations that once resided in the Central African region, called the National Republic of Umbutu. Named after the Umbutu family, the warlord Upanga Umbutu and his two sons, Dikembe and Bakari. And residing directly underneath the City Destroyer that landed there and started drilling. According to the Independence Day wiki (yes, there is an Independence Day wiki), the NRU (or RNU if you go by the French name for the country) was formed out of a province of the Central African nation, the Democratic Republic of the Congo 🇨🇩, the second largest African country back in 1996, and third largest after the breakup of Sudan 🇸🇩 with South Sudan 🇸🇸 becoming its own separate nation in 2011 (it's unknown if that still happened in the Independence Day world, I'm honestly not sure, it could go either way), and it is not formally recognized as a legitimate nation. This is all stuff that we got to see in ancillary material that didn't really materialize, even during this movie's marketing. Like, at least a tie-in comic showing this backstory, this in-between story, would've been cool to see because there's so much there. There's so much potential. This movie expanded the lore in a big way, and because this movie was unsuccessful, we only got see a small glimpse of that world that Roland Emmerich and Dean Devlin created. 

 

Some people, a lot of people actually, didn't like the subplot involving Julius and the kids driving across the country to get to Area 51 after the second Harvester mothership lands on Earth 🌎 and leaving devastation in its wake across multiple continents, including Asia, Europe, and parts of North America. The entire East Coast of the United States 🇺🇸. But, like a lot of things in this movie, it didn't bother me. At least, not this time around. Julius is upset that David doesn't see him anymore, that he's off busy working with the UN 🇺🇳, running the ESD 🌎, trying to investigate any all signs of the Harvesters left on Earth 🌍, and he's bummed out that he didn't give him any grandkids. Julius wanted to be a grandfather, and David never gave that to him. 

 

So here he is, he gets paired up with these orphaned kids who saved his life after they saw him dangling from his fishing boat which got pushed inland by the mothership landing right above the Atlantic Ocean to start drilling to the Earth 🌎's core. He not only drives these kids to safety, but he offers to take them in when they no longer have a home or parents, and they agree to it. He finally got the chance to be a grandpa, even if they aren't his biological grandkids obviously. Adopted grandkids. I don't know if that's even such a thing. This subplot does kind of mirror the subplot in the first one involving Russell Case and his family. It gave us a look into how the normal everyday person is dealing with this, as opposed to just seeing it through the eyes of government and military people. Although, the kids in this movie are a lot more normal everyday people than even Russell Case and his kids were. And one of them is played by Joey King, and I like her. 

 

I don't know this is was pre or post Kissing Booth 💋, but it was pretty early on in her career, she's very young here. Still a kid. I'm glad she got more roles after this and the Kissing Booth 💋 movies. My favorite role of hers would have to be Prince in Bullet Train 🚅🇯🇵. She was so good at playing a villainous character in that. Makes me wish she played more villain roles. Even when they bring along the kids in the bus, it still didn't bother me. Again, it does sort of mirror how Jasmine saved people along the way, and brought people along with her on the way to her destination in the first movie. Only here, it's with Julius and exclusively kids. I guess if you find kids annoying in movies, you'll hate this subplot, and I feel like a lot of people were the most vocal about hating this subplot really do hate kids, or at least hate them in movies. Like, I'm sure if Brandon Tenold reviewed this movie, he'd complain about this subplot because he usually complains about seeing kids in movies. He'd probably call them all of the Kennys after the character in the English dub of Gamera, the Giant Monster called Gammera the Invincible, which is public domain BTW.

 

I even think the idea of the Harvester queen is pretty cool. Some people didn't like the queen, and didn't think the Harvesters needed a queen, but I think it does work with what was established in the first one. They did compare them to insects in the first one, they compared them to locusts, especially in the way that they consume every natural resource and then move on. So, given how insect-like in their behavior they are, it makes sense that they'd be eusocial, and they'd have a queen. Or multiple queens as this movie establishes. That's one detail that I didn't catch before when I first watched this back in 2016, and probably a lot of other people didn't each other, there are multiple queens, and each queen seems to run her own colony. Sort of like how there multiple ant queens 🐜 for multiple ant colonies 🐜. It also works with how they communicate exclusively through telepathy. The Harvesters form one mind through their telepathy, being connect to their respective queen, and once you get taken over by one of them, you're tapped into their singular consciousness, their one mind. It expands the lore, and how these creature, while working with what was established in the movie. 

 

And of course, the queen is huge. Almost kaiju-sized. Like the 1998 version of Godzilla, specifically Godzilla Jr., could've fought this thing in an episode in the animated series that people like more than the actual movie. It's way bigger than the Xenomorph queen in Aliens, or really any of the Xenomorph queens in the entire Alien franchise. Roland Emmerich, always gotta one up what came before, and have the biggest version of everything. Biggest spaceships, biggest alien queen 👽. Everything about the Harvesters is big. Their spaceships are big and their queens are big. Nothing they do or have is small scale, nothing is minuscule or minimalist, everything they do or have is maximalist, the biggest it can possibly be. They make their motherships almost as big as entire moons. And each one carries millions, if not, billions of them. One Harvester mothership could house a population of Harvesters that dwarfs the entire human population. Especially after the War of 1996, which killed half the global population. 

 

We have a lot 6 billion or I guess, 3 billion people in the aftermath of the war, well on an average mothership, there might be 13 billion Harvesters. Though the fact that the queen has her own biomechanical suit and that one looks very similar to the one that the regular Harvesters wear, goes against the explanation Patrick Tatopoulos came up with for where their biosuits came from. That they were once a species that lived on the same planet as them, and they enslaved them, treated them like live stock, and then wear them as skin suits. Unless the species that they suits are derived from also had a queen that was gigantic size, though I doubt it. I think Roland Emmerich and Dean Devlin ignored Patrick Tatopoulos's own suggestion about the origin of the biosuits, his own personal headcanon, and just went with their own explanation. Or maybe that was their explanation, but they ignored it or retconned so that they could have a queen, and the queen could also wear a biosuit that increases her size and strength.  

 

The move is shorter than the first one. Depending on which cut you watch, the first one is either 145 minutes, or 2 hours and 25 minutes, long or 154 minutes, 2 hours and 35 minutes, long. The Special Edition added 9 minutes worth of additional footage. It's not necessarily essential stuff, but it does me feel like I'm watching a more completed film, I'm watching a film as close to its most completed form as I can, and indeed I feel like the Special Edition is the definitive version of Independence Day (1996), even though it isn't available on most streaming platforms. Well this movie, Independence Day: Resurgence, is only 120 minutes, or exactly 2 hours, long. Much shorter than either cut of the first one. Which, depending on how you felt about the first movie's runtime, if you hated it or you were fine with it, will be a positive thing or a negative thing. Personally, I don't mind either way. The first movie goes by so fast that you really don't notice its enormous runtime, and I was surprised at watching this movie again and learning what the runtime was. The first time I watched it, it felt way longer than it actually was, but on my second time, I noticed that it was going by quicker, and I had no idea why, until I saw the runtime, and I noticed that it was way shorter than the first one. Figure that. Maybe it's because Roland Emmerich and Dean Devlin were treating this almost like a two-parter, even if they weren't to be titled as much. With the two movies combined adding up to a pretty lengthy runtime. 

 

I have a feeling that if they made the third one, it would've been a lot longer than this one. It might've been just as long as the first one, maybe even longer. Maybe something closer to 3 hours. Which brings me to the thing I want to talk about before I finally end this review: the unmade third Independence Day movie. Given that this movie ends in a cliffhanger, and was clearly made with the idea that there would be another one, I'm guess that the third one would've focused on the humans fully joining the Sphere ⚪️'s resistance, along with several other alien species 👽 and taking the fight to the Harvesters. Finally putting a stop to their reign of terror across the galaxy once and for all. And it would've been more of a space adventure movie, or space war film than a disaster movie like the first two were. Much closer to something like Star Wars, than the disaster movies of the 1970s that Roland Emmerich and Dean Devlin were initially inspired when making the first Independence Day movie. 

 

I saw this one comment on PointlessHub's review of both the first Independence Day movie and this one, that said Roland Emmerich clearly wants to do a space opera movie and they're baffled that he keeps making disaster movies regardless. Well, I'm not as negative or judgmental as that comment was, but yes, they are correct. I think Roland Emmerich had greater ambitions for this franchise than just being disaster movies. I think he wanted to show and prove with this third one that Independence Day can be so much more than a disaster movie. Maybe he can see that there's only so much you can do with the disaster movie genre, and he wanted to move past that. So, he tried to use this movie as transitional movie from the disaster movie of the first one to the more space opera or space adventure of the third one. This movie would've acted as a bridge between those two genres, easing the audience into the other one after expecting more of the same but bigger and more CG. 

 

 

 

(This is the comment I was talking about that was talking about how Roland Emmerich wants to make a space opera epic, but keeps trying to ease people into it by doing yet another one of his disaster movies, and that he should just cut to the chase and do one. Without making a disaster movie first to try to Trojan horse it in there.) 

 

 

 

 

But alas, it didn't pan out. This movie bombed 💣, and the third movie never got made. Even when he tried doing the same thing again with Moonfall 🌕 (2022), a new and original IP, it still didn't work since that movie bombed 💣 even harder than this one and didn't get a sequel either even though it clearly sets one up at the end. Even though I like this movie a lot more now, I still can't fully recommend it since the movie doesn't fully stand on its own due to that cliffhanger ending that will likely never be resolved. Even if they make another Independence Day movie, it will either be a reboot, or if it is another sequel, it'll probably completely ignore this one and go in its own direction. Sort of like what the Godzilla movies have done, or the Terminator movies have done, or the Halloween 🎃 movies have done. Selective sequels, as Patrick Willems termed them. Roland Emmerich and Dean Devlin should've made this movie stand on its own a lot more, just in case the movie wasn't successful to get another sequel. They were too confident in the movie's success for their own good. They thought they had instant gold right there, when they actually didn't. 

 

Why the movie bombed 💣 is anyone's guess. If it was due to the lack of Will Smith, or the negative reviews, or the story and script not being to audiences' liking, or just greater competition. It was likely a combination of different factors, rather than just one or two things. But, I guarantee you that if this movie had actually been more successful, despite all the negative reviews, they would've made that third film. They would've even made that second Stargate movie they wanted to make also. It's totally possible, it could've happened because remember, the first movie was a huge success despite all the negative reviews it got. Like, it's hard to imagine how with how beloved it is, but all of the reviews for Independence Day (1996) at the time were negative. Roland Emmerich included parody caricatures of Roger Ebert and Gene Siskel in Godzilla (1998) for a reason. So, negative reviews for a movie don't automatically mean that it will be a financial failure. Quite the opposite in fact. There's a lot of movies that were financial successes despite overwhelmingly negative reviews from critics. This is why box office is not an exact science. No body knows what makes a movie a hit, or if a movie will be successful or not, and you cannot engineer success. It can only happen naturally and organically. Depending on how the audience responds to the movie, or if they have awareness of it or not. 

 

 

(This is another poster for Independence Day: Resurgence.)