After all the bad reviews and opinions it's almost inevitable that this film was better than expected. Yes, it's not as good as the original and there is an abundance of cheesy moments plus a cynical, market boosting, nod to China. But I enjoyed it and kinda hope there is another film where they take the fight to the aliens.
shareI can personally testify to the effect that expectations can play on a film watching experience. Basically any film that I go into with a lot of hype for I end up let down by (Ad Astra, Joker recently), but often when I go into a film with low or no expectations, I can walk out pleasantly surprised (Rambo: Last Blood).
Sometimes when I am disappointed with a film the first time around, I can watch it again with adjusted expectations and enjoy it a lot more the second time around (London Has Fallen, Blackhat).
This is not the case with Independence Day: Resurgence though. I was really disappointed by it the first time around, then when I gave it another shot I still thought it was a piece of shit. It is just not a good movie, in my opinion. It doesn't work on a script level, and all the CGI makes the effects scenes feel like a video game. (One of the original film's strengths was all the practical effects work, and that was completely jettisoned for this film.)
I really wanted to like it, as I love the first film and think that a sequel was a long time coming. It's actually amazing that it took so long for a sequel to be made, when you consider how successful the first film was. I mean, Will Smith did MIB right around the time he made Independence Day and there are now four of those fucking things. So I do think that we needed a sequel. We just didn't need THIS sequel.
Agreed. I generally avoid reviews before going to see a film though I find it interesting to watch or read them later and see if I agree, or perhaps what I missed. And I don't think this is anywhere near as good as the 1st but I did like the cast, particularly that they bought back Maika Monroe all grown up and a pilot.
shareThere were some things that I found interesting in this film, even though they didn't save it from being lame.
1.) Meeting the alien Queen running the hive mind, and actually seeing her personally attack Area 51 was new to me. The advance in movie-making technology made it easier to see more alien action in this film.
2.) Getting to see inside one of the ships up close was interesting. I had always been curious about the interior of the Mothership in the original movie, and in this one, we actually got to see that these aliens brought their own ecosystem with them.
3.) It was nice to know that the evil saucer aliens weren't the only ones out there in the universe, though the ones that built the round white robot ship still leave a lot of questions unanswered.
4.) It never occurred to me that people whose minds had been touched by the aliens in the first movie would have had mental problems years afterwards, or when the new aliens came, that they could sense them coming.
I don't think there was anything particularly original in any of the details they added but I liked the fact they did. The only think that bugged me about the film was that I don't think they got the scale of the mothership right when we saw it parked on the Earth - but if it was that size, however gently they landed, I suspect there would be serious repurcussions for our planet in terms of geological after effects and maintaining our orbit.
shareYeah, having a 3,000 mile wide spaceship might cause gravitational problems to our planet. But then again, having it drill down to our planet's core with the intent of hollowing it out was a much nastier prospect by comparison.
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