Independence Day: Resurgence (2016)

Independence Day (1996) was big deal when it was released and some people still defend it. It was one of Roland Emmerich's disaster movies where most important things are destruction and barely escaping the destruction all the time. I have seen it couple times but remember almost nothing of it. Independence Day: Resurgence is sequel it.

I start from positive. I liked how Earth had turned into futuristic science fiction world. It made sense since twenty years have passed since first movie. Second positive thing was lot of visual effects artists got work. They spent lot of money on special effect but there was too much of them. Screen was full of everything in special effect shots. It was too chaotic. They couldn't have been able to fly with that much of everything flying in the air.

Action scenes weren't exciting because they were too much over the top. There weren't any stakes. I think only seven people with dialog died. All of them were set to die. This is so based in formulas you know what happen to each character almost as soon as you seen them. Only thing I didn't expect was friendly alien. Well before the movie I didn't expect there to be friendly alien. It was easy to guess it was friendly when Jeff Goldblum suggested they don't shoot it.

I had hard time watching this because it has so little to offer. Everything was so much by the numbers. No interesting ideas. Just lot of cgi and action. It would be easy to say characters didn't have any personality because there was one character whose personality was she was Chinese pilot. She got to hang with three new main characters because movies like this make lot of money in China. Those main characters didn't have much more personality.

Thor's brother was most developed new character. He was reckless but really good pilot who had almost killed Will Smith's son. He has problems with authorities. Will Smith's son was angry to Thor's brother. Thor's brother's buddy was looking for girlfriend and liked Chinese pilot. When I add Thor's brother's girlfriend is first movie's president's daughter I have said everything I can say about four new main characters without saying what they do in the movie. You can pretty much guess where these characters go based on what I just said.

There are no conflicts between characters after aliens show up. Only conflicts are between Thor's brother and Will Smith's son, Thor's brother and his Chinese boss and Jeff Goldblum and politicians but these conflict cease to exist when aliens come. Conflict between Jeff Goldblum and politicians is solved by Thor's brother stealing a ship and getting Jeff Goldblum to investigate wreckage of shot down alien ship. Thor's brother doesn't get any consequences of this.

Heroes can do what ever they like without anyone stopping them. African Warlord can go anywhere he likes because he was with Jeff Goldblum. People who are clearly controlled by aliens are trusted with important tasks in beating aliens. Brent Spinner has been in coma for two decades and write alien language to walls after he wakes when aliens show up. We should let him study friendly alien ship.

Independence Day: Resurgence is big mess. Emphasis on word big. Everything is big. Action scenes are big with lot of stuff flying everywhere. Cast is big. Too big to give individual characters personalities or interesting character arcs. Budget was so big they didn't dare to take changes. Movie is full of events which should give audience reaction. There is little to make you think. Everything is there to get reaction out of you.