Independence Day-Resurgence, Review: Anniversaries and aliens
Independence Day-Resurgence, Review: Anniversaries and aliens
It takes four presidents of the USA to battle a here and now alien invasion—five if you count the first one, in 1996--but the battle is not over yet. German director Roland Emmerich, who gave us the original Independence Day, agreed to helm Independence Day-Resurgence, despite being a self-confessed sequel sceptic. Now, since the end has been left open, he might even return for a trequel or a prequel. However, if they do make the third film, it is not likely to be because this one is great or even a blockbuster (which it is very unlikely to be), but because the proverbial franchise cow is there for the milking.
Twenty years after the events of the previous film, the international community recovers from mass annihilation, and the United Nations creates Earth Space Defense (ESD), a global defence programme that serves as Earth's early warning system. The main defense force uses technology salvaged from the remains of the alien forces, with military forces assembled on the Moon, Mars, and Rhea, while the Area 51 base/safe-house in the US has become the Space Defense Headquarters.
In Africa, ESD Director David Levinson meets with Dr. Catherine Marceaux and warlord Dikembe Umbutu, who lead him to a completely intact alien destroyer that had concealed itself before being shut-down after its mother-ship was destroyed. Umbutu's family had fought against the ship's alien crew, and confiscated many of their weapons, which they now use. Aboard the ship, they discover that the ship was drilling a hole before the aliens' final defeat, and had sent a distress call to its home planet.
About the same time, a small, odd-looking, spherical ship teleports near the ESD's Moon defense headquarters, and is shot down. Suddenly, an alien mother-ship 3,000 miles wide, emerges, and destroys the Moon base, before approaching Earth.
Dean Devlin and Emmerich created the characters and have both worked on this script too, along with Nicolas Wright, James A. Woods and James Vanderbilt. As a plot idea, getting bad aliens to chase good aliens, with earth being caught in the middle, is commendable. Too many liberties are, however, taken, with the first adventure, in terms of continuity and projection. Add to that old emotion/romance tracks and emergent new ones, and the complexity begins to become a burden.
Old man president repeatedly awakening with his nightmares and old man Okun awakening after being in a coma for 20 years, Umbutu leading them to the spaceship as late as twenty years after the crash, and a few more scenes, are unconvincing. One side-plot involves a bus-full of children being chased by the Insect Queen across snow, and drags on too far, consequently losing effect. Another introduces us to gold-diggers and bounty hunters on a small ship, and I strained hard to catch what they were up to, without much luck. There is a tenuous, if any, link, between the alien attack and the American Independence Day, the 4th of July. Do aliens believe in anniversaries?
Technology overdrive is confounded with socio-anthropologo-behaviouriolo-psychological jargon, often used in succession or conjunction. Too many claptrap, populist and glib lines drown the few funny ones. Sample this--
David Levinson: I've had years to get us ready. We never had a chance.
President Whitmore: We didn't last time, either.
Fantasy, sci-fi, ultra-patriotism and disaster are extremely familiar territories for German maker Roland Emmerich--Independence Day, Stargate, Godzilla, The Patriot, The Day After Tomorrow, 2012, and White House Down. In Independence Day-Resurgence, he navigates this space easily, without impressing us too much by his manoeuvres. Effects are high quality and the titanic alien insect Queen does instil fear. Combat scenes, sadly, are predictable, with unrelenting pounding of gunfire, in the awareness that it is a sheer waste of ammo. Encounters between Jake and Dylan are filmed superficially. Umbutu’s ‘attack from the back’ tactic to down the overblown crawlers is hardly ingenuous, even puerile! A clever line comes towards the end, when Patricia instructs her fellow bomber pilots to aim for the creature’s tentacles/legs, which are more vulnerable than the rest of her, she reveals. Indeed, too little too late!
Shot in Mexico and lasting two hours, the film moves slowly in the first half and just about manages to revive interest in the second hour. Rather this than the other way round! It has been given a simultaneous US-India release, and departing from the norm, the press preview in Mumbai was held on a Friday afternoon, instead of the Tuesday/Wednesday/rare Thursday routine. Distributors are wary of press reactions, it would appear.
Liam Hemsworth as Jake Morrison, the lead fighter pilot, is okay; Jeff Goldblum as David Levinson, the lead scientist, computer expert, and environmental activist and Director of ESD, is immersive; Bill Pullman as Thomas J. Whitmore, the 42nd President, stumbles between hamming and falling, but has the audiences’ big support; Maika Monroe, replacing Mae Whitman, as Patricia Whitmore, the former First Daughter and Jake's girlfriend, is effective. Jessie Usher replaces Ross Bagley as Dylan Dubrow-Hiller, the stepson of the now-deceased war hero Steven Hiller (Will Smith's character in the previous film, whose portrait hangs in the background) and Jasmine Dubrow, and a pilot and captain in ESD, has a stock role.
Sela Ward as President Elizabeth Lanford, the 45th President of the United States and the first woman in the country's history to hold the Oval Office, is bound to capture the imagination of viewers, even as Hillary Clinton is campaigning for the office.
Charlotte Gainsbourg as Dr. Catherine Marceaux, a French scientist at ESD, who works alongside David and is David's new love interest, years after his wife died, has small role, parallel to the main plot. Judd Hirsch as Julius Levinson, David's father, provides serio-comic relief, an unlikely hero. Brent Spiner as Dr. Brakish Okun, the unkempt and highly excitable scientist who awakens 20 years after his coma, is modelled after British screen characters of the 60s and 70s films, and you do not know quite what to make of him. Vivica A. Fox as Jasmine Dubrow-Hiller, the widow of the late war hero Steven Hiller, now working as a hospital administrator, will surely jerk a few tears. Robert Loggia as General William Grey, the 43rd President, is seen in his final film role. He died in December 2015. It is a small, strong part.
Will Smith Will be sorely Smithed...er, missed!.
Independence Day-Resurgence will be seen by many, and, probably, missed by as many.
Rating: ** ½
