The moment in Independence Day: Resurgence in which things finally start getting terrible—and thus start getting somewhat tolerable—takes place around the 25-minute mark. We're in Washington, DC, where hundreds of thousands have gathered near the National Monument to commemorate the 20th anniversary of the "War of '96," and to salute the surviving heroes of 1996's original Independence Day (including a sadly waxen Robert Loggia, who must have died three minutes after filming his cameo here). As one of the speakers reminds the crowd, that decades-old conflict with the space invaders helped unite the world, brought about global peace and—oh, hey, look! Former president Thomas Whitmore (Bill Pullman) has just snuck onto the stage, craggly-bearded and shaky in his suit. Maybe *he *has something inspiring to say?
Instead, Pullman sloppily croaks out the words, "I came to warn you...," looking and sounding like a white-collar *Scooby-Doo *villain who's been hiding out on foggy wharf, eating peyote and tin cans. He barely gets to finish his line before everyone starts screaming, and soon, the chaos sets in: A shadow is moving across the moon! There's panic in the streets! The aliens have arrived, and they're here to kill us all!
And, for a few minutes, at least, Independence Day: Resurgence turns into the kind of bad movie you hoped it would be, with cars being raptured into the sky, landmarks being smooshed, and massive spaceships blotting out the sun—and all of it being greeted by mechanical, hysterical dialogue. This is the Independence Day sequel we were all hoping we'd get, because once we found out that Will Smith wasn't coming back—and especially when we learned that the movie wasn't being screened for critics—we knew Resurgence was never going to be able to recreate the same goony charm of the original film.
But, really—how could it? The first Independence Day was a happy little anachronism: A rah-rah tale of feel-goodery released in an age of irony; a futuristic spectacle that often favored old-fashioned, classical effects over CGI; and an explosion-packed action-adventure flick that paused for soapy plot-lines about the importance of family and faith. Independence Day felt like a movie about the '90s that had been made in the '50s. And while creators Dean Devlin and Roland Emmerich had a taste for the garish—slathering the movie with over-swollen music, humdinger dialogue ("You are never gonna get to fly the space shuttle if you marry a stripper," etc.), and scenes like this one—such flaws were forgivable, because you also had Will Smith cold-cocking an alien, and Bill Pullman giving his big presidential pep talk, and all kinds of cool destruction. Independence Day laid on that perfectly calibrated fault-line between good and bad, and while it was cheese, it was the kind of well-aged cheese that you wanted to consume all summer long. (I saw it twice on opening weekend.)
That dumb-fun spirit of the original can be found in Resurgence—but rarely and randomly, as the movie is largely a clumpy, vexing miscastrophe, one that feels like it was conceived and green-lit during an overcrowded Slack session that no one involved bothered to actually read. You've probably already figured out the story by now; heck, there are so many screenwriters on this thing, you may even have helped come up with it: Two decades after the attacks that leveled the East Coast, the aliens have either been imprisoned or killed off (one conflict, we're told, took place in the African desert over the course of a decade, which frankly sounds like a much cooler movie than this one). But all of a sudden, old-timers like ex-president Whitmore (Pullman) and the kooky, formerly comatose alien-expert (Brent Spiner) start getting psychic hints of a new arrival, and sure enough, a mothership finds its way to Earth. (Will Smith's character, alas, won't be around to help, because he died during a test-flight. Cool backstory, guys!)
But, OK—we can all get on-board with a plot like this, right? Certainly, nobody who's seen director Emmerich's recent films—like the insane 2012 or the rompy, comfortably stupid White House Down—were expecting Resurgence to be anything but a delivery system for dogfights and destruction. All we need is for Emmerich to kick some tires and light some fires, and we'll be happy. But, sadly, it's as though he can't even make a good-bad movie anymore; all he can do is glue together as many different kinds of bad-bad movies as possible.
That's evident from the film's first few scenes, as Resurgence wastes way too much time getting to the Good Stuff, setting up a bunch of new characters who'll you immediately wish would get obliterated, including President Something-Something (Sela Ward), DeadWillSmithsSon (Jessie T. Usher), and Skipper Dreampie (Liam Hemsworth). None of them register, especially Hemsworth, whose big introductory scene finds him looking sleepy-eyed and wearing a sideways ballcap and undershirt; he looks like a sad, aspiring Australian rapper who's just found out his Coachella tickets were counterfeit. When the aliens do land on Earth, can they at least bring with them some intriguing, non-kewpie-looking leading men?
We also check in with some of our returning favorites, of course, like geek-squadder David Levinson (Jeff Goldblum) and his cranky father, Julius (Judd Hirsch). But unlike, say, Star Wars: The Force Awakens, there's no zip to their reintroductions, no let's-get-the-band-back-together bonhomie, which the movie desperately needs, especially in the beginning. (Really, I cannot express how leaden and un-fun this film's first stretch is; you're better off hanging out in the lobby and calling your mom, whom I'm sure would love to hear from you.) Everything that's gone haywire with big studio movies in the last few years can be found in this first half-hour: The thickets of overly complicated, utterly meaningless dialogue; the slavish, perfunctory nods to the Original Movie We All Know and Loved; the lack of compelling star power; the hazy establishment of a dozen or so characters, none of whom seem worthy of our time.
All of which makes that scene in which Pullman gives his hammy warning to the crowd feel like such a relief: Finally, you think, this movie is going to camp! And indeed, the middle section of Resurgence has scenes that will stoke a few stash-your-brain-under-your-seat smiles, whether it's Hirsch's boat being chased down by a flaming, ludicrously over-sized ship, or a captured alien getting split in half with a sword, or a swarm of enemy ships descending from the sky. At one point, the team discovers a friendly alien in the form of a large, levitating, talking ball, and it makes no sense whatsoever. But it's totally OK, because it gives Spiner—who has more screen time and fun than you can imagine, and probably for the best—a chance to geek out.
But! But! Even these kind of good-bad moments are marred by Emmerich's lack of comedic prowess, and by the way the actors deliver their lines as if they're half-guessing at them (Goldblum alternates between staring slightly off to the side and doing his science-whisper thing, and looking like he's forgotten his mantra). And they're further undermined by the fact that Resurgence, like way too many of its summer-movie contemporaries, is so thematically and visually dark: Despite all of the carnage on hand, and despite all of the deaths, all anyone talks about is killing even more, as though the 20 years of peace we'd experienced was just some pussy-ass shit we were all pretending to like while we waited for our new space-uzis. And while the original Independence Day took place across sun-baked deserts and blue skies, the action in Resurgence is largely relegated to the darkened bunkers of Area 51. It's as though Emmerich believed he could turn Resurgence into a somber tale of how humanity faces its crises simply by turning the sodium lights down a half-step.
Look, I could kvetch non-stop, Julius-style, about the cosmic letdown that is Independence Day: Resurgence: About how I over-laughed at the film's few funny scenes, just because I needed to feel some investment; about how I actually slapped my head after the ending, which, in true bad-bad-movie style, sets us up for a sequel none of us even want. But, really—I don't want to keep hammering away, and I take no pleasure in telling you a movie I know you want to love doesn't love you back. So instead, let's all pick up a bullhorn, and throw on the original version, which has all of the thrills you were hoping to get out of Resurgence. Today, we will not be let down by another crummy 2016 sequel. Today, we celebrate our Independence Day.
