‘Independence Day: Resurgence’ reviewed…

Twenty years ago the aliens of ‘Independence Day’ were essentially beaten by a desktop computer. Unfortunately during the time-gap, only the phones got smarter…

Twenty years – to the day – after the world survived a surprise attack from the stars, the Earth seems to be a better and more peaceful place. The world gathers to mark a memorial to the fallen and to celebrate its true ‘Independence Day’. Of course, things don’t stay that way and the hi-tech moon-base suddenly picks up two signals. The first is a large spaceship that they almost immediately shoot down because… well, the last time didn’t end so well. The second craft is even bigger and clearly IS the bigger threat… one that the base cannot stop as the new arrival heads towards Earth.

The aliens have returned, determined to drill to the Earth’s core and to wreak revenge for their last defeat. Not all the heroes who fought back in 1996 have survived (or survive the initial onslaught), but the ones that still remain join together with a younger generation to fight back. This time both sides are better armed and determined to survive at all costs – but will our salvation be man-made or come from further afield?

Two decades after the original film burst on to screens and demolished the competition, we finally get a follow-up. The problem is…exactly that, it’s twenty years and too few new ideas too late. Like a tribute band that can afford all the bells and whistles, there’s a checklist of greatest hits and recognisable themes, but Resurgence does less surging and more homaging than it should. There’s a megaton of exposition with characters needlessly informing each other (and thus the audience) of what we’re seeing. (‘Can you believe it, you’ve been in a  coma for 7300 days..?‘ to a waking Brent Spiner and ‘Please abandon the premises in an orderly fashion…‘ to a thronging arena that’s just been shown footage of a massive space-ship passing the moon) being two of the early contenders for obvious clunkiness. And ‘It’s the fourth of July, let’s show them some fireworks…‘ is hardly in the same orbit as Bill Pullman’s original uplifting speech – though he rallies the troops again later.

There’s no doubt that the soft-core apocalpyse-porn with which Emmerich made his name is alive and well – the film giving us major cities being torn apart (‘They like to get the landmarks…’ notes Goldblum with the film’s only true moment of mete-textual irony as London gets the ultimate Brexit). But the sheer size of the upgraded invasion also makes it hard to follow… a spacecraft that’s big enough to entirely straddle the Atlantic Ocean, entire continents lifted into the sky… a drill that can come within a minute of reaching the Earth’s core and still have the planet remain viable? Oh, Hollywood…

There are far too many characters: the splattering of familiar faces as convenient touchstones from the last film…but Spiner and Judd are largely reduced to absurd comic relief stereotypes and an earnest Pullman has clearly been promised a weightier movie than the final cut delivers. Characters such as guerrilla-fighter Dikembe Umbutu (played by Game of Thrones’ Deobia Oparei) are offered 2D support by the script and Angelababy’s vastly under-written Rain Lao seems there only to bolster the film’s chances in eastern territories. (Anglo-French actress Charlotte Gainsbourg is also bizarrely cast as a completely unnecessary foil to Goldblum along for the ride and contributes nothing but minor dialogue in a couple of scenes).  The array of new faces are cookie-cutter replacements that are fine in the short-term but never push at the boundaries of their templates and Emmerich can’t resist throwing in every cliche he can… even including a car-load of cute orphaned kids who happen to be in the right place at the right time AND who have a dog that will need saving before the day is done.

What does work quite well are the thought-processes behind some of the background ideas. As with other projects (such as the animated War of the Worlds: Goliath) there’s the idea that an abortive invasion leads to humanity,canniballizing some of the alien-tech and helping trigger an upturn in research. There’s also supposed co-operation between major leaders though we see there’s still some trouble in paradise with warring factions in Africa who clearly didn’t get that memo). But both are reduced to window-dressing before being reduced to rubble as the plot rumbles forward and quickly forgets the global carnage it leaves in its wake.

It wants to be a mighty mix of Top Gun and Aliens but ends up, as others have noted, more akin to Starship Troopers with some Star Wars Death-Star and Jurassic Park chase homages thrown in. Essentially Resurgence is – and only is – the original Independence Day writ large and indecently late to its own party. That first film wasn’t  high-brow film-making but still a landmark fun-filled outing, a prime slice of 90s derring-do and chest-beating heroics, one that ushered in a wave of further disaster movies and VFX. Resurgence copies all the moves and name checks all the right characters (poignantly, an ill Robert Loggia makes a wordless cameo, acknowledging his contribution to the original film’s line-up) and has flashier graphics to punctuate the canvas, but ultimately it boldly goes to every nook, cranny and cliche to which we’ve gone before and has far less impact despite the terrabytes used to display it.

Perhaps all of the above could be forgiven as being enjoyable heavy-hitting but lightweight fluff… until the final third of the temple-heavy film takes a gloriously illogical and even more exposition-filled hand-brake turn into further handwavery nonsense. There’s a revelation of what the captured first-craft sphere actually is and how its origins might turn the tide in the new war. It’s a cosmic maguffin that comes complete with a lot of technobabble and even a cutesy voice more akin to a tv movie. Suddenly any feel of internal logic is overwhelmed by pithy bumper-sticker quips and ‘Hail Mary’ leaps of faith that feels more like a desperate fan-fic rewrite to bolster the supporting cast.

Despite some moments of harmless, brainless fun, Independence Day: Resurgence is strictly by-the-numbers and reminds us all too quickly that while computer graphics surge… story and nostalgia ain’t what they used to be…

6/10