I highly regret paying $9 to go see Independence Day: Resurgence, the highly anticipated sequel to the 1996 blockbuster.
Even with the $2 discount I got by signing up for AMC stubs, it was still too much for this giant heap of garbage. The film was made out of nothing but pure greed to pump whatever money 20th Century Fox and the filmmakers could get from people who were nostalgic for the first film. I didn't get to see ID4 in theaters but I did watch it often on video with my brother and grandmother after school, back in the day when VHS tapes actually existed.
Despite all the destruction and mayhem, ID4 to me is a "fun" movie, with Will Smith's scenes the parts I enjoy the most (the scene of him dragging the alien through the desert while complaining is my absolute favorite). Now 20 yeas later Smith's Steven Hiller is dead for no other reason than Smith's refusal to take a pay cut, even though his career is not what is used to be what with his recent flops After Earth and Focus. Smith was no doubt the shinning star of the first film, so watching the sequel without him was like viewing an apple without it's core.
In Resurgence Hiller's adopted son Dylan (Jessie T. Usher) is now a hot shot fighter pilot like his stepfather, while his mom (Vivica A. Fox) somehow went from being a stripper to a hospital administrator. The only exchange between Dylan and his mom is a brief telephone conversation, so when he sees her perish in a falling building the emotional payoff is lacking (I don't really care if I spoiled the movie for you. Trust me, I'm saving you nine bucks).
James Whitmore (Bill Pullman) is of course no longer President, but why did the writers have to write him as an old man with declining mental health? Hasn't he gone through enough with his wife being dead? And why, oh why did they replace Mae Whitman with Maika Monroe as Whitmore's daughter Patricia? It's not like Whitman's acting career is no longer active. For five years she was on the hit NBC series Parenthood and just last year she proved she could carry a film with the hit comedy The Duff. If Whitman were in this film I would this film at least one star, maybe two. Instead, I give it zero.
What's infuriating is that the role of Patricia Whitmore wasn't even Whitman's to turn down to begin with. They cast Monroe because they saw Whitman as not being "hot enough" for a major blockbuster, which is complete bullshit because Whitman is hot. I'd even go far as to say that she's hotter than Monroe, but that's just my opinion. Seeing Monroe as Patricia was like watching paint dry. Yeah she's good looking but there's nothing really there.
And whatever happened to David's (Jeff Goldblum) wife or ex-wife? Did she die or did they separate for good? The sequel acts as if she never existed and doesn't even matter. Just like Dylan and his mom, this shows that director Roland Emmerich and producer Dean Devlin forgot about what made the first film so special. It wasn't so much the special effects but the relationship between the characters. David and his dad drove all the way to the White House to save his ex even though she left him years ago. It was this act of heroism, to jump into harm's way to save someone you love who might not love you back anymore, which gave the audience the necessary emotional connection to the character of David Levinson. It is the relationships between the characters that connected audiences to the first film, from the relationship between David and his ex-wife to the relationship between Whitmore and his wife and daughter to the relationship between drunk fighter pilot Russell Casse (Randy Quaid) and his three children, and so on. But unfortunately in the sequel the emotional connection between the characters is entirely lacking. Sure there's Patricia and her fiance Jim Morrison (Liam Hemsworth) but there doesn't seem to be a lot of chemistry between them. It seems as if the only reason they are getting married in the first place is because they both find each other attractive, just like Heidi and Spencer find each other attractive, and just like Barbie and Ken find each other attractive.
If you haven't seen the film you're probably wondering what the film is all about. You're guess is as good as mine. Something to do with the alien queen? After the first 15 minutes I got so bored I started checking FaceBook and wasn't really paying attention because frankly I didn't care anymore.
It seems as if I'm not the only one who was disappointed by Resurgence. While it took the first film a mere 6 days to cross the $100 million mark in the U.S. and Canada, as of this writing in it's 26th day of release the sequel has yet to cross that milestone, and that's not even accounting for ticket price inflation over the past two decades. Worldwide the sequel has made $342 million, yet that is nowhere near the juggernaut $817 million worldwide gross of the original.
ID4 was one of those film's that should have remained as a stand alone film, just like E.T., Citizen Kane, and It's a Wonderful Life should forever be stand alone films. No matter how many sequels are made to Independence Day, the final scene in the first film will forever be the end of the franchise for me.
No comments:
Post a Comment