Twenty years ago, director Roland Emmerich put on screen an alien-invasion disaster feature with moments so iconic & jaw-dropping that viewers n critics alike were left dazzled by the sheer scale & size of its ambition. Independence Day was a watershed event for its genre and its influence on both disaster films & blockbuster filmmaking cannot be downplayed.
Independence Day was in every way a self-contained film. It never needed a sequel and its legacy was well-preserved for years to come. That was until Emmerich decided to put a dent on it, which is exactly what he does with Independence Day: Resurgence. A strong contender for the absolute worst film of 2016, this sequel is as needless & cringeworthy as movies can get.
Set 20 years after the events of the first film, Independence Day: Resurgence presents Earth to be a much more peaceful & united place than ever before. There's higher transparency in international cooperation and the defence system has benefited greatly by reverse-engineering the technology of the ruined alien spacecrafts. But when the aliens return with an even deadlier threat, mankind is put to test again.
Co-written & directed by Roland Emmerich, Independence Day: Resurgence is a facepalm-inducing garbage from start to finish. Everything that made its predecessor an instant classic is discarded in this sequel. What the writers have done with returning characters is downright embarrassing, while the new additions are even worse. There is neither any sense of logic in what transpires on screen nor any uniformity in its plot progression.
All of Roland Emmerich's trademarks make its way into the final print, be it the utter disregard for science or logic, suffocating levels of visual effects, corny characters, nonsensical set of events, and unprecedented demonstration of global catastrophe. The CGI excess is really overpowering in every sense of the word, and with all the stupidity that takes place over the course of its runtime, there is nothing redeemable about this sequel.
Coming to the performances, Jeff Goldblum, Bill Pullman, Judd Hirsch, Brent Spiner & Vivica A. Fox reprise their respective characters while the new additions include Liam Hemsworth, Jessie Usher, Maika Monroe, Charlotte Gainsbourg & a few more unknowns, and the terrible work they put up on screen is only an extension of their awfully-written characters. In fact, the only one to really admire here is Will Smith, who decided to not return this time.
On an overall scale, Independence Day: Resurgence proves that Roland Emmerich is never so bad at filmmaking that he can't get any worse. Undeniably amongst the worst blockbusters to surface on silver screen, it is a horribly directed, shoddily scripted & poorly performed picture made even worse by its wooden characters, terrible dialogues & lame attempts at humour and sort of makes you wish that the aliens had won the last time. In a sentence, Independence Day: Resurgence is an insult to human intelligence.
