Susan Granger’s review of “Independence Day: Resurgence” (20th Century-Fox)
This sci-fi sequel fizzles like a soggy firecracker. Set 20 years after the original, it begins with peace on Earth, as if mankind had finally realized that the biggest threat comes from outer space.
To that end, Earthlings are now utilizing the technology acquired from the extra-terrestrials to build up our defenses, including tactical bases on the Moon and Saturn.
Incoherently bobbled together by four different screenwriters (Dean Devlin, Nicolas Wright, James A. Woods, James Vanderbilt), working with director Roland Emmerich, it’s a frenzied, fragmented fiasco.
What’s missing is a charismatic hero, like Will Smith’s swashbuckling Marine pilot Captain Steven Hiller. Before “Independence Day” (1996), Smith was best known as TV’s “Fresh Prince of Bel-Air.” After that, until bad choices torpedoed his career, Smith’s movies dominated the Fourth of July weekend.
So without a central character, we’re left with token supporting characters, each doing his/her thing when the bug-like aliens return, causing epic, global destruction to drain Earth’s molten core.
Jeff Goldblum’s wisecracking engineer David Levinson has been working with Catherine (Charlotte Gainsbourg), a psychiatrist studying humanity’s consciousness since the alien invasion, and Judd Hirsch is still around as his father, ferrying a school bus of children.
Brent Spiner’s eccentric Dr. Brakish Okun awakens from a coma with a bewildering alien-brain connection. And the former exotic dancer played by Vivica A. Fox is now a health-care worker.
Although the White House Oval Office is occupied by a female POTUS (Sela Ward), Bill Pullman’s former President Thomas H. Whitmore surfaces again, along with Maika Monroe as his daredevil daughter.
Other newbies comprise the Earth Space Defense Team, hotshot fighter pilots led by the late Capt. Hiller’s son, played by Jessie T. Usher, and his renegade rival Liam Hemsworth.
And the climactic battle with the immense, indomitable Alien Queen is lifted from “Aliens” (1986) in which Ellen Ripley (Sigourney Weaver) proved a far more formidable foe.
On the Granger Movie Gauge of 1 to 10, “Independence Day: Resurgence” is a tedious 3 – failing even as a patriotic popcorn picture.
