I don't care. ID4 is one of the first "Event" movies I remember. It's when Will Smith became a star. The mix of action, humor, and cheesy heartstring tugging just works. I like the way it follows several different stories and has them all converge. It's just a movie that I really like.
ID4: Resurgence is a sequel that no one really asked for, but I was willing to welcome simply because I wanted to like it. And I did like it. I didn't love it. I liked it. This is a very flawed movie [which I'll get to in a moment]. It's also exactly what a sequel to ID4 would look like. It's big and bombastic. All sorts of things explode and get destroyed. The emotions are blunt and direct. The stakes are obvious and unsubtle. You can see where the money went on the screen, which is always nice. It's really hard to pick at anything in this movie without inviting the counter of "What else did you expect?"
Resurgence begins 20 years after the events of the first movie. Since the first alien attack, the world has been at peace. The alien technology has been mixed with our own to turn the very real world of 1996 into a Sci-Fi world of 2016. The movie quickly catches us up on all the major players from the original as well as the new characters. President Whitmore (Bill Pullman) is haunted by dreams about the aliens. David Levinson (Jeff Goldblum) is working with the U.N. investigating the aliens. Julius Levinson (Judd Hirsch) is on a boat. Patricia Whitmore (Maika Monroe, replacing Mae Whitman) is working as an aid for the president. She's engaged to Jake Morrison (Liam Hemsworth), an Air Force pilot working on the moon with his friend Charlie (Travis Trope). Charlie is infatuated with another pilot, Rain (Angelababy), who is part of a presidential legacy group led by Dylan Hiller (Jessie T. Usher). Dylan has had a national spotlight on him ever since his father, a worldwide hero, died in a test flight (an awkward but necessary way to write Will Smith out). And Dr. Okun (Brett Spiner) is still alive! He's been in a coma, but alive is alive. There's many more characters like Sela Ward as the President or Vivica A. Fox who is a nurse now. Well, anyway, on the 20th anniversary of the first attack, weird things start happening. Alien prisoners start going crazy. The alien ships start turning on. People who had close contact with the aliens start going insane. Guess what? The aliens are back and with a bigger ship and army than before. The world (but mostly America) must team up again to stop them.
The more I think about the movie, there's three things in particular that I must discuss to explain what isn't quite right about it.
1) Out with the old, in with the new
There are entirely too many characters to juggle. The model of the first movie worked because a bunch semi-random people stumble into one another and save the world. Resurgence doesn't have that freedom. It really wants to build up the young cast (who I am calling the Power Rangers*), but there's all these leftover characters that need attention too. Vivica A. Fox and Judd Hirsch have no significance, but they have to be fit it. President Whitmore is there because you have to have Bill Pullman. Jeff Goldblum is the only returning character who still feels vital. As a result of all this wasted time on the old, none of the Power Rangers feel all that fleshed out, even for a Roland Emmerich movie. Watching this reminds me how well The Force Awakens pulled off balancing the old with the new. It's harder than it looks.
*3 guys: two white (one a nerd), one black. 2 girls: one white, one Asian.
2) Rolland Emmerich: Future Theorist
This is a fundamentally different movie than the first. ID4 was about the real world being attacked by aliens. It was a disaster movie with a science fiction threat. Resurgence is a science fiction disaster movie. This isn't the real world and Roland Emmerich really isn't interested in this fake world. Normally, when a filmmaker sets a movie in the future like this, he/she has an idea for that future. There's something special about it and it's all in the details. Emmerich is kind of forced into making a future world in Resurgence and it shows. Nothing about the world is inspired. It feels like the least effort required and that permeates across the whole film. Basically, it all feels inauthentic.
3) Innocence Lost
ID4 is actually a really simple movie. Aliens visit Earth. People are intrigued by it until they attack. Humans fight back and luck into a victory. The most important thing about the movie is fighting aliens. It has some fun with Area 51 and it comes up only with enough answers to make the movie work. It's all very innocent. It's about discovery and piecing makeshift solutions together. Resurgence has the unenviable job of trying to create a mythology out of that. Again, that isn't something Roland Emmerich is all that interested in. He just wants aliens to attack again and plucky humans to stop them. Resurgence adds all this talk about queens and intergalactic wars and prophetic nightmares. The word that comes to mind is 'midichlorians'.
I heard a great story a while back that in some writers rooms for TV shows, whenever someone starts going way deeper into a story point than the audience ever needs to know, they use the shorthand of "midichlorians", of course from the Star Wars prequels, as a way to shoot it down. Resurgence is filled with midichlorians and it kept reminding me that this was never meant to have a sequel. The best version of this movie would find a way to have aliens attack again without needing to know why. And I'll go ahead and say that they tease a third movie. I'm fascinated by the idea for it, because it looks like a completely different kind of movie that will probably be crazy and a complete mess.
Despite all the deep issues with the movie, I couldn't hate it. I love how much fun Roland Emmerich has creating meyhem. It isn't at all controlled. It's destruction for destruction's sake. But it comes from an authentic place. I'd rather have a Roland Emmerich or a Michael Bay blow stuff up in a movie than some director doing it for a paycheck, because Emmerich and Bay are having fun doing it which has a way of showing in the work.
There's some small notes in the film that I was impressed by. For example, there's a moment toward the middle when former President Whitmore drops from the demented state he's been in for most of the film to delivery an inspirational speech in the middle of an Air Force hanger. He's putting on a show, because he knows the importance giving people something to rally around. It's a clever moment that's both authentic and self-parody. Looking back at Emmerich's filmography (especially something like The Patriot), it's clear that he is interested in how heroes can be used as symbols to inspire. In fact, the one thing he really gets right about the world 20 years later is the reverence the world has for its heroes. Will Smith's Stephen Hiller is famous and revered, with portraits hung on walls and buildings taking his name. His son has a prestigious assignment because of the worldwide reverence for his father. David Levinson has a hard time getting his job done because he's being pulled in for ceremonies honoring his heroism. There's no fading into the sunset for these men. This is a world that knows who it owes thanks to.
I had a lot more to say about this movie than I realized. It's really not good enough to warrant this much discussion. It's a pretty standard disaster movie made under unusual circumstances. All around it falls short of the original but has enough of the same DNA to still be enjoyable.
Verdict (?): Weakly Don't Recommend
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