Just saw Independence Day Resurgence, and well, I'm glad I saw it in IMAX, because at home on a TV or computer screen, it's sure to be a disappointment.
You take away the effects, and you have an underdeveloped overall concept with badly executed pacing, too many scenes that are clearly "playing to the gallery", and a fair amount of dialogue that should have been cut or just plain never written.
The original ID4 (1996) has an IMDb rating of 6.9, which is probably about right, so if that's the case, then ID4R (2016) should probably be about a 5.8 - which, as it so happens, is precisely what it (currently) is.
I liked the overall concept, that 1996's aliens got off a distress signal that brought reinforcements, but from that point on, teenagers seems to have taken over the production.
Earth of 2016 has had little trouble reverse engineering and assimilating the aliens' advanced technology (which we destroyed in 1996, don't forget), which seems highly unlikely. What are the odds that 19th Century people could see some PC computers in action, get their hands on a few destroyed iPads, and within only 20 years have the whole planet covered in mobile tech? Same problem applies here.
Then there's the obligatory, misguided, and badly written effort to show us what happened to all the main characters from ID4 and to bring them into this new storyline. Maybe a little paring down on this aspect might have helped streamline the bloated script somewhat. (It's not as if the world wouldn't have survived without Julian Levinson driving a school bus through the desert, after all.) Then there's the aliens themselves. Their appearance was successfully more menacing thanks to CGI, but there was very little time/effort spent on developing their plan and/or hierarchy, which I suppose is because the producers figure ID4 already covered that.
But then there's the alien "queen" thing. ****SIGH**** (even referred to as "she" in the dialogue, even though there's no hint whatsoever of her having any sort of reproductive role, a la a queen bee or the alien queen of 1986's "Aliens" (for which it was actually an original concept for that movie). Labeling an alien as "queen" just so you can make it the "boss" of the other aliens, but more importantly, also give it gargantuan, monstrous size is a worn-out, tired concept that needs to be just simply forgotten by all monster/alien movie writers, OK? It no longer has the impact that you think it's going to have, so just don't do it.
Personally, if it had been me writing for ID4R, I would have presented Earth as badly divided (instead of united in one anti-alien, feel-the-love, happy Terran family) while they recover unevenly from 1996's catastrophe (clearly, developed nations like the EU and the USA would recover more quickly than third-world nations, and there would undoubtedly be a great deal of bitterness over that), plus the world should have been shown as struggling with the alien technology, desperately trying to figure it out, with the various nations where ships crashed keeping what they learn as closely guarded secrets from each other, leading to even more division.
They would certainly not have recovered to the point where we would have a massive forward base on the moon...
...oh, and then, there's the idea of the USA having a woman president. If that's not the producers having wishful thinking about Hillary Clinton, then I don't know what is - just one more thing cheapening the movie, please leave your politics at home producers!!...
...and then there would certainly NOT be a quick fix like just-kill-the-alien-queen to make the whole re-invasion quickly and conveniently fall apart.
I could go on and on about other things that should have been different about the script, but you get the point.
1996's ID4's strongest point was that it took a world which, in 1996 terms, was realistic, it was believable, and it was similar to what we were all living with around us. Then, into that environment, it injected something that, while clearly fantastical (an alien invasion), was still somewhat based in "reality", if one keeps in mind all the UFO controversies around the world and stories of alien kidnapping (not saying anything one way or the other about how credible those stories are). So ID4 at least had SOME basis in reality to build from. That, plus a well-paced story (with the invasion being presented in the very first scene, even before we see any humans!) and a non-bloated dialogue all combined to make a true blockbuster movie that audiences could relate to.
This movie has no such basis in reality to begin from, and then the story is not well-paced (it takes half the movie just to get going!), plus the dialogue will have the audience conscious of the movie's writers instead of the characters they're watching on the screen.
The ONLY thing that was truly well-done in this movie is the effects and the sound. So you better see it in IMAX 3D, because on your flatscreen at home, even the effects will be a flop.
You take away the effects, and you have an underdeveloped overall concept with badly executed pacing, too many scenes that are clearly "playing to the gallery", and a fair amount of dialogue that should have been cut or just plain never written.
The original ID4 (1996) has an IMDb rating of 6.9, which is probably about right, so if that's the case, then ID4R (2016) should probably be about a 5.8 - which, as it so happens, is precisely what it (currently) is.
I liked the overall concept, that 1996's aliens got off a distress signal that brought reinforcements, but from that point on, teenagers seems to have taken over the production.
Earth of 2016 has had little trouble reverse engineering and assimilating the aliens' advanced technology (which we destroyed in 1996, don't forget), which seems highly unlikely. What are the odds that 19th Century people could see some PC computers in action, get their hands on a few destroyed iPads, and within only 20 years have the whole planet covered in mobile tech? Same problem applies here.
Then there's the obligatory, misguided, and badly written effort to show us what happened to all the main characters from ID4 and to bring them into this new storyline. Maybe a little paring down on this aspect might have helped streamline the bloated script somewhat. (It's not as if the world wouldn't have survived without Julian Levinson driving a school bus through the desert, after all.) Then there's the aliens themselves. Their appearance was successfully more menacing thanks to CGI, but there was very little time/effort spent on developing their plan and/or hierarchy, which I suppose is because the producers figure ID4 already covered that.
But then there's the alien "queen" thing. ****SIGH**** (even referred to as "she" in the dialogue, even though there's no hint whatsoever of her having any sort of reproductive role, a la a queen bee or the alien queen of 1986's "Aliens" (for which it was actually an original concept for that movie). Labeling an alien as "queen" just so you can make it the "boss" of the other aliens, but more importantly, also give it gargantuan, monstrous size is a worn-out, tired concept that needs to be just simply forgotten by all monster/alien movie writers, OK? It no longer has the impact that you think it's going to have, so just don't do it.
Personally, if it had been me writing for ID4R, I would have presented Earth as badly divided (instead of united in one anti-alien, feel-the-love, happy Terran family) while they recover unevenly from 1996's catastrophe (clearly, developed nations like the EU and the USA would recover more quickly than third-world nations, and there would undoubtedly be a great deal of bitterness over that), plus the world should have been shown as struggling with the alien technology, desperately trying to figure it out, with the various nations where ships crashed keeping what they learn as closely guarded secrets from each other, leading to even more division.
They would certainly not have recovered to the point where we would have a massive forward base on the moon...
...oh, and then, there's the idea of the USA having a woman president. If that's not the producers having wishful thinking about Hillary Clinton, then I don't know what is - just one more thing cheapening the movie, please leave your politics at home producers!!...
...and then there would certainly NOT be a quick fix like just-kill-the-alien-queen to make the whole re-invasion quickly and conveniently fall apart.
I could go on and on about other things that should have been different about the script, but you get the point.
1996's ID4's strongest point was that it took a world which, in 1996 terms, was realistic, it was believable, and it was similar to what we were all living with around us. Then, into that environment, it injected something that, while clearly fantastical (an alien invasion), was still somewhat based in "reality", if one keeps in mind all the UFO controversies around the world and stories of alien kidnapping (not saying anything one way or the other about how credible those stories are). So ID4 at least had SOME basis in reality to build from. That, plus a well-paced story (with the invasion being presented in the very first scene, even before we see any humans!) and a non-bloated dialogue all combined to make a true blockbuster movie that audiences could relate to.
This movie has no such basis in reality to begin from, and then the story is not well-paced (it takes half the movie just to get going!), plus the dialogue will have the audience conscious of the movie's writers instead of the characters they're watching on the screen.
The ONLY thing that was truly well-done in this movie is the effects and the sound. So you better see it in IMAX 3D, because on your flatscreen at home, even the effects will be a flop.