Reviews

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.

There have now been twelve Star Trek movies, including "Into Darkness." The "re-boot" Star Trek of 2009 that preceded this movie was probably the 2nd worst out of all twelve movies. Into Darkness was a definite improvement. Instead of being the 2nd worst out of 12, it moved up to being only the 3rd worst out of 12. At least JJ Abrams is moving in the right direction - sort of. A little.

Into Darkness is a re-vamping of the classic Khan story from the 1980s movie, "The Wrath of Khan" (which many fans would call the greatest Star Trek movie ever made), which was also a continuation of the story from the 1960s episode, "Space Seed", both of which starred Ricardo Montalbahn as Khan Nunien Singh. The Wrath of Khan featured a highly personal conflict between Kirk and Khan that made the sci-fi and the special effects take a back seat to a very powerful story. Audiences were inevitably shattered emotionally by the time that movie was over.

Into Darkness, unfortunately, reduces Khan to merely another sci-fi villain who needs to be knocked down. There is a very lackluster attempt to insert a "personal" conflict between Kirk and Khan in this movie by arranging for Khan to be responsible for the death of a senior officer that Kirk looks up to, but it's so shallow compared to the decades-long story in the 1980s version that it actually would have been better if JJ Abrams hadn't even tried.

Then there is the biggest problem with the previous 2009 "re-boot", which continues unabated in this movie: Before 2009, Starfleet, supposedly the most elite military force the Earth has ever seen, was always presented as (mostly) impeccably professional soldiers who followed strict military protocol (in a Star Trek way), and held to a very high moral standard of personal conduct. Even William Shatner's Kirk, as much as a renegade as he sometimes was, had certain moral principles that he would die before he would compromise them. Subsequent captains, Picard, Janeway, Sisko, and Archer, took those moral principles and standards of conduct and raised them to an even higher level, giving Starfleet a consistently very high moral ground throughout the franchise.

The re-booted Starfleet, however, is nothing at all like this. Regulations are routinely treated as if they were written for the specific purpose of being ignored or outright violated. The Federation's Prime Directive, not to interfere in the development of younger civilizations, is treated by "Into Darkness" as if it's just some pesky playground rule that has no business stopping Kirk and his gang from doing whatever they want - and the senior admiralty seems to feel the same way! Orders are issued and routinely ignored. A commanding Fleet Admiral makes a personal decision to destroy one of Starfleet's finest capitol ships to cover up a "mistake" (his word) that he made, and nobody in his entire crew seems to have the thought occur to them that hmm, it might be wrong to go along with the admiral's decision to unilaterally murder the entire crew of the other ship.

Senior officers who, in the old Starfleet, took their responsibilities to their crew and the Federation very seriously, now seem to have a very difficult time thinking about anything other than finding their next bed partner. (There's a scene where Alice Eve strips down to her underwear in front of Kirk, but the story gives no reason whatsoever for her to do this. They're not even sleeping together! She just takes off her clothes for no reason, and then the story abruptly, bewilderingly moves to the next scene. Don't get me wrong, she looks great, but it's one of the most gratuitous, badly written scenes that I can recall seeing.)

So while Into Darkness is visually very impressive (especially with the 3-D), it still profoundly fails in its understanding of what the 23rd/24th Centuries are supposed to be all about in the Star Trek universe. It IS possible, after all, to still make a JJ Abrams movie while keeping the moral high ground that Starfleet was always so good at in the past. But this sure didn't happen with Into Darkness.

I give it a 4/10 - and that's being very kind.