Independence Day: Resurgence

INDEPENDENCE DAY: RESURGENCE (Roland Emmerich, 2016)

Movie theaters have been chockablock with ill-advised and hard-to-justify sequels in 2016, so Roland Emmerich’s bid to make a franchise out of INDEPENDENCE DAY seems like business as usual for Hollywood. Still, it’s some feat that INDEPENDENCE DAY: RESURGENCE feels like a rush job even though twenty years have passed between the original and this sequel. Will Smith does not return, leaving his character’s absence to be explained with about as much elegance as Poochie being written off THE ITCHY & SCRATCHY SHOW on THE SIMPSONS. Some of the special effects impress, but a number of scenes don’t look much different than television dramas with conversations in front of chromakeyed backgrounds. The hash made from several weightless narrative threads does nothing to diminish the sense that this is a cash-in project timed to align with an anniversary ending in a zero.

INDEPENDENCE DAY: RESURGENCE picks up two decades after the events of humanity’s defeat of the alien invaders. Knowing that a common enemy is out there among the stars, the world has become a more peaceful and unified place. Scientists have reverse engineered alien technology to improve Earth’s defenses in the event that another attack comes. Former President Thomas J. Whitmore (Bill Pullman) is haunted by the the previous battle and worries another is imminent. His fears are confirmed when scientist David Levinson (Jeff Goldblum), among others, discovers that a distress signal is being sent by the first mothership.

When an unidentified vessel appears at the moon defense base, the snap judgment among world leaders is to destroy it. This victory is short-lived, as a ship three thousand miles in diameter follows and begins drilling into the Earth in pursuit of the molten core. Those fighting for Earth Space Defense against the aliens include Patricia Whitmore (Maika Monroe), the onetime First Daughter and pilot who assists the current Commander-in-Chief; her fiancé Jake Morrison (Liam Hemsworth); and her friend Dylan Hiller (Jessie T. Usher), the stepson of Will Smith’s INDEPENDENCE DAY character.

The aliens wipe out the United States’ East Coast, London, and presumably much of Europe and Asia, yet the massive toll doesn’t register at all. The lack of impact could be attributed to scenes of spectacular destruction becoming commonplace in comic book films and the like, so the imagery of large-scale catastrophes has become overly familiar to moviegoers. Emmerich doesn’t help matters by putting no emotional investment in these sections. There isn’t really any proportional human reaction to the incomprehensible carnage that occurs. Emmerich dispenses with the faceless masses and fleetingly recalled characters from the first film as if he’s stepping on an ant colony. INDEPENDENCE DAY: RESURGENCE goes even bigger than before, although perhaps not as near-extinction level as THE DAY AFTER TOMORROW or 2012, but the tragedy merits little more than a shrug of the shoulders.

Emmerich’s large-scale disaster films are knowingly outrageous and campy to a degree, and INDEPENDENCE DAY: RESURGENCE is no different even as it verges on self-parody. Brent Spiner hams it up as Dr. Brakish Okun, who has been in a coma since the previous film. Judd Hirsch is back as Julius Levinson, the father of Goldblum’s character, and he brings some levity via his matter-of-fact acceptance of all the nonsense happening around him. Spiner and Hirsch’s performances demonstrate awareness that this is all big and dumb, so why not have fun with it? The rest of the film subtracts fun from the equation and substitutes it with an earnest insistence that a good time is being had. Emmerich’s salesmanship is not convincing.

Grade: D-

2012

2012 (Roland Emmerich, 2009)

With Earth on the eve of destruction in 2012, we can't stop the impending apocalypse; we can only hope to contain it. Conspiracy theorists, such as Woody Harrelson as the film's resident nutjob, believe that the Mayan calendar foretells the end of the world on December 21, 2012. Scientists may not put any stock in the predictive power of an ancient civilization, but they notice that the planet is heating from the inside at an alarming rate, which may cause the crust to crack.

Of course, the powers that be don't bother informing the public about the forthcoming catastrophe. Rather, they plan for how to save their own skins and ensure the future of humanity. Failed author turned limousine driver Jackson Curtis (John Cusack) happens to be in the right place at the right time when hell on earth arrives. Armed with knowledge of a long shot survival option, Jackson scrambles to save his former wife Kate (Amanda Peet), kids, and their stepdad.

As INDEPENDENCE DAY and THE DAY AFTER TOMORROW demonstrated, 2012 director Roland Emmerich was already proficient at destroying the world's landmarks and land masses for vicarious thrills. In wiping out most of Earth's population in 2012 he takes his filmmaking as ant colony stomping approach to a new level. Fortunately the faceless nature of the mass casualties keeps this from being the most depressing movie ever.

Alternately serious and goofy, 2012 is intended to be a breathless action picture with some sobering moments and a hoot of a comedy. Emmerich would be better off losing the pretense of respectability and embracing the B-movie showmanship that is clearly his strength. Emmerich and 2012 don't do heartfelt emotion and character so well.

The film is padded with a few little stories and one primary tale of the fight for survival, but these lumbering scenes of dialogue and plot generate about as much feeling as reading the names on a company's emergency phone tree. 2012 perks up when catastrophe befalls the planet, but after awhile the repetition of CGI destruction becomes numbing.

Harrelson's pickle munching, paranoid radio talk show host brings some over-the-top humor that this preposterous movie desperately needs, but in terms of tone 2012 follows the lead of its solemn survivors more often than not. Then again, maybe Emmerich is slier than he's given credit for. Punctuating 2012 is the discovery that enduring the possible end of the world cures a little girl's bed-wetting.

Grade: D+

10,000 BC

10,000 BC (Roland Emmerich, 2008)

Pity mammoth hunter D'Leh (Steven Strait) in 10,000 BC. When he was a boy, his father left for the good of the tribe. Now a young man, dreadlocked D'Leh can't relish his crowning achievement making the kill on the big hunt because it was more or less an accident. Feeling as though he is not worthy of his rewards--the white spear and his longtime crush Evolet (Camilla Belle)--D'Leh returns what he does not believe he has earned.

Another chance arrives for D'Leh to prove his mettle when Evolet is among those taken from the tribe by four-legged demons, which is the prehistoric people's scarier way of describing men on horses. During his epic journey to save his true love from enslavement D'Leh encounters terrifying beasts and slowly builds an army to fight back against a god.

Omar Sharif's grave and too-frequent narration suggests that 10,000 BC is to be taken seriously, but it's hard to avoid laughing when not struggling to stay awake during the countless continent-traversing scenes. Better to show D'Leh and his men walking than having them talk, though. The dialogue can be pretty idiotic even by the standards of pre-civilized mankind's usual film depictions.

The prehistorical inaccuracies are glaring even to this untrained observer. Mammoths as domesticated service animals for transporting materials to build pyramids? Really? Look, no one expects to be educated from a Roland Emmerich film. If he didn't want to put the effort into being true to the era, he should have gone entirely in a fantasy direction. Otherwise the result plays as unintended comedy.

One wonders how Mel Gibson, star of Emmerich's THE PATRIOT, might have been able to improve this material. Emmerich borrows from BRAVEHEART and APOCALYPTO, so such conjecture has a basis in what turns up on screen. 10,000 BC'S director lacks Gibson's visual acumen and anthropological curiosity. Emmerich stages the so-so CGI setpieces and plodding tribal camp scenes with little sense of awe or danger, something Gibson would have instilled in every frame. Even if Gibson weren't behind the camera, the film desperately needs his (or someone's) star power for the hero role. Strait is found lacking in every way.

Technology has made it possible to recreate anything in the movies, but rendering saber-toothed tigers and a bygone time and making it all come alive are not the same thing. With a dreadfully dull story and performances as petrified as 12,000-year-old wooden artifacts, 10,000 BC shambles along as if on a march to its own extinction.

Grade: D