As far as blockbusters go Independence Day stands up there with the best of them and even after twenty years its perfect mix of CGI and physical graphics still hold up.
Now in 2016, the city swatting aliens are back with a vengeance and here to rid the world of our popular tourist photo hotspots once and for all in the long awaited sequel Independence Day Resurgence.
Here’s what we’ve gathered from the trailer, which thankfully isn’t just some words on a screen.
ID4p2 is set in a universe created when the world was destroyed on the 2nd June 1996 (a Tuesday) and mankind fought back within 2 days and kicked ass with nothing but a MacBook and a barely sober Tom Arnold. Now it seems that in the relatively short space of twenty years humanity has seemingly been able to rebuild nearly every major city as well as add all the fun bits. Note the London Eye appearing in some of the scenes. How was this possible?!?! It’ll probably be explained by the use of Alien Technology which brings us on to our next point ….
Alien Technology
We’ve worked out that highly superior extra-terrestrial hardware can interface with our iPhones so we’ve integrated that with all their left over junk to make super space weapons. Logical if you’re gonna fight the bad guys again. The world also seems to adapted a lots of this tech into everyday life with giant jumbotrons. However the one thing that hasn’t dampened is the pure American jingoism with the red white and blue being flown on the back of these super fighters. Plenty there for collective f**k yeahs and fist pumps.
Old Faces
Sequels have to have some continuity about them and Independence Day Resurgence has a few of our favourites back in action. Jeff Goldblum is reprising his role as cable repair man come saviour of the world as is Bill Pullman as a haggard former president looking more like a later day Al Gore. Heck they’ve even got Brent Spiner (aka Data from Star Trek Next Gen) as the crazy Area 51 scientist who looked pretty dead in the last film but is now back to life. Judd Hirsch is thankfully still with us and is in the film too playing Goldblum’s dad who in IMHO has the best line in the first ID4 (“All you need is love. John Lennon. Smart man. Shot in the back, very sad.”) Perhaps the two most notable omissions are Will Smith whom the writers have conveniently killed off as part of the films backstory (perhaps he cost too much!?!) and Mae Whitman who played the presidents young daughter in the first film. Who’s Mae Whitman I hear you ask? Well aside from that little fun fact she’s now quite an established actress in her own right with memorable roles as “Bland” Anne in TV’s Arrested Development and Roxy Richter in Scott Pilgrim v The World to name a few. According to various sources online Whitman wasn’t even considered for the role with no reason given for her omission. Bad call Hollywood. Bad call.
So will it be as good as the first? Who can say really. We’re mostly of the opinion that if it’s not broke don’t fix it and after a twenty year hiatus shouldn’t a film like ID4 received a 2nd part a lot sooner? It sounds like 20th Century Fox’s collective scrapping of the barrel in the effort to compete with the Disney/Marvel world which is really whopping ass right now. Then again we do enjoy watching Roland Emmerich destroy the world like a kid with a pyromania disorder!
Independence Day Resurgence hits screens in the US on 24th June 2016. Check out the films website for more details on backstory and the latest developments.
