BrendanW 
I enjoyed the original Independence Day film for what it was: a loud, ridiculous and entertaining big-budget explosion-fest involving aliens. It was ultimately silly but it had its charms which were namely Will Smith, Jeff Goldblum and Bill Pullman and probably the strongest directing I’ve seen from the otherwise-abysmal Roland Emmerich. When I heard they were doing the sequel some twenty years later I wasn’t super-stoked for it. Granted, it works out sometimes like with Jurassic World and Dumb & Dumber To (I will defend that film to the bitter end) but this just felt like something that didn’t really necessitate or warrant a sequel.
Basically, the plot is that the aliens are back. After the human race launches a pre-emptive strike against a suspicious-looking spacecraft, another attack is made against them but this one is far more severe. A lot has changed in the time since the first one as well: former president Thomas Whitmore (Bill Pullman) is constantly haunted by the memories of the first alien strike while new President Lanford (Sela Ward) leads the charge this time, Captain Steven Hiller died during a test drive (seriously) and now his son, Dr. Okun (Brent Spiner) awakens from his coma, Julius Levinson (Judd Hirsch) tours senior citizen homes with his book about how he stopped the alien invasion the first time while his son, David (Jeff Goldblum), is still trying to decipher this problem and figure out why they are attacking Earth again.
I think one of the problems lies in the multitude of characters we get this time around. There are just way too many to care about and they are written so thinly with barely any defining characteristics for us to get behind. It was nice to see old favourites return and Jeff Goldblum is fine in the lead role but he doesn’t do anything outstanding or stand out in any way. The same goes for Brent Spiner even though he does his best to make his manic character interesting even if he has some truly inane dialogue to spout most of the time. Bill Pullman is the only one who really stood out for me in the film as he at least has a semi-interesting story to accompany his character’s return and he has actually changed in the last twenty years. Out of the new cast, Liam Hemsworth is the less charismatic between him and his brother and doesn’t really do anything of note and the same can be said of Jessie T. Usher, who plays Will Smith’s son all grown up. William Fichtner is usually adept at playing such interesting characters and particularly cool villains so of course he does none of that here and has no discernible traits whatsoever. While the acting is not great I must also fault the writing because no one is given anything to work with (aside from Pullman). As I’m writing this review, I notice that this film had FIVE WRITERS (in three different groups) which definitely explains a lot.
We’ve established that the characters are pretty expendable so it makes it hard to care about the stakes presented in the film. But do the special effects save it? Well… not entirely but they are, no doubt, highly impressive. Everything that occurs in the film as an effect is done in a very cool manner that was entertaining from time to time. I will also admit that the design of the aliens is very cool. They are terrifying creatures with long tentacles and their queen in particular is a stellar accomplishment in design. Everything else is lackluster though. I don’t care about whether certain characters survive or die. I could not care less about characters dying off-screen because certain actors didn’t want to sign on for a sequel. I did not give one solitary shit about any of the tacked-on romance stuff and that might have been some of the most forced on-screen chemistry I’ve ever seen. In fact, if this film had been almost entirely about Bill Pullman and his journey I would have enjoyed it immensely… at least more than this one.
It’s mediocre and while the effects are good and I liked certain aspects of the story, it failed to deliver for the most part and made for a rather lackluster movie-going experience.
**
Rating System:
* (Brutal; the worst rating)
** (Some elements keep it from being awful but still not very good)
*** (Completely watchable; a rental as old-timers might say)
**** (Great film with a few things here and there keeping it from being perfect)
***** (Flawless; a true achievement)
