Independence Day: Resurgence - May Be The Dumbest Movie Ever Made

guilty pleasures we all have them stuff that we know is bad for us but we just can't help ourselves like when tatiana takes my and puts the cheese grater inside make sure it goes all the way up i don't want to get that one backwards though anyway when it comes to movies one of my guiltiest of guilty pleasures is independence day an action blockbuster from the mid-90s about america saving the world from an alien invasion that succeeded on a potent cocktail of flashy special effects big explosions unashamedly gung-ho patriotism will smith's mad charisma and a very loose understanding of computer viruses seriously if you've got a virus that can override a completely alien operating system why bother messing around with shields why not just order the ships to self-destruct or open fire on each other or fly directly into the [ __ ] sun nah who cares when you've got moments like this today we celebrate our independence day [Music] [ __ ] yeah usa usa the point is the independence day truly was the epitome of the big dumb star-studded summer blockbuster it wasn't smart and it definitely wasn't complex but it was a fun thrill ride that looked cool made just enough sense that you could understand what was happening and delivered enough big emotional payoffs to keep you invested the kind of movie that knew exactly what you wanted from it and was happy to give it to you just like tatsuyana but then 20 years later long after the buzz and excitement and relevance of independence day had faded from memory director roland emmerich woke up one day and decided that what the world really needed was a sequel trust me it didn't what we actually got was one of the most ridiculous brain-dead incoherent cinematic disasters in living memory that somehow managed to amplify everything bad about the original while expertly removing virtually everything that made it fun and entertaining it's really quite remarkable when you think about it and it's basically a master class in how not to make an effective sequel so naturally i thought it deserved a closer look allow me to explain independence day resurgence begins 20 years after the original movie humanity has mostly recovered from the alien war that wiped out half the planets cities have been rebuilt nations have learned to work together and they've reverse engineered recovered alien technology to develop advanced weapons space fighters and bases on the moon and mars nice work chaps but all is not well president whitmore is kind of a crazy old man now he's got ptsd from his mind meld with the aliens and he keeps spazzing out and drawing weird symbols on the wall and he's not the only one remember data from the first movie tearing chunks out of the scenery because brent spiner finally got a chance to show real emotions remember how he got possessed by an alien and then brutally killed by a combination of strangulation and bullets i mean i'm no doctor or anything but he looks pretty [ __ ] dead here but the script is like nah it'll be fine and we find out that he's been in a coma for the past 20 years well that was convenient but what's even more convenient is that he wakes up and starts drawing the same symbol as whitmore whatever could this mean nothing as it turns out this whole thing is just included to create the idea that there's some kind of clever mystery plot going on with this movie when in actual fact it's just dumb as [ __ ] also how exactly is he even able to get up and move around like nothing happens when his muscles certainly would have atrophied after decades of inactivity wouldn't he be horrified to learn that he's lost two decades of his life wouldn't he have questions about what's been happening in the world not to mention his friends and family and loved ones nah who cares there's even a cameo appearance from robert logia as general grey in fact this was his final movie role because he died before the movie even came out and while it's nice that they were able to bring him back man it's pretty clear he wasn't long for this earth jeff goldblum is also in this movie playing the same basic character that he's been playing for the past 20 years a comically exaggerated jeff goldblum anyway now he's the world's top scientist so he goes to africa to investigate the only alien ship from the last war that actually landed i love how this scene is played out like this is the very first time he's been here [ __ ] sake mate you've had 20 years you're seriously telling me that you've never bothered to investigate one of the most significant artifacts from the last war until right now anyway this ship was trying to drill down to the earth's core for some reason and it managed to send out a distress signal before it got blown up wow i wonder if this will soon prove to be extremely significant but of course it wouldn't be a modern sequel without a bloated additional cast of bland young actors playing equally bland characters and some shameless pandering to the chinese market for good measure i love how chinese government officials are portrayed as highly trained efficient and of course deeply concerned with protecting human lives there's discount chris hemsworth a cocky loose cannon flyboy that gets chewed out by his efficient chinese superior for being too good at his job or something his mate charlie who's charlie who's got the hots for efficient chinese superior's daughter who's so forgettable that i can't even remember her [ __ ] name and i'm too lazy to look it up but the situation is complicated by the arrival of discount will smith because the real will smith wanted nothing to do with this turd discount will smith is angry at discount chris hemsworth because naturally they have a rocky history together oh no i'm so intrigued by this fascinating character dynamic jesus this cast is bigger than game of [ __ ] thrones and i've not even mentioned the african veteran from the first alien war or the generic lady president of the united states or the angry general guy that oversees earth's defense forces or jasmine given up stripping to become a doctor for some reason or jeff goldblum's love interest that they brought in with no explanation because they couldn't get the original actress back or judd hirsch doing a bunch of stuff that's totally irrelevant basically they brought back every single actor from the first movie that was still alive and needed a quick paycheck now that's great if you want to milk the nostalgia teats for all their worth but the problem is that independence day had a pretty big cast to begin with and trying to catch the audience up on what they've been doing for the past 20 years quite rightly takes a long time this problem gets magnified when the script tries to introduce an entire film's worth of brand new characters at the same time the result is a confusing spaghetti super people and subplots from all over the world most of whom have nothing of any significance to do for most of the movie and quickly become forgettable distractions anyway i guess it's time for stuff to start exploding so a wormhole opens up on the surface of the moon because i guess that's the thing that can happen now and a spaceship flies out of it naturally the humans assume it's another alien invasion so they blow up and the wreckage crash lands on the moon's surface and if this all sounds a bit random and irrelevance well it is the real action kicks off not long afterwards remember the big alien mothership from the first movie that was like a hundred miles across well this new one's so big that it covers half the [ __ ] globe and it blasts right through the world's space defenses with absolutely zero effort because they take about two hours to charge up and open fire seriously guys you didn't think this was kind of a design flaw it's also so big and dense that it's pull is apparently strong enough to lift objects off the ground and even uproot skyscrapers wait what what the [ __ ] is happening like wouldn't the ship have to be many times heavier than the earth itself to overcome the planet's gravity also wouldn't its sheer weight cause it to break right through the planet's crust suck the atmosphere off the surface and kill every living thing on earth in a matter of minutes i would genuinely love to see the reaction of an actual physicist watching this movie you can actually picture the writing room when they had to come up with this [ __ ] like damn the first movie had every major landmark in america getting blown up what can we possibly do to top that i know we'll just pick them up and drop them on each other that'll be more impressive right anyway so it lands and starts drilling down into the earth's crust and we find out that the aliens apparently want to steal our planetary core to power their ships i'd like to point out that basically every terrestrial planet in the galaxy has a molten core thus literally billions of worlds that they could harvest without any difficulty or resistance whatsoever so they'd never have to expend massive amounts of military resources invading populated worlds with advanced civilizations i don't know maybe they just like fighting or maybe they're just [ __ ] or maybe the scriptwriters didn't think this one through naturally the humans need to put a stop to this [ __ ] before the aliens can reach the core luckily the whole alien force is basically a giant hive mind that's being controlled by a single queen if they can kill her it'll shut down all the drones and ships under her commands well lucky the alien's entire command structure is based around a single individual with no backups or contingencies of any sorts like what if this queen got sick and died or got killed in an accident or drank too many shots of toilet duck until she choked to death on her own vomits would the tens of millions of drones under her command become instantly useless if so why does the queen have to physically be here at all i mean she's basically in the middle of an active war zone that would be like churchill and roosevelt going ashore with the troops on d-day wouldn't it make more sense to have her directing things from the other side of the solar system just in case also there was nothing whatsoever to suggest that these creatures operated as a hive mind in the first movie this one was able to function perfectly well by himself so why couldn't the others nah whatever because we need to replicate iconic scenes from the first movie it's time for another mass fighter attack now considering what happened 20 years ago you'd think they'd be kind of concerned that the aliens would anticipate an attack like this but they're like nah it'll be fine but it turns out it won't be fine after fighting their way through heavy resistance and getting inside the alien ship the fighters all get disabled by a magic emp which kind of begs the question why didn't the aliens just use that to begin with were they just [ __ ] around man these aliens really are [ __ ] naturally discount chris hemsworth discount will smith and forgettable chinese actress all remember to wear their pull-up armor so they're totally fine and these guys absolutely do not give a [ __ ] about this situation look see he's he's taking a piss in front of the aliens to show how much he doesn't care what's a legend meanwhile at area 51 discount data activates a giant white space testicle which makes the alien queen really mad so she gets into a smaller ship and heads off to destroy it wait why couldn't she just send an army of drones to do this why would she put herself literally the most valuable member of her entire species in danger for a mission like this why is she even so determined to destroy the giant white space testicle don't know so the humans put out a fake signal to lure the alien queen out into the desert and president whitmore gets inside the queen's ship and uses a nuke to blow it up but the queen escapes the wreckage because apparently she has a shield around her own body really where and how is it strong enough to withstand a nuclear blast at point-blank range don't know this is pretty much where the movie drops all pretenses of even trying to make sense the queen is on the rampage trying to get to the giant white space testicle and fighters are trying to blow her up and other aliens have gotten loose inside area 51 to attack the giant white space testicle and the mother ship has almost reached the earth's core and then judd hurst shows up in a school blast for some reason and all could think was how ridiculous this thing looks when you see it in broad daylight i love this girl's reaction when she sees it zero [ __ ] given there anyway the queen grabs the testicle and tries to make a run for it so discount chris hemsworth and discount will smith shoot her in the arse and then she just kind of dies well that was kind of anti-climactic so the drone's all shut down and the drilling stops at the last second and the mothership just kind of takes off and leaves how could this happen when the queen's not there to control it don't know just don't dwell on the devastating environmental damage or the unsold billions of people that got crushed to death when this thing landed the more pressing question here is how the [ __ ] does this girl manage to make her boob jiggle like this seriously if there's any ladies watching that can verify this send me your video evidence anyway discount date is all excited because the giant white space testicle has agreed to share new weapons and technology with them so they can take the fight to the aliens in a sequel that will absolutely never get made we're gonna kick some serious alien ass somehow i don't think you will data so that's it that's the dumb as a bag of ryan johnson's plot for independence day regurgitation what the [ __ ] can i even say about this film honestly i left the movie theater with absolutely no idea what i'd just seen and to be honest i'm still not sure even now the obvious temptation with sequels is to make them bigger and grander than the original and often this comes at the expense of writing quality but when the original was already one of the biggest dumbest blockbusters of all time where the [ __ ] can you even go with it the answer is nowhere especially if you don't have a lick of imagination all you can really do is recycle the same exact plot beats except dial everything up to 11 and hope nobody notices the problem is the novelty and spectacle is entirely gone now watching giant spaceships crashing through the atmosphere just isn't unique anymore that shot of the white house getting blown up was iconic because we'd never seen anything like it before but in the decades since that shit's been done a hundred times over including from roland emmerich himself even the characters in this movie don't seem impressed a lot of the charm of the first movie came from a cast of talented actors that played it just straight enough to keep you invested in what was happening and watching will smith and jeff goldblum play off each other was genuinely fun because they really seem to be enjoying themselves but now what have we got discount will smith has all the charisma of a two-person stage act featuring brie larson and sophie turner forgettable chinese actress adds absolutely nothing to this movie and even discount chris hemsworth who hands it up to the best of his ability can't rescue the film bill pullman looks kind of embarrassed just to be here and who can blame him no wonder he's hiding behind that beard for most of the movie you're better than this bill on the other hand watching jeff goldblum in this film is like watching jeff goldblum being played by nick cage on [ __ ] acid the only guy that actually seems to be having fun is discount data sorry brent spiner then again he's not exactly busy these days so maybe he was just glad to be working again the point is this entire movie feels like something that was made out of necessity rather than any kind of artistic impulse they saw a chance to launch yet another shared universe that could ride the coattails of the mcu so they dusted off a 20 year old ip that still had a hint of nostalgia value slapped together a script that was just coherent enough to function and used hefty paychecks to tempt back as many of the original cast as possible the intention was clearly to kick-start a whole new franchise of sequels prequels and spin-offs from the ending that hints at an alliance with other species to the prospect of taking the fight to the enemy on their homeworld and even prequels like the guerrilla war against the aliens back in the 90s there's a whole world of possibilities that this film tries to open up but it all depends on one thing resurgence actually being good and well it isn't in fact is possibly the dumbest of dumb sequels a lame hastily concocted mess of a story trying desperately to milk the nostalgia of the original while shamelessly pandering to foreign markets and baiting sequels that nobody's interested in seeing and worst of all it loses the charm energy excitement and likability of the first movie ultimately giving us no reason to stick around independence day might have been a guilty pleasure but resurgence is just guilty guilty of being [ __ ] anyway that's all i've got for today go away now

Channel: The Critical Drinker

Views: 1,693,260

Keywords:

Id: 9UIOmInIv7g

Length: 16min 46sec (1006 seconds)

Published: Wed Oct 21 2020

Reddit Comments

[u/killedbyBS]

It's a got a lot going for it that makes it eligible, but it still pales in comparison to The Predator 2018. That movie is simply nonsense-perfection.

[u/riegspsych325]

this movie, even without Will Smith, had a lot going for it but it just faltered in so many ways. It had built some interesting backstory in the 20 years since the first film with the idea that humanity would adapt the alien tech, aliens surviving in one intact ship that set down in Africa, introduction of other alien races, etc. But it lacked the execution and charm of the original film. It was disappointing since it had a lot of good ideas that just went to waste

Oddly enough, as I type this, I am watching Real Genius. Dean Devlin (ID4/sequel writer and producer) actually plays one of the nerd side characters in this movie

[u/JurassicBasset]

Worth watching just for Judd Hirsch driving a bus around the desert.

[u/r2001uk]

Frenchie: "That's fucking A-Train!"

[u/GMHGeorge]

They had 20 years to write a sequel and this was the best they could do? WTF.

[u/zawarudo88]

Critical Drinker is great. Watch all his vids.

[u/JC-Ice]

It certainly is dumb, but I'm not sure it's even the dumbest movie Roland Emmerich had made. Have you seen 2012?

[u/DrinkingAtQuarks]

That is a hotly contested title these days. Still, a fine contender.

[u/RevWaldo]

We're going to kick so much alien ass!