Independence Day: Resurgence [Review by Haus]

Oh, excuse me. Are you here for the roast?

You heard Independence Day has a sequel, and Will Smith said no? You heard it’s just a peevish senescent Goldblum, with that dude who played the president, and a brutal zwei stunden smear of Sturm und Drang in CGI? And having heard all this, you’ve come to see Roland Emmerich pilloried by the staunch servicemen of truth here at The Parsing Haus?

I mean, yes. Independence Day: Resurgence is bad. I could lament it. Everyone will lament it. Emmerich, your film is nonsense, and you have no secrets from us.

But here’s another important detail: During my preview screening, the Brexit vote came in. Britain voted to leave the European Union, isolationism and distrust are the new normal, and, coincidentally and consequently, ID:R is now the actual high water mark of a once-buoyant world optimism that, sometime during act two, was savagely beaten by the electoral answer to a football mob.

Movies stand against the backdrop of their time, and let me tell you, there’s something otherworldly indeed about watching CGI London destroyed by flying saucers while mainlining a blue ICEE only to trundle out to the bright lights and backlogged text alerts announcing that the English voting populace has in fact dealt a similar killing stroke to world financial markets. Like, gee. What’d I miss?

I didn’t need that stock portfolio anyway. I’m going to quit and open a post-apocalyptic roadside stand peddling Krugerrands, spring guns, and signs that say “We don’t dial 911.”

But hey, as a film to watch while the actual world ends, ID:R is quite well suited.

This has nothing to do with the story, which is thin and abysmally stupid. Twenty years on, we’ve mined alien technology to make flying cars and moon bases and skyscrapers in DC. (We applied alien tech to demolish those L’Enfant zoning regs! Who says the law isn’t fun?) Some milquetoast aliens return to destroy some stuff, but don’t even do us the solid of razing a single U.S. landmark. Instead, they squat a 3000-mile wide spaceship over Europe (or Asia? not clear) and knock over some boats. There’s no real feeling of threat to anything, no menace, no suspense. There’s some weird robot alien beacon thing that shows early promise but devolves into spouting human exceptionalism. The casting is no help either: As I thought to myself over and over throughout this film, Liam Hemsworth and Jessie T. Usher just cannot carry this movie. This leaves poor Brent Spiner as the longhair Area 51 mad scientist–essentially comic relief in the first film–shouldering far too much weight. It’s all pretty grim.

No, the reason why ID:R should be your 2016 political apocalypse go-to picture is that the wild-eyed American jingoism of twenty years ago is largely gone, replaced by a happy coalition of nations united against alien threats. Angelababy and Chin Han feature prominently (in what I hope is a drink in the face of #OscarsSoWhite, but fear is just a smarmy attempt to boost Chinese ticket sales). There’s a black lead, a woman U.S. president, a fiftysomething gay couple at Area 51, and even the robots are our friends. It’s all very inclusive, and good on Roland for making it so. Too bad it will never happen, ever, because this is the world and everyone hates everyone, forever.

Contrast this to the original, an absurd Yankee-Doodle flag-gasm that saw fit to impose the July 4 holiday on the entire world — a world, mind you, consisting of helpless B-players such as beret-sporting Euros on scooters and cobblestones, literal spear-shaking natives, vodka-swilling Russians, and a Victorian orientalist’s wet dream of Hong Kong, all junks and open flames and Fu Manchu-bedecked oldsters, the whole lot of them clustering around radios and hanging on every utterance of American Wisdom to save the day. So yes, the new one is an improvement, although when any Asian character in the original could basically have lived upstairs in Breakfast at Tiffany’s, that’s not super tall boots to fill.

Of course, the original was also over the top and goofy and loud and fun — I’d call it a classic, now — whereas this film still sucks a plunger. So maybe it’s a wash, after all.

I do look for silver linings, though, and here’s one. This film has its share of cameos, and despite some truly bracing evidence of the damage two decades can wreak, Judd Hirsch, who plays Goldblum’s kvetching father, seemingly hasn’t aged a month. Turns out premature grey is really just a down payment on a future stopped clock, so, there’s that.

Haus Verdict: Hollow and convoluted alien attack on a cute inclusive little world that we now know can never, ever exist. While I watched this, Europe split apart. What’ll happen when you see it?

Independence Day: Resurgence opens Friday, June 24.

Never miss a review — like The Parsing Haus on Facebook!