Reviews & Ratings for
Independence Day: Resurgence (2016)

This movie is going to get bad critical reviews!
The previous movie which came out in 1996 wasn’t well reviewed either, but it was dumb, fun and eye popping back in the day. Its also one of my FAVORITE movies of ALL times. I must have seen it more than 20 times.

This new sequel takes places 20 years after the original and the aliens are back! It’s up to David levinson played by Jeff Goldblum and team to save the day – again.

This movie majorly suffers from Transformer-itis, with a good measure of Blow up the Queen to kill all drones syndrome thrown in for good measure. So is this movie terrible and unwatchable?

Not exactly, there’s good and bad.

Let’s start with the good parts.

It’s great to see quite a bit of the old cast coming back. Former president President Whitmore played by Bill Pullman is back. So is previously mentioned David and his Jewish Father. New cast members included Dylan Heller who is Will smith’s character’s kid from the previous movie. It’s good to see them all together again. The plot moves along swiftly and the movie doesn’t take too much to pick up and get going. The music is fine, the action is passable and the FX is great.
Also, the film makers are self aware and they know what kind of movie they are making, thats one good thing about the film. It sometimes DOESN'T fall for the cliche. But only at times!
Now comes the problematic part. Since the last 20 years visual FX has gotten a LOT easier. So easy, that every director over does it these days. From the new Terminator to Star Wars to this movie, the FX seem TOO much. There is too much going on in the screen, the eye can’t focus on any one cool thing. There is 100s of cool things happening on screen! This is where the direction falters. It’s the film makers job to direct the eye to something meaningful, rather than have everything blowing up and thrown at your face all at once. This is Michael bay’s transformers formulae and this film also suffers from it!
Then comes the rather hack job of editing. The first movie was 2 and a half hours long and had great character and human moments in-between all the spectacle. This one is rushed, it feels rushed. There is NO build-up to the alien’s arrival. The build-up was the BEST part of the first movie, the anticipation of seeing those shadows covering those cities. They got rid of all of that awesomeness.
There is a sudden school bus full of children thrown in good measure, the whole kids plot line comes out of NO WHERE and it feels like their introductions were left on the editing floor.
There is no time to think in between the action, it’s all rushed and going at break neck speeds. They should have spaced out this movie by at least 15 more minutes.
The plot and story is absurd but that is one thing I was expecting all along. They do try to build more mythology about the aliens and their intergalactic war. But it all seems a bit Star Wars-ish.
Some actions or things that happen don’t follow logical choices but that is fine, given it’s a big dumb movie.

I didn’t hate this film, it kept me entertained, but it is far from the brilliant original film.

Fans of the first part will like it, new-comers to the genre might not get it.

Rating : 6/10 . See if you like Sci-Fi, but go in with low expectations and it will be fine!
P.S: They left the door open for the next part and I doubt it going to be made…