INDEPENDENCE DAY: RESURGENCE (2016)

Roland Emmerich’s film based on a screenplay that he co-wrote with Dean Devlin, Nicolas Wright, James A. Woods & James Vanderbilt is a sequel to 1996’s INDEPENDENCE DAY and essentially the same story repeated over again sans Will Smith. Though I appreciate the artistry involved in the making of this film along with the many fine actors involved, this film is a major disappointment and essentially a waste of one’s time in viewing it. Since it becomes abundantly clear that the only reason a film of this type gets made is to make money, it reflects itself in the final product. Also a film that may have worked 20 years ago may not necessarily work in our present day world. Though there have been scores of excellent films that have flopped for whatever the reason (ie. a poor marketing campaign or the fact that the public was simply not aware of the movie’s existence) this is not the case here. A bloated, over produced story that we’ve all seen too many times before, only has a chance with a less sophisticated audience that may be completely ignorant or innocuous to the first film. Many fine actors such as the luminous Sela Ward, Liam Hemsworth, Jeff Goldblum, Bill Pullman, Judd Hirsch, Brett Spiner and Viveca A. Fox must have all been enticed by rather large pay checks to have been drawn to this rather lousy screenplay. This film is not really bad but it certainly isn’t very good either.