Houston is now 2 for 2 when it comes to Independence Day references...that's about the only positive I can say about this movie. Lame story, and not nearly enough wanton destruction.
I may be a bit kind, but I'd say it's about average. Does it have a lot of problems, sure. I feel like half of the movie is caught up in trying to replicate the movie from 1996 and the other half is trying to push forward and be more of a modern blockbuster. When it's the former, it usually fails, but the latter has it's moments. Plot holes I'm fine with as ID4 had plenty. But probably the biggest sin is the characters. The ones they brought back mostly fell flat or just didn't have much to do. The new characters, or grown-up versions of the children from the first, were either horribly written or suffered from wooden acting. And then they throw in more supporting characters on top of those and expect you to care for them. I did enjoy Brent Spiner's return as the Area 51 doctor and Liam Hemsworth was fine. Jeff Goldblum is Jeff Goldblum. The President's daughter was ok. The effects were pretty spectacular but the action felt a bit rushed at times and stale at others because we saw similar action pieces in the first. I liked the fact that they reversed engineered the alien technology, but they accomplished way too much in only 20 years. And then the flow seemed a bit off to me. Spent too long re-establishing the world in meaningless scenes in the beginning, not enough time really building up to the invasion, too little time on the first attack; the pace may have been just a bit too choppy. So I'd say it's a resounding "meh." I would give it another watch on cable and maybe we'll end up liking it better in time. But yeah disappointment, but not horrible. Honestly, it might have been better to just return completely fresh, hundreds of years in the future with all completely new characters instead of regurgitating old ones.
WTF? I thought he died because the monster strangled him? How did they get around this problem exactly? They nuked Houston in the first one right? Most cities and militaries were destroyed. They are all rebuilt?
The fake news station is the enduring sign of trashiness, they're always so willing to lend their image for politically theme stuff. If not for the implicit praise of the UN, this would seem like a Kirk Cameron or Pat Robertson film.
Don't go that far. Even though they have increased the military budget by orders of magnitude in a post apocalyptic economy, this appears far more based in reality.
Seconded. This was complete crap. Terrible acting, cringeworthy dialogue, humor that was basically fart jokes and they just kept going on and on with it. At no time was there ever any real sense of loss or suspense or any emotional attachment to the characters or the plot. Avoid at all costs.
We need less remakes and movies with agendas. We need more movies with honest portrayals of life with genuine acting.
Apparently not. I remember him briefly being in the previews, and sure enough he's still alive in this. They don't bother explaining it really. They've rebuilt civilization after the first invasion and advanced their tech and defensive capabilities exponentially, pretty much because everyone made peace with one another.
aside from the graphics, which were great. the movie as a whole sucked. really bad. ultra cheezy. it felt like i was watching a PG disney movie. i wasnt expecting it to be as good as the first one, but give me something decent. this was just bad. the mothership was way too big, if a ship that large landed on earth it would destroy everything on the planet. end of story. the meteor that hit earth some 65 million years ago was +/- 20 miles wide. this space ship is supposed to be 3000 miles wide?? wtf hollywood dont go full tard on.
Pretty bad. No character development, terrible acting, major scientific impossibilities, etc etc. So many scenes were copies of the original - something that make sequels terrible imo. I think they should have done more with the soldiers (on foot) lost inside the mothership. That was one of the more interesting parts of the movie, but they only gave it a couple scenes.
I'm not going to see this, for obvious reasons. Can someone who has seen it explain how Brent Spiner is alive? He totally got strangled by an alien, and used to speak telepathically in the first movie.
