Reel Entropy

Photos courtesy 20th Century Fox.

Dusk is falling on the era of sequels, but even though Hollywood is repeating itself to the point of self-satire, Independence Day: Resurgence is still a great idea. Released almost 20 years to the day after the iconic first movie, Resurgence presented the promise of a throwback to when disaster movies were still done right and when sequels were produced with the same care as the original, not just on a tight studio schedule. It’s only when you get into the theater you realize how distinctly, horribly 2016 the movie is.

Independence Day: Resurgence follows way, way too many characters, and it’s difficult to parse out which ones are actually important — really, none of them are. Nobody does much of anything to drive the plot, but some at least participate in it. There’s main-ish character Jake Morrison (Liam Hemsworth), a U.S. pilot serving on the Lunar base. He’s engaged to Patricia Whitmore (Maika Monroe), a former pilot herself who left the armed services to care for her father, former president Thomas J. Whitmore (Bill Pullman), who, like many who were exposed to the aliens’ telepathy, has been suffering from intense psychic visions for years. As a stress-free day job for when she has time off from taking care of her dementia-ridden, widowed, crippled national hero father, Patricia Whitmore has taken up speech-writing for the current president, Elizabeth Lanford (Sela Ward).

Also, David Levinson (Jeff Goldblum) is back. He’s been the director of incorporating alien technology into the allied global military. He doesn’t do much in the movie. He has a new love interest, though, in Catherine Marceaux (Charlotte Gainsbourg), a psychologist who specializes in residual psychic images such as former president Whitmore’s. Also, super-annoying Area 51 scientist Brakish Okun (Brent Spiner) is back, he’s been in a coma since his encounter in the first movie. Back to Morrison for a second — he’s got beef with air force royalty Dylan Dubrow-Hiller (Jessie Usher), son of war hero Steven Hiller from the first movie, who tragically died in a flight test because Fox didn’t want to pay Will Smith’s acting fee. That’s a conflict-resembling plot device that happens throughout the movie. Also, there are these guys on a boat. And there’s this group of kids in a school bus, they make their way into the final fight sequence, somehow.

Also, aliens are invading!

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