Supreme silliness, with no impulse to acknowledge its silliness. Independence Day: Resurgence is thus also serious silliness, a bad film that is a particularly bothersome brand of bad: it's boring. And yet it's set at record speed, as though to make up for the 20 years that have passed since Roland Emmerich last made an attempt (and an altogether more persuasive one) at selling this material as relevant. There's a whole planet-full of characters, in a universe-full of locations (though each capable of appearing in any number of them at a moment's notice, or even not). There's backstory dribbling out of every orifice. There's sci-fi psycho-babble that seems to emanate from one particular orifice (and it's not the mouth, alas). Why, then, does this most hurried, jam-packed, ludicrous of films feel like such an interminable slog? As every comedic quip misses its mark, Independence Day: Resurgence descends into a dreary drag, each set-piece the same as the last; Emmerich's proclivity for scenes of mega-destruction indulged to the maximum here, the film thus becomes literally one massive catastrophe after another. As every CGI effect, buried beneath a bottomless pit of gloom provided by Markus Forderer's cinematography, recalls countless better designs in countless better films before it, what moderate interest Emmerich might have aroused is lost entirely, not least due to the total lack of interest invested in the characters, by filmmakers and viewers alike. One might query whether or not this film was ever meant to be about its characters, but this only raises further queries: if it's not meant to be about its characters, then why is everything else about Resurgence so similarly sub-standard, and indeed, what was it actually meant to be about? Silly queries, then, for a silly film. Silly me for sitting through it.
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