"Independence Day: Resurgence" proof bigger isn't better - East Idaho News
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“Independence Day: Resurgence” proof bigger isn’t better

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When the original “Independence Day” blasted into theaters in 1996, it was unlike anything ever seen before. Oh, the story was hackneyed and unoriginal but the visual effects… Wow! The scope was epic, the size was massive and it just felt absolutely HUGE.

The trouble is, things have changed since those days and we get a movie the size of “Independence Day” almost every week. And one of the only ways to stand out is to go bigger than the competition. Unfortunately, as shown by “Independence Day: Resurgence”, bigger doesn’t necessarily mean better.

“Independence Day: Resurgence” picks up 20 years after the original film, and humanity has harvested a bounty of advancement from the wrecks of alien spaceships. But all these new weapons fail to do squat when the aliens show up in a much bigger ship, intent on sucking the molten core right out of the Earth. A veritable cast of thousands must band together to figure out how to fend off the alien invaders. And Brent Spiner runs around in a hospital gown.

Director Roland Emmerich and his filmmaking team have cranked the size of this movie up to “11”. Where the invaders showed up in city-size ships the first time around, now they drop by in a ship that spans the entire Atlantic ocean. The aliens now tower over their human counterparts. There’s even a Godzilla-size queen alien who shows up to wreck a military base.

The cast has even swelled. The main leads are played by the likes of Liam Hemsworth, Jeff Goldblum and Bill Pullman, with dozens of faces both fresh and familiar supporting them. The acting is, for the most part, solid. It does the job. But the acting is, ultimately, pretty irrelevant. I mean, you go to an “Independence Day” flick to say action, right?

Indepence_Day

The problem is that “Resurgence” drops the ball in the “stuff-blowing-up” department. The action set pieces are so big, and the destruction so colossal, that they’re easy to get lost in. I spent too much time trying to figure out what I was looking at. And they lacked the zip and energy of the action scenes from the original film. The exception was the scene that revealed the alien queen. That sequence warmed my kaiju-loving heart.

Say what you want about the original “Independence Day”, but it had heart and spirit and energy. Those three qualities are lacking in “Resurgence”, in spite of the fact that this movie has TWO rousing speeches instead of one. It also could’ve used the lunacy that Randy Quaid’s character gave the first movie. In a world dominated with massive blockbusters, “Resurgence” really doesn’t do enough to make itself stand out.

There are some bright spots. The aforementioned queen alien scene is fun, in that cheesy, monster movie kind of way. The fighter planes are sleek and cool. And we even have a base on the moon. The cast is attractive and the aliens are scary. And the movie’s relatively short running time means you’ll get out of the movie before trucker’s butt sets in.

But, at the end of the day, “Independence Day: Resurgence” is just two hours of summer blockbuster that’s barely distinguishable from its competition. The ending leaves things open for another helping, and I want to see where they go with it. But this helping, while epic and huge, has been served up a little lukewarm.

2 ½ Indy Fedoras out of 5

MPAA Rating: PG-13

Thanks to Fat Cats in Rexburg for providing screenings for movie reviews on EastIdahoNews.com.

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