The man who effectively invented the Hollywood disaster
movie was a producer called Irwin Allen who had made his name on Sixties
television with series like Land of the
Giants and Voyage to the Bottom of
the Sea. He struck gold on the big screen with The Poseidon Adventure, followed it up with The Towering Inferno, and launched a whole Seventies movie genre.
In some respects Roland Emmerich is a
post-millennium Irwin Allen. Independence Day in 1996 ushered in a
raft of films including The Day After
Tomorrow and 2012; all of which
are eminently watchable He is the king of the modern-day disaster film and
contemporary CGI has allowed him to raise the stakes: Allen had to be content with
destroying ships or tower blocks where Emmerich takes out entire ecosystems.
The similarities do not end there because just as
Irwin Allen had the spectacularly awful The
Swarm, now Emmerich has the equally
inept Independence Day: Resurgence.
This is a film which is emblematic of the new
Hollywood; every frame screams risk aversion. From the brand recognition of the
title to the careful wooing of the newly-lucrative Chinese market, to the
pointlessly returning cast – even one you were convinced was dead – this is a
calculated exercise in box-ticking.
Shoddy, chaotic effects, a plot which just rips
off the first one, and a cast who look like they’ve been chosen by the size of
their fee rather than their competence provide a film which says ‘will this do’
from start to finish.
The disappointing thing is that Independence Day is one of those rare
movies which might actually have merited a sequel. It seems reasonable to
assume that the aliens would not simply retreat to Planet Zog or wherever and
not bother us again; there would I imagine be an enthusiasm on their part to
bomb us flat. As indeed there is but not, it seems, for 20 years.
The whole timescale is one of many troubling
things about this film. Why for instance would they wait 20 years? Also the
progress we have made in those 20 years seems improbable. Bearing in mind the state
we were in at the end of the first movie we are expected to believe that not
only have we rebuilt cities and restored infrastructure, but pirated alien
technology has given us cold fusion and enabled us to colonise the moon.
Incidentally, if we have deciphered the secrets of
their technology why do we have such problems reading their language? The film
is full of ‘if only we knew what they meant’ moments, most of them from
Charlotte Gainsbourg delivered with all the passion of a hostage video.
Independence Day: Resurgence is slipshod from start to finish. Will
Smith has made some dodgy career decisions lately but ducking this is one of
his smarter moves. Ex-president Bill Pullman has gone gaga for some unspecified
reason – ‘if only we knew what his dreams meant’ – and Jeff Goldblum is still
doing his coolest kid in the class act with Judd Hirsch kvetching away in the
background as his dad. It’s all pretty tedious stuff and the testosterone
posturing of Liam Hemsworth and Jessie T. Usher doesn’t help.
In the best traditions of creative bankruptcy, the
ending sets up a third movie in which we pursue the aliens to the stars, to
which my only response has to be ‘let’s not, but say we did’.
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