Directed by:
Roland EmmerichCinematography:
Markus FördererCast:
Liam Hemsworth, Jeff Goldblum, Jessie T. Usher, Bill Pullman, Maika Monroe, Sela Ward, William Fichtner, Judd Hirsch, Brent Spiner, Patrick St. Esprit (more)Plots(1)
We always knew they were coming back. After INDEPENDENCE DAY redefined the event movie genre, the next epic chapter delivers global catastrophe on an unimaginable scale. Using recovered alien technology, the nations of Earth have collaborated on an immense defense program to protect the planet. But nothing can prepare us for the aliens' advanced and unprecedented force. Only the ingenuity of a few brave men and women can bring our world back from the brink of extinction. (20th Century Fox)
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Reviews (12)
Total creative misery and a massive drop in quality. Emmerich seems to have completely forgotten what trademarks and directorial techniques made him rise to the top of the imaginary blockbuster ladder in 1996. His ID4 was funny, dynamic, emotional and at times very chilling. Above all, though, it was hugely entertaining, with interesting characters you rooted for even though (or perhaps because) they were so different. 20 years later, we have a new attack, which is only watchable thanks to the evolution of the digital effects. Because the script is out of the question, the new main characters are uninteresting and boring, and the old ones get little time or are treated reprehensibly badly. You could say that, with the exception of Goldblum, the director hasn't let them age with the grace and refinement they would need, while still being great draws for the young hungry crowd, who, by the way, average about 15 years old and pilot fighter jets, fly to the moon, and sacrifice themselves for humanity without blinking an eye. Overkill is fine, but here it’s often meant too seriously. The mix was simply wrong from the start. The blatant copying of Aliens and Sphere cannot be forgiven either. Truly a giant disappointment of intergalactic proportions, and I think back with nostalgia to the perfectly polished and charismatic first film.
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I am not entirely sure what the viewers in the USA expected. The sequel to Independence Day went to the absolute human extremes that we, as the viewers would never have imagined. This means that Roland Emmerich outdid himself once again and he painted a future involving aliens and all that comes with it. The most striking thing of it all is American patriotism that is literally gushing from every single scene. If he were to add that the film is being broadcast on TV America to a hundred and fifty countries of the world, where they interrupted all programming only to show this, nobody would have been surprised. On the other hand, I am a bit disappointed that Roland isn’t able to poke some fun at himself and that he didn’t turn this film into a sequel to Starship Troopers. As far as the screenplay is concerned, there was certainly hope for that. But he did manage to prepare a perfect digital visual that saves him wherever possible and that managed to save the rest of the film as well. That is actually the only thing that ensures the quality of this movie and that elevates it to the level of at least your standard Emmerich movie. So what was it that we actually wanted?
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I only regret three things - that the writers didn't pay as much attention to the new characters as their colleagues who wrote Star Wars: The Force Awakens, that the film is not longer (this could have solved the first problem) and that Will Smith did not want to, although he could have easily done what William Fichtner did. That’s too bad. Otherwise, the second Independence Day is exactly what I hoped it would be. Monstrous, funny, surprising and knowingly simple, with the promise of an even more monstrous third installment. I won't blame Roland Emmerich for not using miniatures, but everything is digital, because if everything could have been done digitally twenty years ago, he certainly wouldn't have bothered to build a plaster white house. In short, times have moved on, and during 2012 he figured out that he can do absolutely anything he wants to Mother Earth. And so he does it to her, too. Of the returning cast, no one disappointed me; on the contrary I was very pleased with Brent Spiner, who was given much more space than I had hoped for, and of course Jeff Goldblum is a classic and his scenes with Judd Hirsch still have that hundredth of a second comedic timing from years ago. ___P. S. The film is actually in the same position as its soundtrack, which consists of completely new but somewhat familiar music by Kloser and Wanker, in which one can hear hints of the well-known Arnold motif here and there as time passes, which returns in full force only in the last quarter of the album. And then it's regular Independence Day with everything that it encompasses.
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Does anyone still find this entertaining today, in age of Interstellar, Gravity and The Martian? There is no paradigmatic
shift when compared to the twenty-year-old (!) original; instead, everything is just multiplied – the number of characters,
fighter planes, the size of the space ships, the number of presidents and their speeches with patriotic background music.
The spectacular and loud action begins almost immediately, lasts 100 minutes and is denser than in the first
Independence Day, but EVERYTHING seems borrowed from somewhere and there is not a SINGLE innovative element in the entire movie. Personally, what made me suffer the most were the characters and their insipid dialogue and blatant stupidity, which might have seemed funny and cool in the 1990s, but today?! The best moment for me was the fadeout
before the end credits when David Arnold’s famous musical theme started to play.
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What more can I say? An old liberal, all of whose ships have already sailed, but who miraculously continues to knead his overpriced anachronistic visions united by states of love and tolerance. It's half scandalous and half terribly contagious. When two old gays heartbreakingly say goodbye on the screen or Bill Pullman is pulling humanity together with another speech just after a brain collapse, it reminds me why I love Roland so much. He brought the over the top principle very over the top. He doesn't understand the business as much as Michael Bay, so even a meeting of a Chinese sexy wonder, an American yuppie, an Australian surfer, a Jewish morose and an intergalactic ball on the autopsy table looks like a magical mistake, which is a bit unknown to the viewer. The film is best described by two scenes - old Levinson, who sells a discounted book How I Saved the World to comatose retirees, and Dr. Ocun, who immediately begins to kick alien ass after waking up from a 7,300-day coma. This is exactly Independence Day 2. (I'd really need to see part three, btw)
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