Independence Day: Resurgence

[Evildrider]

He is an actor.  He gets paid to entertain.  If he makes horrible movies, it is our own dang fault for getting him paid for them.

Well to be fair, I am sure most of us made him famous before his string of shitty movies.  It didn't save him from releasing some box office bombs.

[angry.bob]

Shame on him for being a father that is obsessed with his children.  Shame. 

His sin is not that he is a father obsessed with his children. His sin is that his children are talentless, self-absorbed retards with beliefs that anything they say or do is groundbreaking or profound. And because of his pull, Will Smith continues to inflict them upon us, and will continue to do so until he dies. On that day, we will finally be free of his stupid fucking children, except for whatever vanity projects they shit away their inheritance funding.

THat he is proud of them and actually seems to believe that we should all be thankful for all the things Jaden does for us is his sin.

[Evildrider]

I only have a problem with Jaden.. that kid is so far up his own ass I don't know how he hasn't died of oxygen deprivation.

[Speedy Cerviche]

I actually find him entertaining.

[Sir T]

One thing Will Smith has is charisma. And yet he played a character with zero charisma in "After Earth" to try and make his son look good. That's not bieng proud, that's insanity.

I'm just surprised some Hollywood exec hasn't taken him behind the studio bikeshed and beaten some sense into him. Is Smith THAT powerful??

[palmer_eldritch]

I'm pretty hyped for this film.

[Velorath]

I'm pretty hyped for this film.

Movies written and directed by Roland Emmerich since ID4:

- Godzilla (the Matthew Broderick one)
- The Day After Tomorrow
- 10,000 BC
- 2012

[lamaros]

I've only seen two of those, but they were great for what they were.

[Rendakor]

Day After Tomorrow and 2012 were both decent set-piece apocalypse movies; Godzilla 2000 was shit, and I didn't see 10,000 BC. Psyched for ID42.

[angry.bob]

I've only seen two of those, but they were great for what they were.

But you're also proven to be wrong about everything. Literally nothing that you've written here has ever been correct or stood up to being questioned.

[Soulflame]

I've seen Day after Tomorrow (hate it) and 2012 (hate it possibly worse) so... yeah.

You made me agree with Angry Bob.

Fuck.

[Lantyssa]

I haven't seen 2012.  I don't even remember the plot, but I remember raging at Day After Tomorrow.

[Soulflame]

2012 is John Cusack and the world is flooding oh shit plus other assorted improbable disasters because neutrinos from solar flare or Darwin knows what and subs that are launched from the Himalayas which can hold 100,000 people each which are selected by lottery or reserved because of super importance and somehow John Cusack and family stow away on subs launched from the Himalayas and whew the water recedes 27 days later yay.

I think that's all one needs to know to feel that the movie is complete shit.

[Teleku]

Eh, it actually had some good destruction scenes, nice effects, and decent pacing.  That's all you can really ask for.  It didn't hide the fact that it was purely a disaster porn flick.  So I don't think you can call it a shit movie for doing what it set out to do very well (unless you think it was a terrible disaster movie and bad at the genre).  I mean trying to make a decent, logical plot in a straight disaster movie is a terrible waste of resources as it does nothing to improve the film, IMO.

[lamaros]

I saw San Andreas recently. 2012 and Day After Tomorrow are the height of cinema in comparison. They are good disaster films.

[Ironwood]

Nah.

[angry.bob]

I haven't seen 2012.  I don't even remember the plot, but I remember raging at Day After Tomorrow.

Mutated neutrinos heat the Earth's core enough to cause it to melt. Now that the Earth has a core of molten planet-stuff instead of whatever the writers believe is normally there, the earth loses it's axis. This of course  causes the ground to open up, chunks of land to go flying, and the sea level to rise to the top of Mount Everest in a day. But other parts of the planet like Africa - not underwater.

None of that is made up, or even stretched for effect. That is exactly what is in the movie.

[Velorath]

Eh, it actually had some good destruction scenes, nice effects, and decent pacing.  That's all you can really ask for.  It didn't hide the fact that it was purely a disaster porn flick.  So I don't think you can call it a shit movie for doing what it set out to do very well (unless you think it was a terrible disaster movie and bad at the genre).  I mean trying to make a decent, logical plot in a straight disaster movie is a terrible waste of resources as it does nothing to improve the film, IMO.

If someone sets out to take a shit on my doorstep I don't applaud them for achieving their goals when they manage to do it. Demolishing shit with CG is one of the lowest hanging fruits filmmakers can go for in movies.

Also, at least San Andreas had Alexandra Daddario in wet clothing so that puts it above Emmerich's stuff.

[lamaros]

You can see stuff like that for free on the internet, if that's all you care about.

[angry.bob]

Sure. But if you're going to sit through a terrible disaster movie with a star in wet clothing, Alexandra Daddario is clearly preferable to John Cusack. Check and mate.

[Fabricated]

Interactive/hype website 

http://www.warof1996.com/ 

And this is what failed contract negation looks like. 

Will Smith: I MUST GO. MY PLANET NEEDS ME. *slide whistle plays*

[Azazel]

Interactive/hype website  

http://www.warof1996.com/  

And this is what failed contract negation looks like.  

I misread that at first as "Col Hitler"  

[MahrinSkel]

Saw this over the weekend: It was much better than I expected. Not great, it's still a summer CGI-driven blockbuster, but it was decently done, visually very impressive, and most of the times I laughed it was because I was supposed to. The bad logic doesn't punch you in the face the way the original did.

If you want to see a movie, and everything else at the theater is kid movies or bullshit, it's not a waste of money.

--Dave

[Merusk]

So does it get campy like the original or did it stay just this side of the 'too serious' line so avoided being unintentionally tongue-in-cheek.

[MahrinSkel]

It has campy moments, I think, but they mostly seem to be deliberate invocations or subversions of the unintentional camp of the original. The punch in the face, for example. Generally, it manages to stay on the right side of the 'too serious' line.

--Dave

[Velorath]

If you want to see a movie, and everything else at the theater is kid movies or bullshit, it's not a waste of money.

I disagree and I didn't even have to pay to watch it. It's a nostalgia cash grab that's like every movie Emmerich has made since the original in that it once again proves he has no idea what people liked about ID4 in the first place. Five people including Emmerich have a screenwriting credit on this thing, none of the new characters have any sort of charisma, and the end of the movie is a video game final boss fight. It's not even bad in any sort of interesting or entertaining way, it's just entirely forgettable. The most charitable thing I can say about it is that it's nice to see Judd Hirsch getting work in movies.

[Pagz]

I feel bad that I like this, but it's probably because I've been playing way too much Stellaris.

A sequal to this will be the closest thing to a Mass Effect movie we'll ever get.

[Khaldun]

Reminds me of Greg Bear's Anvil of Stars if it were done right, but it's not going to be with Emmerich in charge of it.

I could see a ID3 where they find out the aliens left a doomsday device that can't be stopped (say, self-assembling mass drivers on half the asteroids of our solar system, aimed at Earth)  but the alliance that made the Sphere offers to relocate humanity to several extraterrestrial systems and grant us access to a jumpgate network, as long as we also join the armada of former victims who are going to genocide the evil locust aliens once and for all. Take all the ID2 characters and put them on one ship in a ragtag fleet of former victims and you could get some interesting bottle drama about committing genocide as well as all sorts of fun Star Trek stuff about meeting up with tons of aliens, followed by a big ship battle at the home planet of the locust aliens.

[Mac]

This movie is stupid awesome, as in awesome in it's stupidity.

I want them to make ID3.

[Mac]

Edit: Double post

[calapine]

Well, double posts happen. But 12 minutes apart? 

[Mac]

Dunno what happened there, probably got distracted by a squirrel.

[Merusk]

I felt like the original cast and whitebread hero were the only ones who had any fun at all with this. Everyone else really seemed to take it too seriously.

Spiner and Goldblum saved the movie from being totally awful by hamming it up just right. The most amusement I had was tracking the identical story beats in this back to ID4 and Jurassic Park. Sign of a bad movie: you have to steal jokes whole cloth from the actor's previous movies.

ID3 is happening, it was already in pre-production prior to this release and it's made double its budget in the first two weeks. That should be fun if everyone loosens up a bit.

[Evildrider]

I wasn't upset by this.  The old cast members saved it for me mainly though.  I didn't think anyone was really a standout out of the young cast.  Hemsworth being the strongest out of all of them.  Pullman, Goldblum, and a batty Spiner had all the best lines and scenes.  I think Judd Hirsch wasn't used well at all and he might as well have not even been in the movie.

[Venkman]

I enjoyed it. Oddly, I enjoyed it more after thinking about it than during it, which seems, like, the opposite of how things should work

The one thing that felt off was that this was even more squarely an America-first movie than the last one, which at least attempted to show vinettes and talk a bit more about and to other nations. Here is was the American POTUS leading the world leaders and almost-exclusively-Americans saving the world.

I'm curious how this was re-edited for China. Anyone know? I could see Moon general guy getting more airtime, and his daughter being the one who kills the Queen rather than midwestern boy, at the very least.

Kuala Lumpar crashing into London was fun. But an alien craft taking over the entire Atlantic ocean was a huge missed SFX opportunity for a tidal wave/tsunami wiping out everything from Bar Harbor to Denver.