Here is my review of 'Independence Day: Resurgence', which made its debut in Singapore this evening. (No spoilers.)
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Not since 1997 has Jeff Goldblum had the pull to draw millions of people to the cinema to watch him save the world. Over the next few weeks, he will taste that sweet power once more, as he reprises his role as the sharp-tongued intellectual mothership David Levinson in 'Independence Day: Resurgence', the long-awaited sequel to ID4...that's 'Independence Day', not 'Independence Day 4'.
How fitting that this film should invade cinemas around the world on the day that could forever be known as the United Kingdom's independence day if a certain vote that everyone keeps talking about goes one way.
Anyway, I don't know if I would last very long in the ID universe, because I have no patience. Rather than waiting for the re-thermalised plasma cells to heat up to whatever temperature they're supposed to get to, I'd want to chuck 'em right at the scaly space invaders as soon as I could get my hands on them! How about that for cold fusion? Then again, it is a ubiquitous flare for near-suicidal levels of impetuousness that wins the day in films like these, and that seems to be a prevailing theme in 'Resurgence'. How can a race of even the most technologically-advanced psychic aliens possibly hope to defend themselves against a species that doesn't even know what it is doing, let alone its attackers, and behaves in ways so unpredictable that not even the world's leading diviner, the First Minister of Scotland, could fully account for its actions? Luckily for the Earthlings, the aliens have been taking shooting lessons from Star Wars stormtroopers, and they must have bought their weapons off the Galactic Empire, too.
Perhaps it was with this suicidal flare for impetuousness that I turned out with my troupe to watch one of the very first showings of the film in Singapore. Ever the impatient man, I was not prepared to wait for absent friends who are presently out of the country but who want to see the film when they get back. No! I will not be sated until I have seen it. More than anything else, I will not have the film spoiled for me, so you'd be a fool to rival any one of the characters if you didn't take your chance as soon as it was presented to you.
Of course, no science fiction film is plausible without plausible but fictional science. And there's no shortage of that in 'Resurgence'. The re-thermalised plasma cells were one example of many. (What do you suppose a thermalised plasma cell is? Does it come with a warning saying "Do Not Reheat"?) But by far the most stunning of the sci-fi discoveries was cold fusion, a technology supposedly possessed by the aliens in the first film, and which we harvested from them. Yes, the aliens are apparently so good at cold fusion that they can't do it...you discover this contradiction if you know what you're looking for. You're not supposed to think about that, though. The fictional science is technical words jumbled together into gibberish. It's supposed to confuse the viewer unless you know it's gibberish. Either way, you will think it gibberish, so I guess it works.
I'm not sure they could have come up with cheesier lines if they had hired Ken Dodd to write the script. But then at some other points, it was quite slow (maybe those bits were written by Alan Yentob). Levinson was on top form with the dry one-liners, but some characters spoke only in cliches, and other characters were walking cliches, none more so than President Hard-Nose. Such a cliche was she that just about the most shocking thing about her unintentionally-comical character is that she didn't unzip her skin to reveal that she was Morgan Freeman all along. (Some of you who pay attention to Hollywood disaster films might have been expecting that to happen, but I don't think that technically counts as a spoiler). Well, that's Roland Emmerich for you!
I imagine we should be grateful that in this film, unlike in the original, we see glimpses of a few choice non-American cities before they are reduced to rubble. But, dear reader, how much did the French government pay '20th Century Fox' for that scene? And you may ask yourself the same question when you get there. What you must remember, though, is that once those non-American cities are reduced to rubble, their populations apparently either all die in unison or become positively catatonic in their passivity, for we hear nothing of them again. Once again, our non-Freeman heroine of a US President must bear the burden that her utterly toothless allies have unwittingly forced upon her by agreeing to appear in a Roland Emmerich film and being reduced to nothing more than glorified talking buddies. Well, that's Roland Emmerich for you!
Don't expect 'Resurgence' to be a masterpiece in screenwriting, for it is riven with plot holes so big that not even Boba Fett could fail to hit them. One of the first things we must inevitably conclude at the start of the film is that David Levinson, or the people working for him, are not as sharp as they lead us to believe they are. In the original, the most significant stumbling block to the eventual human victory was the aliens' invisible shield, which all of their ships had. And all of their ships still have it. The only trouble is that, despite -- one assumes -- not having forgotten how they defeated the aliens the first time by having to disable their shields, everybody seems not to notice or care about this very much. When their memory is jogged by some meaty suicidal impetuousness on the Moon base, they simply carry on not caring about it much. When the uber-alien fleet arrives at Earth, there is, at first, some incredulity that they once again failed to notice a 3,000-mile spaceship sailing into the Solar System, but rest assured for this incredulity soon turns to casual apathy, too.
It is not all bad, though. The sense of foreboding of the terror that is about to come is created very powerfully in the first half-hour of the film, with fleeting but casual peculiarities and the odd occurrence that makes you shiver. One of the most terrifying lines of the film is when a butt-naked Dr Brackish Oaken (played by Lieutenant Commander Data) stumbles into a top-secret secret meeting at Area 51 and sees the security footage of imprisoned aliens suddenly going wild. "Why are they screaming?" asks Mae Whitmore. "They're not screaming," replies Data. "They're celebrating."
What 'Resurgence' does not lack is action, plenty of it. The original romped home with the Academy Award for Best Visual Effects, and I absolutely expect that 'Resurgence' will be nominated, too. The CGI has come on leaps and bounds, and is now both seamless and convincing for the most part.
1996's ID4 will always have a special place in the cold, black hearts of misanthropes the world over, but 'Resurgence' is brash, nonsensical fun. The sense of the spectacular is always strong with Roland Emmerich. Say what you like about his scripts, but you will not leave the cinema without a customary rollercoaster ride.
Expect another sequel. The original mothership was, as one suit put it, "one-fourth the size of our Moon". The 'Resurgence' "harvester" that was really in charge of the original fleet is 3,000 miles wide. You can be sure that somewhere out there, lurking even further away, there is a Solar System-sized Alex Salmond, who is royally pissed off that independence day still hasn't come.
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By
The Imperial Orange,
23rd June 2016
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