A big toy-movie, I found it entertaining enough, I honestly feared worse. It was quite predictable indeed, but the many battle-scenes made it entertaining anyway. It’s full of b****hit, absolutely, no doubt about that, and also many elements wanted to recreate the first story, of course, plus there were many details that... well, I couldn’t avoid thinking of the Millennium Falcon escaping from the beast mouth in one scene, or thinking of Star Trek many many times, and not because Brent Spiner is in the movie, he was in the first too but that was different.
We see most of the old characters/actors, but of course not Will Smith, I can understand that, but still I think they didn’t need to make his character dead :-/
They chose a female President for this movie, only to have her make a terrible decision and then kill her off. :-/
The characters are: Jake (Liam Hemsworth), a pilot; Dylan Hiller (Jessie T. Usher), the little kid of the first film now all grown up, a pilot himself like dad was. David Levinson (Jeff Goldblum) of course, and his father Julius (Judd Hirsch). The old president Whitmore (Bill Pullman) and his daughter Patricia (Maika Monroe). General Adams (William Fichtner), the scientist Okun (Brent Spiner), Mrs Hiller (Vivica A. Fox) and the new entry: the new president (Sela Ward), Rain (Angela Baby) another pilot, and Charlie (Travis Tope) the silly talk-too-much pilot, plus an African Warlord or something, rather cool.
So, in details:
a very stupid, very American, very human decision: they see a sphere-like ship approaching, and without knowing anything about it they shoot it down. Which is more or less why everything else happens. How demented is that? It COULD be an enemy, so just in case shoot it dead !!
...
Did they think it was a Borg ship???
They didn’t care about the possibility that they might be declaring war to another alien race, as if one wasn’t enough. Let’s not talk about killing some innocent aliens, it’s not like people care about innocent’s lives if they’re not their own, right?
Anyway.
We are told that after the events of the first movie, Earth sort of reunited, putting aside all the insignificant differences, realising we are all on the same side and all that stuff that is so Star Trek, but so not human.
We meet Jake and his friend Charlie who gets distracted during a complex operation and almost causes the whole base to be crashed under a big thing (what was it, a weapon of some kind? I’m not sure). Jake acts of his own initiative saving the day but nobody thanks him, instead accusing him of the accident.
The aliens and their stuff have been dormant for twenty years and all of a sudden they wake up. Also an alien machine in Africa, now it is all light up.
Honestly, I think they were taking the whole matter a bit too lightly...
In Africa we meet David again, and also Catherine (Charlotte Gainsbourg), who knows why, she studies the aliens and for whatever reason the Africans obey her...
Dylan is some sort of hero (because of himself or because of who is father is?) while Jake caused some accident during training, so as soon as they meet again, Dylan punches him in the face.
Charlie has a crush on the new Chinese pilot Rain and his way of approaching her is rather embarrassing...
After they shoot down the sphere-like ship, they want David to attend a ceremony instead of studying the ship, but Jake ‘steals’ a ship and goes to pick him up. Catherine follows, so does the Warlord (if he had a name I didn’t catch it) and also, unfortunately, some kind of little bureaucrat - I really have no idea what was his role in the movie, I only know that he was very annoying, that he was embarrassing, and that his character added to the stupidity because as it often happens the guy that at first looked like he had never lifted anything other than a pen suddenly becomes a warrior... well more or less, but still, he fights without killing himself.
At the ceremony to remember the heroes of the 1996 war of course David is not present, but president Whitmore shows up, in a sort of delirious state before his head starts hurting exactly like Okun’s - by the way, he also woke up after twenty years... and he started walking around as if only a night had passed. I thought he was dead...
A huge spaceship approaches, and after a scene much like Spaceballs where the ship never ends, this one scratches the moon before resting very close to Earth - it wants to dig to reach its center.
It’s so big that it has its own gravity, and all things are attracted up towards it.
Miller’s mom saves a woman and her baby but then she falls to her death.
There’s a group of kids on the run, their families may have died and they are alone. They have a car and they meet Levinson dad and join him.
The pilots try to attack the ship but it’s a tough battle, some manage to get in but it was a trap and their bombs don’t work, there’s an energy field.
The warlord has killed an alien before and knows a little of their language... I mean, hats off to the only guy who seems to know how to actually kill aliens, without all the silly toys that the others like so much, but really, how did he learn their language? It seems easy when they tell you ‘x means this, y means that, so I guess that z means blahblah’, but when he didn’t know the meaning of any one symbol, how did he learn it? How can they say that he knows, maybe he guessed wrong, because come on, it can only be a guess, it’s not like he can access more data to confirm his theories....
It turns out that the ship they attacked at the beginning was actually here to help, it’s a sphere, the last survivor of its species, trying to put together a resistance. The aliens know it and want to destroy it. Good move, humans, you always know what to do! Shoot down the only one who was on our side!
There’s a big attack, the ex president goes on a suicide mission, the big mother ship is destroyed but not the alien-mother because it has a personal shield. Patricia (ex president’s daughter, I think) breaks that shield with a strong attack, but now the alien-queen calls all her ships to surround her and protect her and goes to get the sphere. Dylan and the others manage to get themselves free since they are now in alien ships and they manage to kill the queen before she gets the sphere.
Of course now that the queen is dead the battle is over. As everyone knows, where there’s an almost unbeatable race trying to kill us all, don’t waste your time and your characters-without-a-name’s lives fighting them one by one, go directly to their mom, ‘cuz all aliens are mama’s alien-boy and without her they don’t know what to do anymore, ships stop moving, aliens stop fighting, even the huge ship digging to the center of the Earth stops immediately and leaves heading back home.
Not sure why, actually. Why did it leave? Does it have no shield left? Why isn’t it continuing its mission?
Anyway, the film ends with... how can I put it... you see, the thing is, it’s such nonsense that it’s hard to know how to say it. Basically the sphere tells Okun that humans are so great that it wants humans to lead the resistance against the bad aliens.... did it forget already that these so called great humans shoot it down on sight? Sure, after that they got lucky, which is the main and best characteristics of all these human heroes: the sphere was not destroyed and at the end the bad-aliens ran away with their tails between their legs, for whatever reason... and you know what they say, better to be lucky than rich, so the sphere is probably hoping that their luck will continue.
But ehi! I’m all for it if they want to make a third movie bringing the battle up there, I would watch it because even with all the nonsense, these movies are still entertaining, and the nonsense is not so much as to spoil the entertainment, so yeah, do make a third movie and concentrate on alien-humans fights, and big ships and whatnot.
Maybe since you’re at it, see if you find another place for the humans, because after all the damage done to the moon and to the Earth, I don’t think things could really be the same here....
I mean, a 3000 miles diameter alien ship drilling its way to Earth core... that’s got to hurt...
ITA independence day: rigenerazione
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