The release of “Independence Day Resurgence” is the sequel to the original movie which came out 20 years ago. This is probably the longest period of time between sequels in movie history, especially when you consider how much money the original made in 1996. As I have reviewed in this blog, the original Independence Day was a very good movie with a very stupid and bad ending. This movie had excellent special effects but overall a bad story and an ending that was not as bad as the first but was still a mostly bad ending. The plan to beat the Aliens at the end of this film was extremely convoluted and mostly made no sense. With 20 years to think of ideas for another huge alien movie I definitely expected better than this story and most especially the ending.

Most of the original cast are in this film, the notable exception is Will Smith who dies somehow in the last 20 years but this was never explained. This new version has his son taking over the jet flying and fighting the aliens along with the daughter of the President of the Unites States in the last movie. Judd Hirsh seems to have been placed into this movie after the fact with a crowbar and does not seem to belong in this story at all. Hirsh is on a boat, almost killed, then winds up on a bus and then by some miracle winds up in the Salt Flats at the end of the movie where he reunites​ with his son for the final battle of the movie. He also looks the exact same age he was 20 years ago, which could have been some kind of an oversight with the makeup. The cast overall is effective, but there was way too much build up in this movie before the action or the story really starts. The other stupidity, which also exists in the first movie is allowing the President to join in the Jet fighting and high risk of death dogfights​ with the alien spacecraft. Of course in real life, this would never be allowed, but it is allowed in both of these movies. Overall I was pretty disappointed with the story in this film, but not with the special effects.

Go to this movie to see the special effects and not for the story or satisfying ending.

It’s hard to believe that during the July 4th weekend 20 years ago in 1996 the movie Independence Day was released. The special effects which we all saw on TV before the movie came out were spectacular, especially for the time. Even more surprising is the fact that the sequel to this movie is coming out this weekend, a full 20 years later. I am sure there is some financial reason why they didn’t wait until the July 4th weekend this time around because I think it would have been better of they waited one more week until the release of the new one. Independence Day had everything, great special effects, some humor and a great action movie acting performance from Will Smith, who is not in the new movie.

The one thing for me that stands out in this film more than anything else is that it probably has the stupidest ending idea in this history of all movies. The ending almost ruined the whole film even though before the ending it was very solid throughout. At the low point in the war against the Aliens, Jeff Goldblum who is the lead in this movie had no idea what humanity was going to do to stop this Alien invasion. His idea at first was very good. Invade the mother ship with one of the captured alien spacecraft from Area 51. Amazingly this ship still flew and the plan was to plant a bomb in the spacecraft, fly into the mother ship and set it off. Brilliant idea. If you disable the mother ship then all the other spacecraft that were destroying many cities on planet earth would be disabled! This is a great idea and would win the war. However, because of Hollywood, because of money, because of some kind of an audience reaction test, because of stupidity or other reasons, Jeff Goldblum came up with an idea to “install a virus” into the mother ship. How can someone do this? How can a person install software invented from planet earth into Alien Software and expect it to work? So this Alien world also uses the same code we use? It uses the same binary language we use? Also, how can you interface with the alien computer? Do they use a USB port? How do you connect to their computer and how did Jeff Goldblum do this with his laptop? Why didn’t the producers realize how stupid this is and that there is no logical way this idea to save the world could be pulled off? They already had a good ending with the bomb idea, why add this stupidity at the end? For me, it almost ruined the whole movie.

I am hoping that the new movie has a better ending than the last one 20 years ago. As far as Independence Day, its a very good movie despite the stupid ending.

Kevin Hart has probably made the most movies of any well-known movie actor in the last 5 years and I heard the other day that his movies have grossed close to 1 billion dollars. I have noticed that all of his movies follow the same pattern. An average story, some physical humor and many attempts at verbal humor, some that fails and some that are only moderately funny. As a standup comedian Kevin Hart is one of the best to come out in many years, but as a comedic actor, he has to find better scripts than the mostly average ones he has found so far. The other problem if this keeps up is overexposure which can be the death of anyone’s acting career in Hollywood.

The other hard working actor in the movie “Central Intelligence” is Dwayne Johnson, “The Rock” and over the last 5 years, he has probably chosen his movie roles a little better than Kevin Hart. The good part of this movie includes some important statements about bullying, which is a huge problem in this country and has been getting worse over the years. From an outrageous bullying incident in 1996 involving Johnson’s character who was obese at the time, he later became not only a great physical specimen “because of his 6 hours of training for 20 years”, but also a CIA agent. The re-connection of Hart’s character and the Rock is through Facebook and very quickly they find themselves being chased around by CIA agents within a story that became rather convoluted and run of the mill. Some of the physical comedy was somewhat funny but not enough as were some of the lines and interaction between Hart and Johnson’s characters.

This movie is a very typical Kevin Hart movie and if you are not a big fan, you can miss this film.