No fireworks in long-awaited sequel Independence Day: Resurgence

The original Independence Day blockbuster came out—hold on to your walkers—in 1996, a mere seven years after the Berlin Wall fell and five years before 9/11. The greatest threat to America during that in-between era of innocence (and ignorance) probably did come from extraterrestrials, or so many thought. (X-Files, anyone?) But the new sequel, Independence Day: Resurgence, out finally after 20 years, fizzles with recycled tropes, soporific heroics, and none of the original’s legitimate drama.

The film’s first 20 minutes are a meet-and-greet of returning characters (Will Smith’s alter ego isn’t among them), new faces, and potential love interests. Icebreaker complete, the aliens begin to make trouble.

“That’s definitely bigger than the last one,” Earth Space Defense director David Levinson (Jeff Goldblum) says of an alien craft—3,000 miles in diameter—that flies over his head. When it parks on the Atlantic Ocean, Earth experiences a serious case of continental drift.

Levinson witnesses the super ship drilling into the earth with a plasma beam and somehow immediately deduces the aliens intend to extract the earth’s molten core. (Behind his serious-guy eyewear, the kooky-countenanced Goldblum blinks not a single time throughout the film.) With equally inexplicable insight, helpless world leaders—fist to mouth, biting on fingers—calculate exactly how long it will take until Earth’s core is all slurped up.

“This is humanity’s last stand,” General Adams (William Fichtner) pep talks the planet. “In the next 12 minutes, succeed or fail, we’ll face it together.”

A half-dozen subplots beg viewers to find a reason to care about the human race’s survival: A presumed-dead scientist (Brent Spiner) wakes after 7,300 days in a coma; an African warlord (Deobia Oparei) offers his alien-fighting expertise; a loner old guy (Judd Hirsch) drives orphaned kids in a school bus; and the former president (Bill Pullman) emerges from dementia to contribute to the cause. But it’s hard not to snicker at the pervasive bravado.

“I’m taking this fighter!” Patty (Maika Monroe) informs her fellow combatants during a call for pilots on what could be a suicide mission.

“The fusion drive’s only at 32 percent!” a mechanic warns.

“That’s enough,” Patty proclaims.

With just a few tweaks, Independence Day: Resurgence (rated PG-13 for sequences of sci-fi action and destruction, and for some language) could be the Spinal Tap of alien mayhem flicks. Instead, the film takes itself way seriously while muffing most actual attempts at humor, eliciting yawns and laughs only of a derisive nature. The computer graphics lack punch, but if nothing else, Resurgence is a testimony to the long-lasting influence of the 1979 sci-fi horror hit Alien on space creature design: oblong head, jutting jaws, and pluri-tentacled body.

It’s difficult not to root for the intergalactic invaders, if only to stave off a third film.