INDEPENDENCE DAY: RESURGENCE - The Review...

So last night, I went to the Cinemark theater in Orange County to catch a double-feature screening of 1996's Independence Day (ID4) and the newly-released Independence Day: Resurgence (IDR). ID4 was still as patriotic, feel-good and cheesier as ever...with President Whitmore's (Bill Pullman) Area 51 speech and David Arnold's music being memorable 20 years later. As for Resurgence, all I can say is— It was both exciting and disappointing at the same time. It was exciting in that, despite the absence of Will Smith's character Captain Steve Hiller, the other characters were as lively as in the original, and the story was more intriguing than in ID4. Resurgence was disappointing in that David Arnold didn't score the movie this time around. With no disrepect to IDR composers Thomas Wander and Harald Kloser (who began conducting the scores for most of Roland Emmerich's films after the director had a falling out with Arnold due to creative differences over 2000's The Patriot...which was eventually worked on by John Williams), Arnold would've added the same patriotic and melodic fervor to IDR like he did in the previous film. It might be my nostalgia talking, but the best moments in IDR had the classic music motifs from ID4 playing in the background.



In regards to other aspects of Resurgence, the visual effects were stunning...although the same critique made about the Star Wars prequels (the CGI was excessive) can also be applied here. The arrival of the so-called "Harvester Ship" was cool (though once again, it would be much cooler if the ominous music playing in the background was scored by Davi— Ah, nevermind), yet it still somehow lacked the punch of the 15-mile-wide alien destroyers arriving above Manhattan, Los Angeles and other cities in the first film. The Harvester Ship is supposed to be 3,000 miles-wide (compared to 500 miles for ID4's Mothership), but the fact that the vessel was created via CGI as opposed to using a practical model prevented it from having the same impact as the destroyers did in 1996. As for the new alien attackers in IDR (once again, it's my nostalgia talking), these fighters didn't have as memorable a design as the manta ray-shaped spacecraft that Steve Hiller and company battled in ID4. Also, the engines on the new attackers didn't have a cool screeching sound like their 1996 predecessors had. Nor did the laser guns on the new ships sound as interesting as those fired by ID4's killer UFOs.



The one thing that I really looked forward to with Independence Day: Resurgence was seeing the alien exoskeletons in action for the first time. Weta Digital (the company that worked on The Lord of the Rings trilogy and Peter Jackson's other films) did a great job animating the murderous extraterrestrials. It was cool to see the Harvester Queen suit up inside her biomechanical armor and wreak havoc on the humans once she set foot on earth. The Queen's movement echoed the behavior of the monsters seen in the J.J. Abrams movies Cloverfield and Super 8...and watching her take on the alien hybrid jet fighters piloted by Patricia Whitmore (Maika Monroe) and company was a cool sight to see. One person who sat behind me at the theater yesterday complained after the movie ended that Resurgence felt too futuristic compared to the more grounded, realistic world depicted in ID4. On one hand, he is completely right. On the other hand, it is understandable that this would happen...seeing as how 20 years have elapsed and it obviously makes sense that we would apply alien technology to our weapons, vehicles, and every other applicable thing that we used in our daily lives. That, and most of Earth's major cities were wiped out in 1996...so that gave Emmerich freedom to interpret how a rebuilt Washington, D.C. would look post-ID4.



And lastly— The story in IDR was intriguing, to put it mildly. Not to spoil anything, but the ending paves the way for a third film if Resurgence makes enough money at the box office (it won't be 2016's highest-grossing film the same way ID4 was in 1996, that's for sure) to convince Twentieth Century Fox to give Emmerich the go-ahead to shoot another installment. I doubt a third film will be made...seeing as how Independence Day 3 will essentially become Star Trek, 2013's Ender's Game and every other sci-fi space flick due to the premise introduced right before the end credits. Also, IDR killed off two beloved characters from the original film—so the presence of at least one of them will be missed in a third movie. All-in-all, Resurgence had so much potential...but it didn't quite live up to it. Just like the 2014 comedy Dumber and Dumber 2 (which came out 20 years after the first film did), IDR was released in theaters several years too late to have the same impact as that of the original. Back in 1996, ID4 was called "the Star Wars of our generation." You really can't say that about Resurgence now when four new live-action Star Wars films (with a fifth movie, Rogue One, arriving in December) were released since then! But I am definitely onboard if Roland Emmerich and David Arnold finally set their differences aside...and Arnold graces us with another patriotic and energetic music score in Independence Day 3 if it ever gets made. That is all.

3 out of 5 stars. ***

SUPER 8... I watched the new sci-fi flick by Steven Spielberg and J.J. Abrams this weekend, and considering what I read in recent newspaper articles about Abrams struggling to combine two movies of different genres into a single flick, I'd have to say it came out pretty good. The beginning of the film started out kinda slow (with one dude in the audience I saw Super 8 with wondering out loud "What’s this movie about?"), but as it went on, the movie became very enjoyable to watch. You can clearly tell which scenes in Super 8 were influenced by Spielberg and which ones were conjured up by Abrams. All the father-bonding-or-not-bonding-with-son moments, action sequences like that Jurassic Park-ish scene where the alien creature attacks that bus on a dark road, and the Close Encounters of the Third Kind/E.T. moment at the end of the movie? All Spielberg. The alien creature itself (which looks like it may be the brethren of the monster in Cloverfield), the army firing upon the creature in the middle of the night (another throwback to Cloverfield...and um, other monster flicks) and Super 8’s Fringe-like atmosphere? The work of Abrams...though let’s ignore the fact he’s the one who actually wrote and directed the film, hah.



Comparing X-Men: First Class (which I saw a few days ago) and this movie... I find it amusing that Spielberg/Abrams like to show teenage kids constantly spewing out profanities in Super 8 while the only major use of profanity in X-Men was in the bar scene where Wolverine (yea, Hugh Jackman makes a cameo in First Class) tells Professor X and Magneto to "f**k off". Of course, leave it to Spielberg to use the ‘s’ word in movies he’s either directing (such as Jurassic Park) or executive producing (such as Super 8 and Transformers). Oh well. Indiana Jones and The Temple of Doom, which is a previous Spielberg flick if you aren’t a film buff and/or wasn’t born before the 1980s, was—I believe—the movie that lead to the PG-13 rating being created (what with the monkey brains and hearts getting ripped out and whatnot). Just one example in a hundred where Spielberg revolutionized cinema. But Super 8 is first and foremost the work of J.J. Abrams...and I want to give him credit for making a summer flick that was as satisfying to watch as his 2009 remake of Star Trek. When does Star Trek 2 come out, by the way? That’s for a Blog on another day.

SKYLINE... I saw the low budget sci-fi film last Saturday, and here are a couple of notes on it:

-- The computer-generated imagery in Skyline was simply awesome. Of course, this is due to the fact the filmmakers (Colin Strause and Greg Strause...the brothers who brought you Aliens vs. Predator: Requiem) employed a bunch of no-name actors that you would see on a CW Network TV show like um, Gossip Girl to save money that was obviously devoted to the visual FX. (This no-name cast excludes David Zayas—who was last seen as a dictator being manipulated by Eric Roberts in last August’s action film The Expendables.)

-- The first 10-15 minutes of Skyline had the most pathetic attempts at character development I’ve ever seen on the big screen. Out of all the so-called characterization (some dude travels from out of state to Los Angeles to hang with rapper friend; rapper friend cheats on his girlfriend with another hoochie mama; and the girlfriend of the dude who came from out of state to hang with rapper friend is pregnant), there was only one storyline that managed to be focused on at the end of the film: One of the girls being um, 'preggers'. Of course, the fact that all but two of the characters mentioned above get killed over the course of the movie is a good reason for this. But still...Skyline's character development was atrocious.



-- It’s a wise move that the military would use Unmanned Aerial Vehicles (UAVs) in the initial attack on the alien ships. Nice use of Northrop Grumman’s X-47B...a prototype UAV that, in real life, may possibly conduct its first flight next month.

-- I like how the aliens are more gruesome than Predator in that they not only rip people's heads off, but they also ingest the humans' brains and gain whatever memory is inside it.

-- Skyline is worthy of being considered an Oscar contender for Best Visual FX (that is...before the nominees are narrowed down to 3 choices). Best Art Direction? Probably not. This is because the aliens were a cross between Predator, the Cloverfield monster, the aliens from Señor Spielbergo's War of the Worlds and the Arachnids from Starship Troopers. Also, the mothership (that gets shot down by an X-47B armed with a nuclear missile) resembled the Romulan vessel Narada from the 2009 Star Trek film...while the smaller aerial craft/creatures were a rip-off of the Sentinels from The Matrix.

-- Skyline cost $10 million to make and made $13.2 million at the box office as of this journal entry. Nice to know that it won’t be considered a flop.


That is all.

HOT TUB TIME MACHINE... I saw the new comedy flick today, and if you like movies like this one and She’s Out of My League, then you’ll enjoy it. I happen to like these kinds of films, so I enjoyed it! Haha. Craig Robinson (of NBC’s The Office) and Rob Corddry (of...Harold & Kumar Escape from Guantanamo Bay) crack me up, and John Cusack plays his usual role as the level-headed goofball who still happens to get the hot chicks. Speaking of hot chicks, there were many in Hot Tub Time Machine: Lyndsy Fonseca, Lizzy Caplan (of Cloverfield and...HBO’s True Blood. Nice. Google ‘Lizzy Caplan True Blood’ to know why this is nice), Collette Wolfe (who was also in last year's Seth Rogen film Observe and Report), Crystal Lowe (who was in an episode of TV’s Supernatural), Julia Maxwell and Amy Esterle. In case you’re wondering how I know all these names in the film, thank the person who invented IMDb.



If there’s one lame little gripe I have about the film, it’s that why would Craig Robinson and his friends go into that hot tub when it was in dilapidated condition moments before? Wouldn’t they have found it odd that after finding a dead raccoon in the empty Jacuzzi upon arrival at that ski resort, it’s suddenly filled with warm, bubbling water? And they nonchalantly enter the water without questioning this abrupt change? Hmm. Anyways, as I said before...this gripe is lame. It’s like pointing out why Ricky Ricardo didn’t leave or bitch-slap Lucy after all those screwball moments she had in I Love Lucy, or how Ben Stiller didn't feel that, um, piece of bodily-fluid land on his ear after "floggin’ the dolphin" in There’s Something About Mary. Because they’re freakin’ comedies! That is all.

UPDATE (April 1): Actually, here's a more specific I Love Lucy example: In that episode where Lucy (after getting into a huge fight with Ricky over who forgave first in a previous argument) is wrapped up in bandages inside her bedroom to pretend she was hit by a bus, and Ricky and Fred Mertz stage a fake fire in the apartment so that Ricky can come in and rescue Lucy, and all will be well between them... Wouldn't Lucy have asked a loud "WHAT THE F**K?" when she exits the bedroom, only to see that the apartment was completely unscathed? Wait to think things through on your plan, Fred. And by Fred, I mean the show's scriptwriters.

147 MINUTES... That’s how long Revenge of the Fallen is gonna be, according to director Michael Bay. Personally, I think that that’s a good thing. If people are gonna dish out 10 - 11 dollars for tickets, then they’ll be for a movie that’s at least 2-hours long (of course, here’s hoping it’s not bloated like any of The Matrix or Pirates of the Caribbean sequels)...compared to spending 10 bones on a flick that’s not even 90-minutes long (Cloverfield being an example...with an 85-minute runtime). I think it’s better to be spending money on something that may be too much of a good thing, rather than a film that’s not even long enough to be worth devoting your evening to (yes, I'm well aware of that little thing called 'having a good story'). That’s all.


Paramount Pictures / Dreamworks

CLOVERFIELD... I saw the film tonight, and thought it was pretty good. However, many in the audience two of my friends and I watched it with made negative comments right after the ending (cause it was abrupt), but those people are ignoramuses. C’mon now— You must have a far more severe mental issue than ADD to not realize that the flick was treated as a ‘documentary’ from the very start... What makes you think it wasn’t gonna have that documentary feel at the end as well? What, did these folks expect some dramatic music (courtesy of Steve Jablonsky or John Williams) to accompany the final scenes in Cloverfield? Or the camera conveniently capturing footage on its own of the military folks who found the device inside the rubble (not to spoil the ending for y’all who haven’t seen the movie yet)? Wouldn’t that have been nice...



No, the movie was treated as if it was actually raw footage that was pieced together so government officials could view it and find out what happened (for those folks reading this who have ADD). Trust me— A movie that has more of a "WTF??" ending to it is something like 28 Weeks Later...or Rob Zombie’s recent take on Halloween. Basically, the more standard horror fare. I’m definitely gonna buy Cloverfield once it gets released on DVD.



What actually peeves me more than the local audience's reaction to J.J. Abrams' thriller is the fact Hollywood is making too many movies like Bring It On. You have Bring It On’s straight-to-DVD sequels, Stomp the Yard, Honey (but that one has Jessica Alba in it, so all is forgiven), Rize, You Got Served, the upcoming How She Move, and Step It Up’s sequel, Step Up 2 The Streets...whose preview was shown in front of Cloverfield (I had to do research online to find all the recent dance flicks, FYI). Um, just how many of these films do we need to see of a bunch of (insert any derogatory name for urban kids here) krumping and doing all that crap? Of course, that's Tinseltown. Gladiator was a hit in 2000, so, gotta make more sword-and-sandal epics that can also become huge successes...like Lord of the Rings, or major flops like Uwe Boll's recent In the Name of the King: A Dungeon Siege Tale. Saw was a huge hit too, so, gotta make more torture porn like Hostel...and more additional Saw sequels (Saw 5 comes out this October...Good God). But I’m just going off on a rant here.



Basically, Cloverfield was good. And for those of you who read my last Blog on the film, the monster looked NOTHING like the image I posted. It looked more like something from the XBox video game Gears of War (which I also wrote a Blog on) or the creatures in The Mist (film review here) than it did a giant whale. And the pic below? Nope— Not a Monster Louse. But a really gruesome ending for one of the movie’s main human characters. Not to spoil the flick for ya. That is all.



UPDATE (January 21): A screenshot of the monster...



All images courtesy of Paramount Pictures / Bad Robot Productions

The CLOVERFIELD Monster? The image below has been all over the Web since last September, but whatever. Someone made this cool artwork depicting what he thinks the creature in J.J. Abrams’ upcoming film will look like. Don’t know how close this sketch looks to the real (so-to-speak) thing, but the "Monster Louse" looks pretty similar to what we see in one of the Cloverfield TV spots. If you don’t know what I’m talking about, there’s a scene in the commercial where a group of people hiding inside an Army tent see the silhouette of a creature attacking someone outside. The shape of that creature, from what I recall, definitely looks like the artwork below. Anyways, can’t wait for the film to come out in theaters on January 18.

...

I hope this film doesn’t let me down like Roland Emmerich and Dean Devlin’s take on Godzilla did in 1998. *Crosses fingers*



Courtesy of HorrorMovies.ca

UPDATE: A screencapture of the scene mentioned above: