Unlike almost every other movie commercial released yesterday, Independence Day: Resurgence actually packed its with some new footage. And an explanation of the way the aliens are going to get back at us. It is, of course, completely absurd.
I just want to point out that capping off a performance of the American National Anthem, at a sporting event, with a bunch of alien ships attacking the flyover, during the Super Bowl commercial is the most Independence Day thing ever.
Anyway, that shot easily fades into a space battle between the aliens and us. It looks like this battle is happening above one of the alien motherships—which is much larger than the saucers from the first movie.
It’s cut so that we see Jake Morrison (Liam Hemsworth), in an Earth Space Defense spacesuit, piloting a ship. Since he starts the film as a hotshot pilot who messed up and was sent to the moon to drive a space forklift as punishment, I think it’s safe to say he redeems himself and ends up back in a ship. As if there was any doubt.
“They’re coming back,” says former president Thomas J. Whitmore (Bill Pullman). We’ve seen this scene before, with the full line being “I see them in my dreams, they’re coming back.” Which makes it feel like less a pronouncement and more like a nightmare he has.
We’ve seen this shot before, too. But the space battle earlier makes it seem like the crash was caused by our great fighters. Not that the crash doesn’t also cause a lot of damage on Earth.
And this shot of Morrison is also not new but is a reminder that he is the love interest of Patricia Whitmore (Maika Monroe).
See? Crashing ship is tearing up the planet.
While the first movie had aliens blowing up cities with a single shot from their death laser, Independence Day: Resurgence has them defying gravity to rip cities up from the ground. Maybe after the first movie we shouldn’t have rebuilt any cities, since they make such good targets?
Dylan Dubrow (Jesse Usher) is the stepson of Steven Hiller (Will Smith) and will probably be taking over the job that Smith didn’t come back to do.
Along with chunks of city, I spy an airplane and a ship being hurled at London here. Also, welcome London to the “featured city destroyed by aliens in Independence Day” club. It’s not just America the aliens hate.
In case you didn’t get what was happening, “What comes up must come down,” says David Levinson (Jeff Goldblum). This line and this delivery are so perfectly Independence Day, I can’t stand it. It’s a cliché delivered with all the gravitas and importance as actual information.
Although there is something poetic about lifting up parts of our cities and then chucking them at the rest of them that is poetic.
Poor London Eye.
Anyway, instead of explosions, the aliens are coming after us by picking up things and dropping them on other things. Like so much of what happens in the huge movies, this premise sounds stupid out loud, but looks awesome on screen.