Resurgence offers up plenty of proof that Emmerich still knows his way around a disaster scene. No one’s expecting an Oscar-winning performance out of the film’s cast, of course, but there’s still the expectation that the new faces will - at the very least - be as entertaining as the familiar faces. Unfortunately, the new additions to the cast do little to make audiences forget about the absence of Smith and feel entirely too generic. Still, solo Goldblum is always preferable to no Goldblum at all. In the spirit of not knowing what you had ’til it’s gone, Resurgence serves as a nice reminder of the great chemistry Goldblum and Smith had in the original film, and the sequel suffers for lack of the latter. In his case, however, it feels like his character’s failings have more to do with Smith’s absence than any problems with the script or his performance. Goldblum also falls a bit short of recapturing his Independence Day shine despite getting quite a bit of screen time in Resurgence. To his credit, he almost gets there at several points in the film, but his character always seems to fall just short of having that one epic moment this time around. Pullman, for example, does an admirable job of trying to get back into the character who delivered that inspiring speech in the 1996 film to what remained of humanity’s last, best hope for salvation. The hopelessness of humanity’s predicament in Independence Day is rarely felt in Resurgence. In this and many other ways, there are few surprises to be found in Resurgence, and the few unexpected elements the film does offer up don’t do it any favors. On one hand, this could be interpreted as some sort of deeper message about the inevitability of history repeating itself, but on the other, far more likely hand, it just feels a little too formulaic - like the film is a remake masquerading as a sequel. It’s clear from the start that Emmerich and the Resurgence writing team intend for the film to serve as a passing of the torch, with the young stars following in the footsteps of the 1996 film’s cast, but the effort occasionally becomes a little too literal as certain legacy characters simply retrace the story arcs of characters from the first film.
Like her father in the first film, she has left her pilot days behind when we first encounter her in Resurgence. Usher portrays the son of Smith’s character, who follows in his father’s high-flying ways, while Monroe plays the daughter of Pullman’s character. The film also introduces a new, younger cast of alien fighters played by Liam Hemsworth, Jessie Usher, Maika Monroe, and Angelababy (a popular Chinese model, singer, and actress who’s apparently referred to as the “Kim Kardashian of China”). Conspicuously absent from the returning cast is Will Smith’s hotshot fighter pilot, Steven Hiller, whose presence is sorely missed (but more on that later). Brakish Okun, head of research at Area 51. Whitmore, and Brent Spiner as the eccentric Dr.
Humanity is now united for the common good in the wake of the first invasion, and the world is incorporating a mix of human and alien technology to protect the planet.ĭirected once again by Emmerich, the film brings back several members of the original film’s cast, including Jeff Goldblum as computer expert David Levinson, Bill Pullman as former U.S. However, they return to a planet far different from the one their species first encountered. Set 20 years after the events of the original film, Resurgence has the aliens from the 1996 film returning to Earth with an exponentially larger invasion force and the intention to finish what they started.
Fitbit Versa 3Įven with all the devastation, the stakes never feel quite as high in Resurgence as they did in the previous film.